The Event Horizon
Some years back, longer than I care to remember, when I started nursing I looked after patients with acquired brain injury and then proceeded through a series of neurodegenerative disorders until finishing up in acute psych. Coincidentally I took an interest i n neuropsychology as it helped understand the pathologies and manage aberrant behaviours. This led to reading about visual perception.
About five years ago I made a list of all of the unofficial rules that we grow up with and comply unconsciously (rule of thirds etc.), then I tried to break them all. To do this I used disparate images in layers to create visual conflict and find the point of optimal ability. The brain cannot comprehend multiple realities and will respond to conflict in one of two ways. It will switch between the two realities or merge the realities into a plausible unreality.
This led to a sense of visual anarchy where counterintuitive action brings its own reward.
In the next stage, I worked out that with meticulous masking I could interpret the unreality as a visual reality. While working on this I worked out that depth perception is based on two immutable truths, that a distant object will appear smaller and that a closer object will obstruct a distal object. The proliferation of depth illusions characterised the series ‘Fake Views’. This series experiments more with multiple vertical planes and orientation. I now use this technique to explore the validity of Gestalt principles.
This collection emphasises strangeness as both an attraction and a warning of the inherent dangers of a large proportion of the population exercises their judgement on ideology and blind faith with a complete rejection of evidence. The images are designed to disrupt weaknesses in the brains representation of reality, and are constructed in a manner which manipulates the viewer to see what I want them to see.
Its like me standing next to the viewer and saying, “I’m manipulating your brain and there’s nothing you can do about it”. The object of these images is to show people how easily they are manipulated. Anything beyond our basic needs for survival are artificial constructs, money, law, religion, human rights are all artificial, inventions. Some constructs like democracy will never be unquestionably right, but there are plenty that are unquestionably wrong.
When we are born we are pretty much blind. By the time we reach around nine months we begin to see edges and blurred colours. As we develop, our depth perception evolves until our vision becomes a perceptual representation of reality. Integral to this are several immutable truths. Some of these are, that the sky is above and the ground underneath, the horizon appears level, an object closer to the viewer will appear larger than the same object further away and an object closer to the viewer will obscure a more distant object. This series evolved from a curiosity to see how the brain responds to visual conflicts created by intentionally breaking these immutable truths.
Production of the images involve the creation of a false reality. In this instance, the technique is integral to the semiotics. Less evident as a finished product, the construction of the images offers an opportunity to examine Gestalt principles in design, and raises the question of whether those principles are hierarchical.
Metaphorically, the false reality is representative of the trend in western democracies towards right wing populism and the manipulation of social media to generate a false perception of reality to deceive and manipulate the ignorant and disengaged. Having referenced geopolitics in previous series, the name, the Event Horizon and the duality inherent in the images represents division and the rapid decline of the west.
Personally, after suffering two serious assaults on the ward, and having been diagnosed with PTSD, the strangeness of the images is a reflection on the Kafkaesque reality of a life dominated by doctors lawyers and bureaucrats.
About five years ago I made a list of all of the unofficial rules that we grow up with and comply unconsciously (rule of thirds etc.), then I tried to break them all. To do this I used disparate images in layers to create visual conflict and find the point of optimal ability. The brain cannot comprehend multiple realities and will respond to conflict in one of two ways. It will switch between the two realities or merge the realities into a plausible unreality.
This led to a sense of visual anarchy where counterintuitive action brings its own reward.
In the next stage, I worked out that with meticulous masking I could interpret the unreality as a visual reality. While working on this I worked out that depth perception is based on two immutable truths, that a distant object will appear smaller and that a closer object will obstruct a distal object. The proliferation of depth illusions characterised the series ‘Fake Views’. This series experiments more with multiple vertical planes and orientation. I now use this technique to explore the validity of Gestalt principles.
This collection emphasises strangeness as both an attraction and a warning of the inherent dangers of a large proportion of the population exercises their judgement on ideology and blind faith with a complete rejection of evidence. The images are designed to disrupt weaknesses in the brains representation of reality, and are constructed in a manner which manipulates the viewer to see what I want them to see.
Its like me standing next to the viewer and saying, “I’m manipulating your brain and there’s nothing you can do about it”. The object of these images is to show people how easily they are manipulated. Anything beyond our basic needs for survival are artificial constructs, money, law, religion, human rights are all artificial, inventions. Some constructs like democracy will never be unquestionably right, but there are plenty that are unquestionably wrong.
When we are born we are pretty much blind. By the time we reach around nine months we begin to see edges and blurred colours. As we develop, our depth perception evolves until our vision becomes a perceptual representation of reality. Integral to this are several immutable truths. Some of these are, that the sky is above and the ground underneath, the horizon appears level, an object closer to the viewer will appear larger than the same object further away and an object closer to the viewer will obscure a more distant object. This series evolved from a curiosity to see how the brain responds to visual conflicts created by intentionally breaking these immutable truths.
Production of the images involve the creation of a false reality. In this instance, the technique is integral to the semiotics. Less evident as a finished product, the construction of the images offers an opportunity to examine Gestalt principles in design, and raises the question of whether those principles are hierarchical.
Metaphorically, the false reality is representative of the trend in western democracies towards right wing populism and the manipulation of social media to generate a false perception of reality to deceive and manipulate the ignorant and disengaged. Having referenced geopolitics in previous series, the name, the Event Horizon and the duality inherent in the images represents division and the rapid decline of the west.
Personally, after suffering two serious assaults on the ward, and having been diagnosed with PTSD, the strangeness of the images is a reflection on the Kafkaesque reality of a life dominated by doctors lawyers and bureaucrats.