umwelts and unwelts

Pondering the week and the week to come.

So loved being in the British Library- giving myself permission to bury my brain in thoughts and writing and reading, helping me to make some sense of what I've been doing and what I'd like to do next. I could really get used to this ;-)

One of the main ideas / themes that seems important is that of the umwelt - John Deeley's writing is the clearest I've found on how this works:

Sensation = an organism actively filtering but passively receiving incoming stimuli
Perception = what the of the organism 'makes of it'... actively structures sensation into things to be sought, things to be avoided, and things that don't matter one way or the other)

He goes on to say ...
It is the network of relations within perception, not any prior pattern within sensation alone, that determines and constitutes the objects of experience, so far as they are distributed into the categories of desirable, undesirable and neutral.  In this way, each species constructs and lives within its own lifeworld. The whole process is executed by means of signs, but the perceiving organism does not think of the matter in that way. It simply uses signs without realising for a moment that there are signs.

I especially like this way of distinguishing between sensation and perception because it links to my own sense that while we can be aware of signals, we are rarely engaged in conscious analysis and deconstruction as the semiologists and 'close reading' literary critics like Empson suggest. And yet I have trouble with the pure 'feelings' people like Heidegger and Merleau Ponty. I like the poetic quality of the idea of the world or umwelt of objects too - but not sure if that is not pure projection.

It links to the question of how the pleasing tension of ambiguity operates and the sense that it has to operate in a unitary / delimited world in order to be realised fully. Went to the ICA for a a tour of Bjarne Melgaard's installation which, so far as I can see, relies almost entirely on the 'network of relations' in order to be legible as an a work of art. We had a conversation about the problems of the New Contemporaries installation because so much current practice does rely on the creation of a self-contained world in which the viewer can 'lose themselves'. Asked if I could write an article / have an interview with Bjarne for publication on the ICA website and they seemed keen. would be interesting to ask him how he sees the role of the artist in embodying / asserting the co-existence of alternative worlds.

Saw Donnet Philips at Moorfields who is leaving her job there and reminded me of the 'worlds' and networks of references that you take on when you work in a corporate environment - or the freelance one for that matter.

Reminded of the 'site specific' nature of art, perhaps up until the 15th century?  Use of 'boxes' in Renaissance perspective paintings and intarsia, extending the canvas to the wall, considering the whole room as the 'box' to create a trompe l'oeil / illusory space.  Thinking of the 'degrees of arc' - the psychologist's way of describing size as a relationship with the viewer- that are required to create the strong illusions of depth in Wilding's work. That was so clear when my own work was in the tower in Alghero - even with the larger ones, they only really got going when people were at arm's length from them - wonder how that relates to the size of the head? Renaissance perspective manuals reckoned on a 60 degree field of view, down from 90 degrees because the angles and shapes got too obviously distorted around the edges.

Reminds me of Patrick Hughes's work - looking forward to making one of those in glass!

Conversation with Chris Garrard in Oxford about the relationship between sound worlds and visual worlds was very interesting- got me wondering about the conventions of creating boundaries in the world of musical performance (darkened space, illuminated frame or stage, silence, performance, applause), even (and perhaps especially for) works like Cage's 4"33'. Chris felt that one of the ways that contemporary 'modernist' work is judged is on the coherence / 'tightness' of that world. Listening to music through headphones has some of that exclusive 'blocking out the world' idea too. He's given me some things to read. Would be interesting if that grows into a paper for this conference in Oxford next year.

And the cystallography project seems to be kicking off. Very frightened about that really - no idea whether the work will be good enough - or how the hell I am going to get it done.

Puncture fixed, although I managed to pump it up badly so that there is a substantial 'bulge' in the tyre and it does not run round evenly. And the brakes need fixing and the whole thing needs a power wash as it is just filthy.

Lovely dinner with Mum, Alice and Hil yesterday. Coffee with Michael, Caro and Jojo a bit later this morning and driving to Frome tomorrow to bring the glass and tools back here so that I can get my hands dirty again - have been getting a bit soft with all this typing...

Hey ho.

Back to the chapter...