we look at the moon through a mist filled field in the early hours. The moon is still up as the sun starts to shine over my shoulder. fig 1 comp photo does not do ...
Recording the experience of encountering mist If we study the phenomenon of vision we can determine that there are two systems in operation, implicit and explicit. We organise our presentations of vision from the data-sets pertaining to each. We also have two eyes so we can effectively double that initial degree of complication. The organisation/composition within the phenomenon of vision also depends on our intent in the world, the way we cycle pertinent information to increase the saliency of the overall impression we are generating. Learning how to see these changes taking place, looking to see the preferred arrangements for each situation and ‘tricking’ the system to present the more stable ones long enough to study their structure is not a trivial or simple undertaking. The commitment is to watch or monitor yourself looking, which is a dynamical system being purposed to observe itself in action! You can’t shut the book and pick it up in the same place the next day or turn the instrumentation off and on. The occupation is closer to a hunter chasing down very illusive prey with the pursuit beginning anew each day, either that or chasing the end of a rainbow! So here I return to the drawing board and try to depict what occurs to us when we look at the moon through a mist filled field in the early hours. The moon is still up as the sun starts to shine over my shoulder.
fig 1 comp photo does not do the job!
I have tried to summarise aspects of the dual field in these situations previously. (as below fig 2.)
Perceptual space is a spatial medium and the mist is a medium that presents within that. I need to articulate a medium within the medium that forms the essential structure underpinning who we are. This encounter of mist is a special set of circumstances that artists through the centuries have tried to depict. (Looking at an object outside the Earth’s atmosphere is a specialist situation in its own right but we are not going to attend to that here.) As a youngster I was fascinated by these mists in rural settings and also with the work of JMW Turner as he took on the challenge. In his work we can start to see a rendering of two systems. One of these fields rendering the diffuse mist but this occurring in conjunction with a texture field using the substance of the paint or the texture of the paper. Fortunately the two mediums can organise in different ways within phenomenal field. Perceptual structure sets out either radially from the sentient being or radially from the locus of fixation, whereas mist is a function of distance from the observer (+ local density etc). So the brain can align the fields (both body centred) or offset them (body centred physical mist v fixation centred perceptual structure), the interplay introducing a novel way for us to ‘experience and sample’ the scene. This subjective sampling makes it more ‘real’ to us. My task is to try to imply two mediums in the depiction of the scene in a way that we can appreciate both. Is this the essence of the aesthetic of the situation we encounter as we look at these scenes?
fig 2. a) looking to Fowey from Mixtow with proximity cues
b) with overlaid ‘pictorial’ mist. This can increase depth perception. The duality within the implicit field could be achieved as in the painting looking to Fowey from Mixtow. However this would reduce the rendering of the mist to a mere layering of a transparency function in relation distance without being fully commensurate with the way this is achieved within the phenomenon. That approach to rendering mist is essentially ‘pictorial’ in outlook whereas within the phenomenon, there is a degree to which the mist extends to us the observer. It occupies perceptual space and not picture space. The medium builds out to us as well as recede into the distance at all points. It's the degree to which it does this within the terms of the foundational perceptual structure that reflects ‘the true feeling of’ its density and the way it occupies space. Ie. The mist field is operational within the terms of the underlying perceptual structure and should not really be separated out into a different rendering strategy. This is not going to be easy to accomplish in a painting! One option for a Vision-Space rendering exercise would appear to involve a sparse rendering of the radial fixation field of perceptual structure and then a sparse rendering of the body centred mist field within the space left by the first rendering sequence? - The first setting out the physical scene in relation to perceptual structure as per regular Vision-Space paintings. - The second setting out the density of mist registering within that perceptual structure between the observer and the objects/surfaces across phenomenal field. It would involve a similar colour pallet for both but avoid me having to think in multiple dimensions as I engage in the act of painting it. Without an approach like this I would quickly loose the plot! Of course as I have mentioned elsewhere,
the field of perceptual structure is not rendered as such within the phenomenon of vision, the field is US we don't see it just the values that register there, so rather we see in relation to it. As an artist I have to render the structure and the spatial values within the paintings so we can ‘read’ and ‘identify’ with it, hence the mosaic nature of the brush marks. So trying to render two interlocking fields in a painting could just end up a dogs-dinner (UK saying denoting an indistinguishable mess of parts)! I will share progress so let’s hope this one works out. We want to ‘feel’ the mist on our faces! Well you know what I mean.
