Week of Perceptual Biases

This last week of my life has been a very interesting and ironic one. Not being one to believe in much of anything other than chance I always find it funny when life chooses a theme, or our brains choose to make notice of one due to the circumstances, but that is what this whole post is about. I have experienced numerous situations with friends and loved ones this week that all speak to our own experiences with Perception (I am capitalizing perception on purpose, it has shown me that it has life and importance. Its the least I could do to show my respect). As a visual artist I have always been fascinate with perception, its been a life long goal to understand my own perception of the world and kindly force it upon others retinas. Being in this situation I am always aware of my own perception but I am finding it harder and harder to understand other people's perceptions. I feel the deeper I dive within my own the harder it seems to feel and relate to someone else s viewpoint. In the heat of discussion especially, I find myself getting frustrated as if the other person it not understanding my side of things but upon reflection its obvious to me that it could not be more the opposite. To save time I will not go scientific in explaining the patterns in which we perceive but more the visual perceptual way. From the day we are born we open our eyes and start to immediately create our own perception of the world around us. No one other person in the world can share that. It is truly yours and no one else s. It is not until we learn to speak that we try and find some way to share these perceptions with one another. Language is really just a clever code developed from our need to communicate what we see. We can only try to verbalize what we see or in my case paint a picture, but this effort is futile. It is so easy for us to get frustrated when someone does not see our point of view but they never ever will. Do you really want them too? That would strip you of your likeness. We need to always be agreeing to disagree. In Jon Berger's book "Ways of Seeing" he makes a great point about the art world-
"The uniqueness of every painting was once part of the uniqueness of the place where it resided. Sometimes the painting was transportable, but it could never be seen in two places at the same time. When the camera reproduces a painting, it destroys the uniqueness of its image. As a result its meaning changes. Or, more exactly, its meaning multiplies and fragments into many meanings.
This is vividly illustrated by what happens when a painting is shown on a television screen. The painting enters each viewer's house. There it is surrounded by wallpaper, furniture, memories. It enters the atmosphere of the family. It becomes a talking point. It lends its meaning to their meaning. At the same time it enters a million other houses and, in each of them, is seen in a different context. Because of the camera, the painting now travels to the spectator rather than the spectator to the painting. In its travels its meaning is diversified."

I agree greatly with what he is saying here if only he acknowledged that even when the painting was stationary it looked different to every individual who lays eyes on it based on their own experiences and memories. So is Art in itself a game of chance and luck, or is it a careful study of what we may be more inclined to think or feel, some sort of social perception. Obviously this plays a large part in our media but we still choose what to notice what to laugh at what to hate and enjoy from our own personal experiences. This being more understood I am finding it near impossible to truly understand one another, but please let us not keep trying. We find out just as much about ourselves in listening and observing other peoples perceptions. Keep trying! Its important but be ok with the fact that no one will ever see exactly what it is you are trying to convey, they just may choose to keep their opinions to themselves. I will leave any of you who chose to read this ramble with a great talk from Rob Forbes at TED.

New Blog

So I am assuming at least for now the only people who might read this are close friends of mine. So as you already know the Gallery is closed. All Well. I deleted my facebook account on the account of I know longer enjoy it. I never use myspace anymore. So maybe this new blog will be my new unsocial social outlet. I think I like it mainly because you know only what I tell you, and you are less likely to comment and annoy me. I will be posting mainly artwork that I am currently working on and information on video stuff. I wish I could stay disconnected but this stuff just keeps sucking me back in.