Space, some points in Space

Back to the four points I made earlier about pictorial Space.

1. There is Space independent of humans.

2. There is the human perception of Space.

3. There is the representation of the human perception of Space.

4. And finally, there is the human perception of the representation of the human perception of Space.

I went on a walk today, and I am going to try an flesh this out a little. I will be thinking as I write, so I do not think this will be my final take but instead the seed that is going to germinate into something marvelous.

1. Space independent of human beings.

We see Space when our sense of sight perceives the phenomena of anything around us. Light has to be present for this to work.

Of course we see in three dimensions but contemporary physicists who study string theory (like Brian Greene at Columbia) are telling us that there may be twelve dimensions.

Space exists without us seeing it. Train tracks do not converge to a point as they get farther away, but that is what humans see when we stand on the tracks and look down them. The color of mountains in the distance does not desaturate and turn gray blue as they get further away, but that is what humans see. These things exist is a way that has nothing to do with human beings perceiving them, but our pictures our only about our perceptions.


2. The human perception of space.

A picture is all about human beings. It is about our vision, our bodies, our height from the ground, our familiarity with what we look at, the systems we use to understand what we are seeing.

The systems we use to make pictorial Space are rudimentary tools that mimic our vision.

3. The representation of the human perception of Space.

Linear perspective is a system where lines converge as they recede to the viewers viewpoint stretched into infinity into the illusory depth of the picture, it is imperfect because it assumes we have one viewpoint but we actually look with two eyes.

Aerial perspective is a system where colors desaturate (lose their brilliance and turn gray) as they get further away. This of course mimics something, again, that only happens inside our mind when we interpret vision. It has no bearing on the actual world.

Depth of field is a similar proposition to both forms of perspective, just once removed by the media of a lens. It is a system that says the further something is from the viewer the softer the distinction between its edges and the edges of the objects around it become.

Color can indicate space, but to be honest I am not completely sure how it works.

4. The human perception of the representation of the human perception of Space.

This is the most interesting and trickiest section of the four. If thoughtfully articulated I think this can explain:

a. Optical illusions

b. How we see deep Space on flat sheet of paper or a canvas.

c. How we see amazingly convincing shallow Space, like a Trompe-l'œil painting.

d. Why some images seem to filled with open Space, and some feel claustrophobic.

e. Why some Space feels so real, while others are more notational

f. Probably a bunch of interesting things that have not occurred to me yet.