Category: unit 1 fanzines

Tate Modern: Olafur Eliasson, Naim Jun Paik and Takis

Olafur Eliasson’s works embrace a visual spectrum and challenge our senses. In many works we are faced with large scale environments, such as a whole wall of sphagnum moss. As I entered the exhibition at the Tate, there was a wonderful array of geometric shapes and polyhedra; we appear to have the same affliction. ‘Your blind passenger’ 2010 is a fog filled room (or series of rooms). As one walks through you can barely see in front of your own face. You shuffle as a crowd but cannot see anyone in front or behind; aside from perhaps a faint shadow. Guided by voices, the hum of the crowd, clinging to the wall for guidance, you are robbed of everyday familiar senses as you struggle to navigate. I wonder how the experience would be on your own, in the middle of the room alone! Olafur has infused various rooms with colour and possibly aromas. You walk through orange, white and blue zones. I wasn’t the only one to sense a hint of orange oil in the orange air, but perhaps the brain is just forming a picture and filling in the gaps. We don’t know. 

In other works, one is asked to stop and take notice, such as the water on the window, simulating rain. ‘Rain Window (Regenfenster)’ 1999 triggers memories of childhood, when I would happily sit for hours and watch rain on the window; I would follow one drop down the pane, trying to predict where it would run; if it would merge with another drop and pick up speed. Sometimes on a car journey, the drop would get blown backwards, and sometimes upward; the unexpected drop of rain that appears to defy gravity. 

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I was surprised that Naim Jun Paik’s show, also at Tate, shared so many visual similarities with Olafur Eliasson. Eliasson’s work seems so involved in both the environment, with nature and climate; and with the senses and sensory experiences. Paik threatened to be more anarchic and technological. But beyond clumsy looking robots, Paik delicately employed technology and audio visual equipment. Far from Fluxus associations and subversive tendencies, candles flicker in a split spectrum of light. Magnets on cathode ray tubes conjure up angelic apparitions on screen. 

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Also in this vein, Takis has taken metal, magnets and clunky decommissioned machinery, then made them dance and hover as if gravity doesn’t belong in their worlds. Old mercury arc rectifiers emit blue light and produce an ethereal glow. Reportedly, Takis used these to make viewers aware of the energy fields surrounding them; these glowing blue valves use magnetism to convert alternating electrical current (AC) into direct current (DC). Ethereal and beautiful, they solicit a very emotive response. 

“But the simpler pieces need no translation. They are (suitably enough, for an artist whose works often screen and rattle) a sort of visual equivalent of music. They do not mean anything. They are meaning. They reflect harmonious relationships between energy and space and mass. Taki’s work is like his subject: it hides in plain sight.”

Simon Ings, Full of wonders: Takis at Tate Modern Reviewed, Spectator Magazine 

“Visual experience is dynamic” 

I have been reading about and researching vision and visual perception. I am interested in all aspects of vision science, from ophthalmology and optometry to neurology and psychology. I hope to understand more about the many ways vision is processed and how visual perception works. 

visual acuity refers to how clearly a person sees but visual perception is how we interpret the surrounding environment. there is much more to vision than images, colours and shapes or distances between objects.  

perception is the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses. it is the organisation, identification and interpretation of sensory information in order to understand the presented information or environment. 

in this way, we also use perception to describe the way something is regarded, understood or interpreted. 

with visual perception we interpret the surrounding environment using light in the visible spectrum reflected by objects in the environment. rods are the photoreceptors found around the boundary of the retina, they are responsible for twilight vision, picking up low level light (scotopic vision). although fewer in number, cones dominate in the centre of the eye, picking up light and colour, they are responsible for high spatial acuity (photopic vision). 

as perception is not a simple translation of retinal stimuli people have long struggled to explain what visual processing does to create what we see. 

perceptual inductions are sometimes interpolations based on previously acquired knowledge. typically, they are often derived spontaneously during perception from a given configuration. they differ from logical inferences which are thought operations that add something to the given visual facts by interpreting them. 

perceptual forces are assumed real in both realms of existence. as physical and psychological. physicists describe forces as a push or pull on an object. they can be due to phenomena such as gravity, magnetism, or anything that might cause a mass to accelerate. in physics, a force is any interaction that, when un-opposed, will change the motion of an object. 

in ‘Art and Visual Perception’, Arnheim describes an interplay of directed tensions that are not added by the viewer but rather are as inherent as size, shape, location or colour. these tensions, because they have magnitude and force, are described as psychological “forces”. 

psychologically they exist in the experience of any person looking. as pulls, they meet conditions established by physicists for physical forces. (physically, molecular, gravitational forces are active too. for example  – in paper; holding microparticles together). artists create experiences with physical materials.

light rays emanating from the sun or other source, hit an object, are partially absorbed and partly reflected. some reach the lenses of eye and are projected onto its sensitive background, the retina. elementary organisation of visual shape, by small receptor organs is combined by means of ganglion cells. as electrochemical messages travel towards the brain, they are shaped at other stations until a pattern is completed at various levels of visual cortex. 

for any spatial relation between objects there is a ‘correct’ distance, established by the eye intuitively. artists are sensitive to this requirement when they arrange pictorial objects in a painting or elements in a sculpture.

within this is an equilibrium or balance, two forces of equal strength pull against each other. we exert a stylistic, psychological or social preference so that all elements are distributed in such a way as to create a visual balance. although not everyone will agree with an individual’s preference, the eye nevertheless has an intuitive sense. 

“Vision typically starts when certain electromagnetic waves strike a light-sensitive retina. The visual end product is something else – a perceptual awareness of the location and properties of objects in the environment.”

‘Perception’ edited by Robert Schwartz 

there are many conceptual and theoretical problems in the study of vision. there is no doubt that perceptual phenomena exist. we recognise objects essentially alike, as constellations, and group them together to dynamic effect. stroboscopic effects can change the perception of moving parts. with vision and perception there are metaphysical, epistemological and ontological questions. 

“What each of us sees is the reality we know”

‘The Frog Who Croaked Blue: Synesthesia and the Mixing of the Senses’, Jamie Ward

I was only able to attend one of the 2 days of the fascinating ‘picturing the invisible’ conference held in chelsea’s banqueting hall, but I have continued to reflect on several of the topics raised and the information delivered. this is an excerpt from my notes on that day.

“This project brings together leading academics from a wide range of disciplines including Art and Design, Architecture, Curatorial Practice, Literature, Forensic Science, Fashion, Medical Science, Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy, Philosophy and Astrophysics with a shared interest in exploring how, in each discipline, we strive to find expression for the invisible or unknown.” UAL

a zine about Platonic solids and my favourite shape, the dodecahedron

the zine can be printed and cut out to form a dodecahedron. this one was printed on Robert Fludd’s 1617 segment of the macrocosm showing the elemental spheres of terra (earth), aqua (water), aer (air), and ignis (fire), de musica mundana, and assembled so that the word content is inside the shape. it can also be constructed with the words outside, and rolled like a die, to read each page in a random order.

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“I am the number of fingers on a hand. I make pentagons and pentagrams. and but for me dodecahedra could not exist; and, as everyone knows, the universe is a dodecahedron. So, but for me, there could be no universe.” 

the number 5 in Bertrand Russell’s 1954 short story,

“the mathematician’s nightmare: the vision of professor squarepunt”

Recent public lectures at the Royal Astronomical Society have included Dr Stephen Wilkins “Origins of the Periodic Table”, Dr Sarah Crowther’s “Moon, Meteorites and more” and Richard Hechter’s “Connecting with people: developing unity and understanding under the nights sky”. 

I have been expanding my own thoughts on more universal aspects; that of space, time and the universe. these lectures, in principal, are dealing with space and the cosmos, looking out at the night sky. 

In Origins of the Periodic Table, Wilkins discussed the astrophysical origins of the chemical elements, almost all of which have an origin ranging from the big bang, to exploding white dwarfs, the collapse of massive stars, and the merger of ultra-compact objects, neutron stars. the final mechanism is responsible for many of the heaviest and rarest elements including gold, silver, and uranium, and was only recently confirmed through observations of a merger event first identified using gravitational waves. this merger of ultra-compact objects I’ve since discovered is also responsible for forming stones such as lapis lazuli. prized for centuries and historically used as a blue pigment. it would not have otherwise naturally occurred on earth if it wasn’t for some sort of merger or impact. 

Dr Crowther introduced rock samples and discussed how different extra-terrestrial materials made it to earth (aside from those physically brought back from the moon by Apollo astronauts 50 years ago). Her research looks at the evolution of the early Solar System through laboratory-based chemical analysis of extra-terrestrial materials; age-dating meteorites to unravel the thermal and impact histories of their parent asteroids. it was fascinating to handle rock samples in person, and to learn more about materials from outer space. rocks seem such everyday items, very much of our world, grounding and tactile. rough, bulky and earthly, it was good to ponder how we look at things and their associations.

in that way, Hechter’s lecture surprised me. it was about humans; breaking down borders, understanding that across our planet we all share the same sky. the stories and myths from other cultures don’t just entertain; they connect us, educate and inform; and in offering up a different view, remind us that our perspective is not the only one. 

“The night sky provides an ethereal backdrop of awe and wonder that unites people in ways we are only now coming to explore… astronomy can be the nexus for connecting people across cultures and religions in an effort to help create a better world.”