Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
Visual Modeling and the Value of Seeing Differently
The very act of seeing is a creative act. The way the optic nerve is connected to
the retina within the eye produces a void in the center of our field of
vision. What we actually see with
decent resolution is quite small: a slice of vision about the width of our
thumb held at arm’s length. The brain then makes assumptions about the missing
information and creates the rest of the picture. We are not even conscious that we are doing this, but we are
expert modelers, relentlessly constructing visual models. Even now, when reading this page,
modeling is occurring. Visual
modeling is an invaluable tool in both how we perceive our world and how
information about our universe can be organized and better understood. For example, the abstract theories,
ideas and concepts of science are often difficult to comprehend, but with the
aid of visual models and the language of abstraction they can be transformed
into more easily digestible forms, such as graphs, schematics, diagrams, maps,
and so forth.
Abstract painting is a form of visual modeling that can take
this much further with its capacity to effectively communicate a complex array
of subtle and nuanced information.
Abstract paintings are, in effect, models of seeing that suggest an
alternate perspective on our world. In some cases, art can be empirical, but
this perspectival shift does have scientific value as well. Stephen Hawking, in his book The Grand Design, gives the example of the
perspective of a fish from within a curved fishbowl. From the fish’s perspective, the world is distorted due to
the curve of the glass, and yet, the fish could construct a model of its
reality that would, from its viewpoint, be “correct”. For a person standing in the room with the fishbowl,
however, the fish’s model would appear useless. But actually the fish and person’s respective models are
both correct in that they reveal a common aspect of truth from each relative
position.
When we look at our past and the great problems that we have
solved, we can see that we did not solve these problems because we had a sudden
influx of intellectual capability.
Our intellectual capability has remained largely constant for thousands
of years, what did change was our ability to look at the problem in new
ways. If we are not getting the
desired answers to our questions, perhaps it is because we are not asking the
right kinds of questions. In this way, Art may not be empirical in the strictest
sense, but it can play a larger role in our understanding by helping reveal the
right questions. The essence of experiencing art brings us out of ourselves,
inviting different perspectives and helping more novel, innovative questions to
emerge. Two hundred years ago the idea of crossing the Atlantic in a metal
canister catapulting through the air in just a few hours was
incomprehensible. Now, of course,
it is a given. What we can gather from this is that our current understanding
is likely wrong in some way as well and that our future often begins within the
depths of our imagination.
In
physics, there is a trend to find a single, elegant equation or theory to unify
the forces of the universe. If
this trend is taken further, we can foresee a future society where the roles of
Art and Science are more interconnected, greatly enhancing human capacity to
comprehend our universe. What we have now is only the smallest hint, a seed, of
that possible future society, where traveling across the Atlantic Ocean may be
as easy as walking to the next room.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Sound and Vision
McKenzie Fine Art
John Aslanidis
Gilbert Hsiao
Laura Watt
As a painter, I have been greatly influenced by the power of the sonic experience, both in the act of deep, immersive listening and also the act of creating music itself. After hearing the works of the Minimalist composers (like LaMonte Young, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley) and the roots of their influences (like the idea in the Upanishads, the ancient Indian text which speaks of the entire universe being constructed of sound), as well as the ambient works and ideas of Brian Eno, John Cage, and Jon Hassell, I became interested in the common ground of painting and sound and their ability to perform a function, in my case, by creating conducive environments for meditation, contemplation and reflection. By implementing a sort of intentional synesthesia of sound and vision, my painting began to focus on the interaction of rhythmic, vibratory frequencies locked in a visual dance of pattern and structure. The sonic influence became apparent in the paintings in the symmetry, which is directly related to the stereophonic phenomenon found in our natural hearing. It also is present with the process. Just as a musician plays a performance in time, my paintings are made in a kind of performance also- line by line slowly applied with a squeeze bottle hovering just above the surface in a session of meditative concentration with little room for error. With sound, expirimentation began with a hand held tape recorder when I was seven years old. With two taperecorders I discovered I could “overdub” and my obecession with sound began. As a teenager I played bass guitar in various bands, composing fusion instrumentals. Then I began, and still am, creating experimental “soundscapes” with the mixing board becoming the significant “instrument”, manipulating raw sounds, either found or constructed, into ambient sonic environments. In addition to twelve solo albums, I have also done several collaborations, including with Angie Drakopoulos on the video/sound installations, “Aurorasis” and “Mythograph”, (excerpt under "animations" here), exhibited in Paris and New York. In 2007, I played bass guitar, guitar and did the engineering and mixing on the vinyl only release “A Jumpin’ Jackpot o’ Melody” by the minimalist art rockers, The Daycare Centre, which received airplay on alternative stations in New York, Canada and Europe. Through this synthesis, this intentional synesthesia of sound and vision, I have ultimately been interested, in a very scientific manner, in the basic, fractal or holographic architecture permeating the universe and how this is revealed through paint, sound and the conscious creative act.
Here are a few albums which had a profound influence fairly early on, defining a new way to “listen”: “Tantras of Gyuto”-Tibetan Buddhist chant, Music from the Morning of the World- Balinese gamelan, Brian Eno’s “On Land”, Jon Hassell’s “The Surgeon of the Nightsky Restores Dead Things with the Power of Sound”, LaMonte Young’s “The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer From the Four Dreams of China”, John Cage’s “Sonatas and Etudes for the Prepared Piano” and Steve Reich’s “Music for Eighteen Musicians”.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)