Seeing Anew (Con't)
The eye is a terrible camera, subject to many possible imperfections. Cameras are the best for seeing empirically, and digital cameras are even better than that because you have binary data and metadata.
It is the imperfection in the human eye and brain that make it possible to have a wider variety of possible interpretations of reality (sometimes referred to as "art"). Data on its own is boring and has to be continually shaped in order to be interesting. Raw materials can be interesting in isolation, but it is rare.
A lot of what we don't see (realize) is based on both sensory flaws and cognitive blind spots. Artists are primed to address the latter. The eye as a light and motion detector is something everyone possesses. Seeing as information is different.
Visualizing data is another one of those areas rich in artistic expression precisely because it's not retinal but cognitive, and requires a tolerance for abstraction. We don't "get it" just from looking at it, and seeing it as a signal of beauty or enrichment. Insects "see" chemicals as nourishment but it's raw "data", not beauty. Beauty is the "exformation" enrichment of all possible big data signals, using available contextualizations that isolate perception (like the Stoplight Dragonfish in the "Red Zone").
A spider walked across the floor in a beam of sunlight through the window as I was writing this. Every time it entered a shadow area, it stopped abruptly, disoriented, yet the sunlight was always a short distance away. Was it seeking the light, or avoiding it for the shadow?
It is the imperfection in the human eye and brain that make it possible to have a wider variety of possible interpretations of reality (sometimes referred to as "art"). Data on its own is boring and has to be continually shaped in order to be interesting. Raw materials can be interesting in isolation, but it is rare.
A lot of what we don't see (realize) is based on both sensory flaws and cognitive blind spots. Artists are primed to address the latter. The eye as a light and motion detector is something everyone possesses. Seeing as information is different.
Visualizing data is another one of those areas rich in artistic expression precisely because it's not retinal but cognitive, and requires a tolerance for abstraction. We don't "get it" just from looking at it, and seeing it as a signal of beauty or enrichment. Insects "see" chemicals as nourishment but it's raw "data", not beauty. Beauty is the "exformation" enrichment of all possible big data signals, using available contextualizations that isolate perception (like the Stoplight Dragonfish in the "Red Zone").
A spider walked across the floor in a beam of sunlight through the window as I was writing this. Every time it entered a shadow area, it stopped abruptly, disoriented, yet the sunlight was always a short distance away. Was it seeking the light, or avoiding it for the shadow?
