Visual Practice
Professor Fred Pearsall
Spring 2012
Description: The project engages the mind/body/cognitive relationship of the real & the digital. Specifically how the mind accepts the varying degrees into & out of the digital, & the smoothness of how one moves through the various parallel space/times. The key issue is of ‘space’ & the multiple projections/occupations of it.
The Stereoscope presented the first moment in history in which the human mind encountered true digital space, defined as the perception of actual space/time with the potential of mental human occupancy.
The discovery of perspective was a step in the direction of creating digital space. Paintings set up, in perspective, rules which gave viewers a seductive realism through which their minds began to leave their bodies & enter more deeply into the painting. Where perspective fell short was in the representation of depth. A flat surface could not duplicate this mechanical device of perception.
The stereoscope duplicated the eye’s mechanical overlay of two images with slightly different perspectives, digitally simulating & eerily ‘real’ image. The device cuts off the viewer from any sort of external reference point making its focus the only point that the mind can occupy when viewing. So the machine grabs the eyes of the viewer & leaves the body behind, adjacent in space, elsewhere in mind. The stereoscope treats the human as a machine of perception, patiently waiting man’s binocular vision to bring the stereoscope’s purpose to fruition. This mechanization of the human is where the stereoscope falls short.
The Meninas Stereoscope presents the participant with the power to interact with the visual mechanism of the device, & its mentally occupied digital space as a real time/space projection. This device allows the participation of several bodies (even the viewer’s own disembodied flesh) to move simultaneously through the real & digital space. Like Velasquez’s painting Las Meninas, the frame of participation is extended outside of the work. An actor viewed in the Meninas Stereoscope stage may exit the frame & enter the viewer’s space.
The participant may easily alternate between the several parallel space times of the: courtyard, window to the courtyard, iPhone screens projecting the courtyard, & lenses which merge the screens into a digital representation of the courtyard’s space & time. A possible conclusion of the cognitive mind to the situation may be the tremendous ability of human perception to easily & simultaneously occupy multiple space/time conditions & its ability to move seamlessly between these conditions. Man does not realize this ability that their mind has & thusly may not understand the ways in which this ability is being manipulated by those creating the visual space/time mediums.
The investigation began with the assumption that the real & the digital were two exclusive realms. Somehow they were perfect opposites, as if the real was waiting for the digital to exist so that it could finally have its counterpart. But this polar distinction proved to be short sighted. The crux is the human mind & the infinite space/times which it has the ability to occupy. The digital is merely an especially seductive medium which the mind has adapted itself to. The mode of occupation is no different than when one sits with a book & imagines/embodies its world or when an architect draws a plan representing a building. The representation of physical space is an especially easy thing for the mind to willingly embody due to its familiarity & comfort. This embodiment can & does seduce to the point of the willful relinquishing of self.
