Cloud Structures

‘Cloud Structures’ You know the feeling when you wake up from a dream and you desperately try to hang on to that amazing idea but it slowly falls apart….

Perceptual Threshold

‘Perceptual Threshold’ This is a layered, multimedia piece consisting of woven tapestry, transparent elements and digital imagery printed on metal and Plexiglas. I like how you can see the surface of materials: the weave in the fabric, the lines on the plexi, and the grid in the image but then suddenly, you see through to an image of water behind the picture plane. You can move back and forth, between the surface and image. It’s always one or the other. You can’t see them at the same time.

Happy Ending

If it’s a happy ending, you could add one more chapter and make it sad. If it’s a sad ending, you could add one more chapter and make it happy.

Images gathered from the cloud observatory

Thes crystalline clouds only make sense locally; in small sections. As your eyes move around the geometry runs into contradictions and pieces start to break apart into beautiful chaos!

A Question and a Theory

Here’s a question: If the present was percieved as a dimensionless membrane dividing the past from the future, could we experience consciousness? Could a mind exist on such a temporal knife’s edge?

That leads to a theory: As a precursor to consciousness, evolution developed in brains a concept of ‘now’ that included a short period of the past and perhaps a little bit of the future. Enough time for neurons to process incoming signals and to develop a predictive model of the world interacting with our bodies.

That describes a condition: Consciousness exists in this thicker ‘now’. The future is projected, and the past is remembered from the anchor of the present. This short lived ‘now’ is the only place where we can think and act. It is the seat of existence.

That inspires a goal: To enhance our engagement with the world we should nurture and expand the temporal span of ‘now’. (I think that’s what art can do!)

What is Now?

Here is paradox about time that dates back to Aristotle: The past does not exist any longer. The future does not exist yet. And the present is just the threshold at which the future turns into the past and has no duration. The present is a nothing that divides two things that don’t exist: the future and the past.

But how do we experience time? It ‘feels’ as though the present has some short duration. One second? One heartbeat? Or one breath? Maybe it’s an illusion, but it feels as though the present is not a dimensionless membrane between past and future; that it has some thickness. Perhaps we need this illusion for consciousness to exist.

Time and the Landscape

It takes time to see a landscape and it takes time to look at a picture of a landscape. Our vision only allows for a narrow cone, 2 degrees, of detailed vision. What we see is a construction, a fabrication of what our mind thinks is out there in the world.

In the landscape its impossible to see every detail at once. The harder you try, the harder it gets. As you look around, that cloud has moved, the light has changed on those trees, and you can never keep up with what those waves are doing.

But even a still image can be constantly changing. Everything is different every time you look at it if you pay close attention. The expression “I know this as well as the back of my hand” should remind you to look closely at the back of your hand - you don’t know it at all!

Navigating Towards a Hazy Horizon

Smoke from forest fires has descended like fog, a brownish, yellowish smog. Over the lake the horizon is obscured. We’re losing our bearings and can’t find reference points. We have to move forward carefully. What does the future hold in store?

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The image consists of a grid of fragmented views of the sky and the water, little glances that comprise our experience of landscape.  The world does not stand still for us to contemplate it. The detailed world we see is mostly an imagined model in the brain.   We only have around 2° of detailed vision which is the are of your thumbnail at arms length.  The feeling that we can take in a view in all at once is really an hallucination.

Wheelbarrows

The fragments of buildings I've included in this cloud are from 3D models of buildings here in Meaford that have been unceremoniously demolished. There was a beautiful little train station here and several nineteenth century factories. Meaford manufactured, amongst other things, turbines, flooring, and wheelbarrows!

Wheelbarrow Factory 36” x 18”

Discombobulated - Recombobulated

You can hardly help it. Its as though you’re pre-programmed to interpret random shapes as discernable objects: animals, faces, buildings and landscapes. Spend any time looking at randomly churning clouds and you’ll see all manor of fantastic creations. Slowly, and inevitably, these apparitions dissolve and your mind serves up new illusions.

The Micromegascope

Clouds having passed through the micromegascope.

Micro Megas is the name of a series of drawings from 1979 by the architect Daniel Libeskind.
They use the language of architectural drawing: plans, sections and axonometrics, but they don’t resolve into concrete representation; they float free of gravity, scale, and dimension, full of ambiguous potential.

Libeskind got the name Micro Megas from a science fiction story by Voltaire. In the story Micromégas, earth is visited by space aliens that are so enormous that they require a magnifying lens to see humans.

Perception: an Experiment

I’m interested in the process of seeing. What actually happens when the mind attempts to make sense of what is presented to the eyes?

This image consists of conflicting representations. At first you see the twisting, colourful geometry that alternates between reflected colours on a water surface and geometric abstraction. A rendered perspective, most visible in the blue section, depicts a building facade. Another perspective appears in other areas with a conflicting orientation.

These representations are illusions that the mind constructs: the illusion of three-dimensional perspective behind the two-dimensional surface; shimmering water conjured from sinuous shapes. The image remains in flux as you can only see one illusion at a time. You become aware that seeing is not passive. Shifting your attention through the image gives you a glimpse of your mind at work.