In Renaissance times lines emanating from a radiating point were sometimes used as a symbol of invisible religious or occult forces and more recently fanned out, broken or dashed lines have been used as symbols of invisible rays or unseen effects such as magnetism, electricity, x-rays, mesmerism and nuclear radiation. These lines can carry all sorts of ideas, some of which haven't been accepted as scientific concepts but which non-the-less impinge upon our collective imaginations as being necessary to a more esoteric understanding of the world, and the invisible emanations that effect it. For instance the concept of the 'aura'; a luminous radiation surrounding a living creature or object.
Grant Morrison in his book 'Supergods' sets out to explain that these comic-book heroes are not simply characters but powerful archetypes that can be traced back into history, art, and various world mythologies. In this case I'm simply pointing out how visual languages are shared across cultures and times, especially when there is a common issue to communicate.
Although auras and emission theory have been debunked several times by modern science, ideas of this sort still seem to have a hold on our collective imaginations. For instance the theorist Rupert Sheldrake has argued that the external projection of images or force of seeing is a reality, he imagines perceptual fields that extend out beyond our body receptors, these fields connecting the seeing individual with what is seen. (Sheldrake, 2004) Sheldrake argues that the formation of these fields depends on changes occurring in various regions of the brain as vision takes place. These fluctuations are influenced by inbuilt responses to expectations, intentions and memories. Sheldrake's theories are related to the work of Velmans, (Velmans, 2000) who suggests that image projections take place in a way that is analogous to a field phenomenon, as in a hologram; however Sheldrake takes the idea further, suggesting that the perceptual projection is not just analogous to but actually is a field phenomenon.
Sheldrake is influenced by an awareness of fields in other areas of scientific thinking, magnetic fields in particular have influenced his ideas, and field theory is central to many of the ideas that underlie quantum mechanics. Sheldrake suggests that minds extend beyond brains through fields, negating the idea that our conscious experiences are totally passive. Quantum mechanics suggests that our conscious experiences enter into the dynamics of real world situations in ways not fixed by physically described aspects alone. (Stapp, 2011) Even though Sheldrake's ideas are still regarded as very speculative, what he describes does have a certain intuitive rightness about it.
Sheldrake states; 'When someone stares at another person from behind, the projection of the starer’s attention means that his field of vision extends out to touch the person he is staring at. His image of that person is projected onto that person through his perceptual field. Meanwhile, the person stared at also has a field all around herself. I suggest that the starer’s field of vision interacts with the field surrounding the person stared at. One field is influenced by another. This field interaction is detected through a change or difference in the field around the body. Just as the field around a magnet is changed when another magnet is placed nearby, this field interaction is directional. The interaction may be weak, and need not be experienced consciously by the person stared at. But, if the interaction is strong enough, the person stared at may respond by turning around, without thinking and without knowing why.'Sheldrake goes on to explain how perceptual fields are related to biological fields embedded within the organisation of developing biological organisms and their nervous systems, and that these fields underlie processes of biological morphogenesis. As an artist my attention was immediately raised, as morphogenesis is the coming-into-being of form, and therefore it is a process that lies at the heart of the all creation. These invisible forces seeming to extend out into everything. In my imagination, the lines drawn to illustrate the invisible powers of mesmerism, beginning to intersect with those of the eyes' emissions and other visions of invisible forces.
Descartes' idea of materialistic spirits that move through the body and through vision was related to the theories as laid out in his "Cosmogony", in particular, that the entire universe was filled with elements of different sizes which shifted around each other. At the centre was the sun, which was made up of the smallest kind of element and the bigger ones circled around it. This notion of vortices was also used by Descartes to explain forces like magnetism. The idea of the vortices suggested that the fixed stars were actually part of a contigious universe of systems like our own rubbing against each other, in many ways the idea of gravity, as introduced by Newton, replaced Descartes' ideas but once again we have a vision of invisible fields influencing each other and this time tightly curved dashed lines are used to visualise the idea.
When you place a bar magnet on a smooth surface and add iron filings, the magnetic forces will produce a physical diagram, the iron filings making their own drawing of the invisible forces at work. I have looked at these forms before in the post on Faraday's lines of force, and the more I think around these illustrations of invisible forces, the more it seems to me that they have been central to our understanding of unknown forces for thousands of years.
From the rays of the Egyptian sun God Aten, literally reaching reaching out to the earth below, to the rendering of 'God Rays' in contemporary CAD software, the sense of a spiritual other can be made visual by linear effects.
Henry Moore uses this idea in his shelter drawings, the space lines, or rays, are bent as they reveal the mass below. This is I think I very powerful metaphor, as it takes the idea of lines of invisible energy or spirit and relates them to the solid physicality of 'reality'. As we all now know, 'reality' is a sort of illusion and the closer we get to it, the more it disappears and at certain magnifications atoms appear, then the elements that make up atoms and finally the energy fields that underpin everything come into some sort of mathematical appearance, something not actually seen but understood as being there.
In my own drawings I'm looking for a way to connect or entangle both inner and outer body space, an awareness of what goes on inside my body and what goes on outside it, how it is perceived from outside and how it perceives. By thinking about line and then going on to think about other basic visual elements I can gradually build a language that in my mind begins to cope with the various elements of a fluid idea. For instance the dissolving of matter into water so that various solutions are formed is another, for myself, important metaphor for the constantly moving events that are life. As one element combines with another hybrids are formed and as they emerge they can become the building blocks for a private language concerned with visualising the nature of a fluid world, a world where there are no fixed boundaries and where identity is always in a state of flux and reality is never fixed.
Sheldrake, R. (2004) The Sense Of Being Stared At: And Other Aspects of the Extended Mind London: Arrow
Stapp, H. P. (2011) Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer London: Springer Press
See also:
Diagrams: visualising the invisible
No comments:
Post a Comment