Alex McHattie
Illusion and Consciousness
The initial ideas of this paper came into being from research conducted specifically within the realm of early cinema and the abstract movements that spawned thereafter. Brought about by frustrations and fears of a return of this new art form to outmoded theatrical modes of representation once the initial expansion of mainstream cinema had been achieved and evidently paramount during the inauguration of synchronous sound. Since many believed that the actors ability to be heard would simplify the new visual language of cinema developed during it’s initial years, a language which had been maturing and developing, capturing the producers an audiences hearts and minds like no other previous art form. Hollywood’s other, slowly maturing through the cinematic works of artists such as Russia’s Sergei Eisenstein, Bela Bartok, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp began to take on exceedingly more ideas from the more traditionally abstract realms of art and philosophy, incorporating and exploring beyond the mere representation of old theatre productions or original naturalistic mainstream pieces, considered to be so at odds with cinemas rationale within art. I will research and explore into notions of abstraction and illusion through both the works of specific artists and through literal critics of their works and ideas.
These artists, along with others trying to reclaim the medium of film and the idea of filmic art, groups such as the futurists became increasing more experimental, and the pioneers necessarily more vocal in their attempts at artistic expression. Duchamp for example, along with several futurists became initially interested with film due to a lack of representational movement within their traditionally static fields of painting. Whilst simultaneously trying to implore movement on the canvas and attempting to somewhat bypass the eye and interact with the brain on a base level, Duchamp became interested along with Man Ray upon the possibility of a suggested third dimension when viewing patterned movement of a projected image.
“Though abstract work at the time was making use of relationships of geometric forms which were essentially visual, Duchamp’s was the first work which attempted to isolate that region of the optical experience which is a consequence of our automatic nervous function. Because the experience is directly dependent on our physiology, some consistency of response could be expected from viewer to viewer. This direction of enquiry could more reasonably hope to discover an area of ‘universal’ experience (if not language) than was likely in the subjective interpretation of colour and geometric shape in the work of Eggling or Kandinsky”
(Le Grice, M, 1977, pg44)
The idea that whilst an audience perceived these illusions, they were somehow interacting within an almost universal frame work of understanding with the creator began to appear. The combination of various different illusions was seen as a way to bypass the subjective views of colour and objective perception, these illusions whether they are through the eyes inability to distinguish between the disturbances of light as with the Hermann grid illusion, or through the cognitive illusions. Were thought to be of a form of language that we could all understand, simply because this was not a scene we were required to see through our minds eye of past knowledge, but was a by-product of our shared human physiology. As such the optical illusion can also be considered to be ignorant of any cultural, or specifically social contexts in which it will be received or experienced by the viewer.
A reoccurring theme amongst numerous philosophers, artists and theorists, of past knowledge being paramount to the way we see, encouraged more to believe in this common experience of understanding that came with the viewing of illusions. Since the refracted light of a given object and the subsequent interpretation of that object within the brain, relies on a individuals past experience with similar objects, a experience two individuals could not possibly have shared, the argument that a piece reliant upon the fairly common physiology of the human body, can therefore begin to give some sense of general response from viewer to viewer begins to become a clear, method of art attempting to enter the realm of pure intellect. The famed writer Maurice Merleau-Ponty considered such goals in his book The World of Perception within which he wrote, in relation to the paintings of Cezanne who was not specifically concerned with optical illusion, more with the realm of pure visual experience.
“…space is no longer a medium of simultaneous objects capable of being apprehended by an absolute observer who is equally close to them all, a medium without point of view, without body and without spatial position-in sum, the medium of pure intellect”
(Merleau-Ponty, 2004, pg54)
Although this particular illusional approach sparked debate as to whether it could be considered art. Due to formal critics concerned with a supposed lack of viewer based understandings, or specific ‘reading into’, of a given piece.
A concern which Diedrich Diederichsen felt inclined to attempt to correct since he saw the sixties genre of op-art as a overall comment upon the clearness of vision and as a statement in general of the process of seeing and visual perception itself. Since he believed the effect of this particular form of artistic expression necessitated a somewhat decorative approach in its manufacture, rather than the more formal artistic approach, generally required of artistic visual acceptance. The reasons for this are through what he claims to be an intentional lack of content, rather than as a consequence of formal method implying, a lacking in attempt of content. This absence of depth of content can be understood since what is attempting to be communicated is the aforementioned comment upon vision itself, necessitating a the impossibility of transparency of visual perception on the part of the viewer. This approximation is further carried out under a supposition that the viewing of the illusions of op art, breaks away from our habitual methods of seeing and realisation through our memories and experiences, which we tend to also have assessed and focused upon the specific content which they contain. Essentially fracturing the familiar memories of real or supposed objects and movement, due to the interaction between the human physiology and from the necessary shapes required to invoke the phenomenon of the various specific optical illusions.
The need and wish for artists to comment upon the act of seeing has existed before the artistic use of optical illusions, Merleau-Ponty claims that Cezanne unwrapped and thrust the ideas of pure sense experience upon the artistic community, and the wider public.
“If many painters since Cezanne have refused to follow the law of geometrical perspective, this is because they have sought to recapture and reproduce before our very eyes the birth of the landscape. They have been reluctant to settle for an analytical overview and have striven to recapture the feel of perceptual experience itself”
(Merleau-Ponty, 2004, pg53)
Diederichsen also through his analysis of arts critique of illusion believes that it is conceivable, that whilst many artists have sought to compete on a political or socially disturbing scale with their work, many more wished to expand art into the realm of a purified sense experience. The suggestion of this comes from two places, one which suggests that shock factor may be used in order to attempt to break the viewers and associated general publics habits of seeing, and a second element which refers to the physiological workings of the human body, rather than the exchange of ideas. Which inevitably leads back to the viewers experience and knowledge with that idea, generally based in objects. In a somewhat simplification, of the endless philosophical or psychological possibilities of this idea, he writes stating pure human physicality as a example of this need for artists to usurp our habitual knowledgeable perception processes of trying to read the image, instead seeking to mobilize pure sense experience.
“Such artists who feel they must constantly beat back the threat that secondary or verbal discourses will impose an external form on their activity or hollow it out, regard this as a way to establish an ontological grounding for their difference vis-à-vis verbal and sociological secondary phenomena. It is a difference that remains incontrovertible; who can fail to acknowledge that the visual experience of art must pass through the narrow sensory channel of the eye?”
(Hatje Cantz, 2006, pg64)
This is the antithesis to the theory of seeing form through past knowledge, which many believe will precipitate an era of pure sense experience. The theory of seeing from past experience and memory is often believed to have been contrived within modern thought by 19th century physician an writer Hermann Von Helmholtz, which has been revisited many times by subsequent writers down the ages concerned with the way in which we see as individuals and as a social group. Roy Armes use’s Helmholtz’s ideas in his book On Video in the chapter Modes of Address, in which Armes attempts to understand how we see and subsequently interpret a given media image or sound. Armes frequently address’s our conscious or preconscious behaviour when viewing a given piece, seeking to revise predetermined notions as to where relaxed media film consumption may reside within our minds. Claiming that conventional film theory seeks to exemplify the common viewer as a passive subject, somehow unaware and uninvolved in the direct operation of watching. Armes use’s the common view of a person watching a television as a base stereotype, ‘he or she is depicted slumped in front of the set with barely enough life or energy to even change channels.’ (Armes, R 1988)
The actual state of the viewer according to Armes, should be considered to be of a mindful one, always actively seeking, both perceptually and conceptually. The claims for this come from a number of sources, namely our experiences with other media productions and with learned experience from a young age of story telling, claiming style and genre has a vital role to play with our perceived experiences. Since we are all familiar from a young age with the specific nuances of mainstream cinema genres, we know for example that the western will frequently contain depictions of the evil villain kidnapping the beautiful heroin, who will subsequently be saved by the hero riding in on a white horse.
As we are actively seeking at all times upon the narrative, so it is Armes believes this is how we view the world, Armes believes we are effectively always guessing at what it is we are perceiving and interpreting. We actively gather all the facts about what is going on, and make a supposition about what it actually is and means to us. This again comes from the vast bank of knowledge and experiences that we build up, we are permanently conscious of the images and sounds, which are omnipresent and presented to us. This permanent state of almost guessing at what is happening is what Armes believes may be easily mislead with the use of illusion. Since the guesses that we make about what we are perceiving can ultimately easily be wrong after we have backed what we believe is true, because after all we cannot have experienced a view of everything from every conceivable angle. Armes writes,
“We take an active role, placing a bet, as it were, on a likely outcome. If we are correct, we are rewarded with a proper recognition. If we are wrong, we simply revise our judgement on the basis of the new information and promptly wager again. In this approach, perception is seen as an active, ongoing process which can improve with experience.”
(Armes, R, 1988, pg 136)
The active role, which we undertake in our perceptions within everyday lived experience is according to Armes, not to far removed from the way in which we undertake the conscious perception of media images and sounds. Indeed the unconscious way in which we may judge the presence of an object against the built up knowledge from previous perceptions according to Walter Benjamin can be proved from the fact that a person can unknowingly and unwittingly master contemplative tasks whilst in a unconscious moment of diversion, he writes in the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,
“Getting used to things is something even the distracted person can do. More; the ability to master certain tasks in a state of distraction is what proves that solving them has become a persons habit. Through the sort of distraction that art has to offer, a surreptitious check is kept on how far fresh tasks of apperception have become solvable.”
(Benjamin, W, 2008, pg35)
Within art, film and media therefore the getting used to a particular type of image is of an actively seeking unconscious state of being, we are most attentive but are particularly unaware of his attentive state. The very experience of illusion according to Merleau-Ponty is utterly reliant upon this unawareness, since he believes that in order for this misleading of our consciousness to be total we must have absolute faith that what we are seeing is the full reality of the object. A belief according to him which comes from our knowledge and experience with similar objects, suggesting that in order to see the illusions unreality we must remain completely unaware of this mistake of our perception.
It is an illusion of this level that we as members of an audience effectively buy into when ever we turn on the television, buy a ticket to a cinema or subconsciously ignore whilst seeing a advert in passing in a shop window. Since the very medium of film itself has always been an illusion to us, what we interpret as movement or motion upon the screen, has been and we have always known to be false. Since the we are not witnessing a continuous whole merely many partial segments of a gesture, the intervening spaces between which are filled in somewhere between the eye and the mind. The medium of film has constantly been analogous to the modern worlds perception of time, the way in which we as intelligent members of society view it within our minds is of a continuous whole while our specific monitoring of it has always and will always be of a constant breach between instants.
The second principal element of cinema which has been overlooked for so long and which cinema as a visual based medium holds a monopoly in this day and age, sound, can be considered to be one of the most elusive perceptible functions of our learned reality. It is the sound of cinema, which proposes the most illusional aspects of it, foretelling the plot, making us believe we have seen when we have not implying a solid world to that which we cannot see off of the screen of the films reality. It is sound which leads us to believe in the reality of a given piece of naturalistic cinema, just as it is sound which provides us with the belief of actual reality within a piece of documentary footage. It is this belief in the ear that led Joachim-Ernst Berendt to write
“Both the ear and the eye can evaluate, supplying us with intellectual, psychological, and emotional information of qualitative relevance. But only the ear can measure, thereby mediating quantitative and numerically precise information. If the eye wants to operate quantitatively it can at most estimate, but – as we all know – it is only able to provide approximations, and very often miscalculates.”
(Berendt, J, E, 1988, pg 14)
Berendt claims that this is the reason why the term optical illusion exists, because we know and frequently experience the eyes mistakes and views of reality, that which we experience audibly, we therefore have more trust in, which is why we are so seemingly easily mislead as viewers, by the creative use of sound through illusion. The unconscious belief in the trust we have of our audible perceptions has given the ability to film makers and producers of media, to make us believe in the environment of the naturalistic production, an ability which through our prier knowledge of media consumptions can provide the public with constantly new visual and audible surprises.
Bibliography
La Grice, M, Abstract Film and Beyond, 1977, MIT Press
Merleau-Ponty, M, (Trans) Davis, O, The World of Perception, 2004, Routledge
Merleau-Ponty, M, (Trans) Smith, C,
Armes, R, On Video, 1988, Routledge
Armes, R, Film and Reality; An historical survay, 1974, Pelican Books
Hatje Cantz, Diederichsen, D, The Expanded Eye; Stalking the Unseen, (Chapter) Critique of the Eye-The Eye of Critique, 2006, Kuntsthaus Zurich
Benjamin, W, (Trans) Underwood, J,A, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 2008, Penguin
Berendt, J, E, The Third Ear; On listening to the world, 1988, Element Books
