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Simon C Page
Georges Braque: Woman with two faces
Figure–ground thinking is central to the psychology of perception and is vital to our ability to recognise objects through vision. In Gestalt psychology it is known as a process that helps us to identify a figure and pick it out from the background; an activity that is harder than you might think. The images above rely on an alternation between two mutually exclusive perceptual states, an awareness of which is also referred to as bistable perception. Finding images that sit on this edge can be a very important issue for an artist, especially if what you are trying to do is to keep an image 'alive'. The flicker between one possibility and another, in effect gives life to the image as a whole.
Salvador Dali related this to what he called the paranoiac-critical method. This concept was one derived from Andre Breton's idea that in Surrealism objects could be thought of not as a fixed external things but also as extensions of our subjective selves. When creating an image that illustrates this idea however, an artist needs to use a process that can result in a double or ambiguous image, one that can be read as one thing or another. As an object or as an extension of our inner psyche.
Dali: Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach
Abstract artists can also use this ambiguity. Victor Vasarely in particular was very fond of these figure / ground illusions.
Keple Gestalt: Victor Vasarely
We are in effect playing with 'border regions' which in visual perception are the transition points between objects and the background in an image. Our ability to identify these borders and assign them to the correct object is a fundamental part of vision, it enables us to 'see' what is out there. This process is also called border ownership, and it's essential for object recognition and understanding the visual scene.
Figure-ground illusions, as in the Raven-Bear image above, illustrate how border regions become grouped together with the object that is perceived, even as the figure and ground reverse. This gestalt totality results in heightened neuronal activity as these borders are perceived in conjunction with the overall image that is also being perceived. This requires a rapid global analysis of the entire scene involving the coupling of masses of neurons, which are collectively seeking out clues for both plasticity and meaning. (What it is and what it represents). Thousands of synapses and neurons are simultaneously contributing to the complex cognitive operations required by our minds to try and solve these types of puzzles, and we intuitively feel this in our bodies, as far more energy is involved in dealing with ambiguity than certainty. Although not strictly figure ground relationships, images that require a 'Gestalt switch' such as the young/old lady, also for myself fit into this category, as well as seeing faces in everyday objects or face pareidolia as it is properly named.
In my work looking at how to visualise interoceptual experiences, I'm very aware that these experiences are often ambiguous and therefore I have been looking at this area of gestalt psychology as a possible solution to some of the issues I have been facing, especially as to how to maintain the feeling tone that comes from a real life experience in a static image.
I think this can be something found out in the world as well as in a drawn image. The 'discovery' of a face within a pile of clothes in an old photograph of mine, shows that Andre Breton's idea that objects could be thought of as extensions of our subjective selves, still has traction. In drawn images about embodied feelings, a certain ambiguity as to figure/ground relationships, can again help heighten visual tension and thus help carry a more accurate sense of a feeling tone. For instance when I was thinking about breathing and how closely our lungs relate to a tree's dendritic structure, it was an obvious move to link the two images and to try and make an image that sat between both.
This works both ways and when drawing a landscape you can suggest it is alive and breathing by the way you place and shape trees.
Entrusted with carnival business: Pen and ink wash: 112 x 50 in
Mythic landscape: Charcoal on paper: 16 x 23 in
The flow between an external view of a body and how we see a landscape is something I have tried to depict several times. Some embodied feelings are not so straight forward, but their images can be designed to still use a certain amount of 'bistable perception', just enough to make the observer have to use a little more energy to try to 'see' what is there and as they do perhaps to 'inhabit' the image on their own terms.
A drawing from a series of images about tinnitus
When I was working with people who had tinnitus, I began making images that were an attempt to visualise an invisible or non-existent force invading the inside of the head, such as the one above. Gradually the drawings of heads became more like landscapes, but not the ones typically produced by European artists, more in my mind like those made by the original inhabitants of Australia.
The 'figure/ground' images made by Aboriginal Australians of "The Dreaming" evolved out of an animist creation narrative and can be understood as belonging to a "timeless time" of formative creation. They are not fixed images, more like maps used to work out where you are both physically and psychically. Their work effortlessly fuses different viewpoints together and I owe a deep debt to a culture I have never witnessed but whose continuing existence reminds me that there have been and always will be many alternative ways of depicting our various realities.
Perhaps the most constant figure-ground or dual image in my work over this time has been that of the body / landscape. We sometimes think of our bodies as small things that inhabit an ever expanding landscape but when we begin to have to focus on our insides, such as during a time of illness, our bodies become the totality of the world we live in. There is of course a flow between the two views, at one moment I stumble and a pain in my foot becomes the centre of my attention and a few moments later, a rumbling sound in the distance takes up all of my perceptual energy, as I try to work out if a storm is coming my way.
In the image above I was trying to construct a representation of the feelings that emerge from my stomach. From hunger to nagging indigestion, via rumblings of nervous responses to facing difficult issues, my stomach seems to digest emotional feelings as much as food. It is a complex thing and I never see it, I only feel it, unless of course I have a nasty accident.
It is no accident that we think of the adjective 'rumbling' to describe both a stomach or a storm.
I have returned to how to depict this, as well as finding images for my chest and breathing issues many times and if the images are to operate as I want them to, they need to sit on a fence between figure and ground, if not they become too static and cannot breathe or as in the case of the stomach, be able to communicate the movement of peristaltic waves. In Chinese medicine a stomach ache might be described as a malignant wind. 'Feng', the Chinese word for 'wind', has a wider meaning, as an invisible power that works in a way similar to how a howling wind bends a tree. It can 'blow' diseases through the body that result in aches, sickness, tremors, headaches, dizziness or fever and it can operate both internally and externally. An internal imbalance of energy or an external confusion created by a too complex environment may receive similar treatments, in both cases treatments would look to ways to induce calm.
As always a balance is required, total stillness may be due to death and the flicking/ticking of awareness is a good sign of life. However too sedentary or too active lives become stressful; so take a deep breath and whilst you engage with what's going on, watch how the world flips from one reading to another.
Reference:
Fields, R.D., Araque, A., Johansen-Berg, H., Lim, S.S., Lynch, G., Nave, K.A., Nedergaard, M., Perez, R., Sejnowski, T. and Wake, H., (2014) Glial biology in learning and cognition. The neuroscientist, 20(5), pp.426-431.
We are in effect playing with 'border regions' which in visual perception are the transition points between objects and the background in an image. Our ability to identify these borders and assign them to the correct object is a fundamental part of vision, it enables us to 'see' what is out there. This process is also called border ownership, and it's essential for object recognition and understanding the visual scene.
Alaska Geographic logo
Figure-ground illusions, as in the Raven-Bear image above, illustrate how border regions become grouped together with the object that is perceived, even as the figure and ground reverse. This gestalt totality results in heightened neuronal activity as these borders are perceived in conjunction with the overall image that is also being perceived. This requires a rapid global analysis of the entire scene involving the coupling of masses of neurons, which are collectively seeking out clues for both plasticity and meaning. (What it is and what it represents). Thousands of synapses and neurons are simultaneously contributing to the complex cognitive operations required by our minds to try and solve these types of puzzles, and we intuitively feel this in our bodies, as far more energy is involved in dealing with ambiguity than certainty. Although not strictly figure ground relationships, images that require a 'Gestalt switch' such as the young/old lady, also for myself fit into this category, as well as seeing faces in everyday objects or face pareidolia as it is properly named.
In my work looking at how to visualise interoceptual experiences, I'm very aware that these experiences are often ambiguous and therefore I have been looking at this area of gestalt psychology as a possible solution to some of the issues I have been facing, especially as to how to maintain the feeling tone that comes from a real life experience in a static image.
A face in the clothes
I think this can be something found out in the world as well as in a drawn image. The 'discovery' of a face within a pile of clothes in an old photograph of mine, shows that Andre Breton's idea that objects could be thought of as extensions of our subjective selves, still has traction. In drawn images about embodied feelings, a certain ambiguity as to figure/ground relationships, can again help heighten visual tension and thus help carry a more accurate sense of a feeling tone. For instance when I was thinking about breathing and how closely our lungs relate to a tree's dendritic structure, it was an obvious move to link the two images and to try and make an image that sat between both.
Lung / tree
Tree lungs within a landscape (detail)
In my drawing, 'Entrusted with carnival business', I wanted to show that a local park was in effect the 'lungs' of the area. In the 'Mythic landscape' drawing, there was an attempt to fuse together the concept of our emergence from a female principle, that was both a body and a landscape.
Embodied landscape: Pen and ink, watercolour and ceramic: 72 x 60 in
The embodied landscape drawing above was an attempt to fuse landscape, body and memory together. The landscape that flows from the embodied hills being one reconstructed from memory, as was the ceramic octopus, which was a reconstruction of a child's toy, something that was important to myself when I lived in that landscape when I was growing up. Memories inhabit the body, just places are engraved into old maps and that feeling of inhabiting a body, never leaves us until of course we die.
Embodied feeling of a failing knee: Felt tip, watercolour and ink: 11 x 16 in
The image of a knee above was made after talking to an old school friend, who like myself is now retired and his knees were going. I made several images of our conversations and he has since had his knees replaced, but the whole experience in effect gave him a mountain to climb. For a while each knee became for him the centre of his perceptual world, the pain blotting out the rest of the landscape.
A drawing from a series of images about tinnitus
A working image exploring how to depict an individual experience of tinnitus
Bandak Nym: 1959/60
Perhaps the most constant figure-ground or dual image in my work over this time has been that of the body / landscape. We sometimes think of our bodies as small things that inhabit an ever expanding landscape but when we begin to have to focus on our insides, such as during a time of illness, our bodies become the totality of the world we live in. There is of course a flow between the two views, at one moment I stumble and a pain in my foot becomes the centre of my attention and a few moments later, a rumbling sound in the distance takes up all of my perceptual energy, as I try to work out if a storm is coming my way.
Stomach awareness
In the image above I was trying to construct a representation of the feelings that emerge from my stomach. From hunger to nagging indigestion, via rumblings of nervous responses to facing difficult issues, my stomach seems to digest emotional feelings as much as food. It is a complex thing and I never see it, I only feel it, unless of course I have a nasty accident.
Storm clouds with lightening
It is no accident that we think of the adjective 'rumbling' to describe both a stomach or a storm.
I have returned to how to depict this, as well as finding images for my chest and breathing issues many times and if the images are to operate as I want them to, they need to sit on a fence between figure and ground, if not they become too static and cannot breathe or as in the case of the stomach, be able to communicate the movement of peristaltic waves. In Chinese medicine a stomach ache might be described as a malignant wind. 'Feng', the Chinese word for 'wind', has a wider meaning, as an invisible power that works in a way similar to how a howling wind bends a tree. It can 'blow' diseases through the body that result in aches, sickness, tremors, headaches, dizziness or fever and it can operate both internally and externally. An internal imbalance of energy or an external confusion created by a too complex environment may receive similar treatments, in both cases treatments would look to ways to induce calm.
A flow of embodied energies
As always a balance is required, total stillness may be due to death and the flicking/ticking of awareness is a good sign of life. However too sedentary or too active lives become stressful; so take a deep breath and whilst you engage with what's going on, watch how the world flips from one reading to another.
Reference:
Fields, R.D., Araque, A., Johansen-Berg, H., Lim, S.S., Lynch, G., Nave, K.A., Nedergaard, M., Perez, R., Sejnowski, T. and Wake, H., (2014) Glial biology in learning and cognition. The neuroscientist, 20(5), pp.426-431.
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