But in a very real sense, all art is pointillism. In fact, all visual perception is pointillism. Our retinas are sheets of photoreceptors, each sampling a finite circular area of visual space. Every photoreceptor then connects to downstream neural circuits that build our perception of objects, faces, loved ones and everything else. Thus, vision itself is largely a pointillist illusion, colored by a tremendous amount of “guesstimation” and filling in on the part of the brain. It doesn’t matter whether a painter uses brushstrokes or candy or whether the “artist” is the sun illuminating the world; the effect is the same—colors, lines, shadows, reflections are processed by the brain to become everyday objects.
Among artists who play with food are those who challenge the brain by changing the scale. Instead of constructing something small (a cupcake) from even smaller items (jelly beans), they build sweeping views. The image above looks, at first sight, like a landscape painting. But examine it more closely. These are actual foods laid out to re-create details of scenery and terrain. London photographer Carl Warner arranges meats, cheeses and vegetables to create environments that could be the setting of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, then photographs the scene in layers from foreground to background to create a composite image.
Warner’s work takes food-based visual illusions to the next level in that here real foods not only represent other things but are juxtaposed in such a way that their various sizes create the illusion of perspective. Some vegetables, for example, appear to recede into the distance: green chili and Romano peppers become cypress trees (the larger Romano peppers placed in the foreground to create the effect), pine nuts are stones for walls, and mozzarella cheese, clouds. The brain recognizes a delicious assortment of Italian edibles, as well as a Tuscan hillside, in the same visual data. Food for thought, indeed.
This article was originally published with the title Hungry for Meaning.
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Add CommentNot sure about this one. Does the brain not continuously generate possible models of data presented to it by light impinging upon the photoreceptors combined with synesthetic connectivity to perhaps the auditory ststem etc - where specific shapes in the visual field acivate linguistic representations of the visual data. Similarly the other sensory domains will be generating possible models that might appear to fit externally impinging stimuli. Hence a number of perspectival views of the outside world will be generated from different foci within the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuch a process would fit Nietzsche's perspectivism whence the 'true' reality of the external world would arise through the intersection and agreement between different perspectival views of the senses.
The process producing effectively a linguistic narrative describing the outside world and organising a response to it?
Peter Reynolds
Reflectogenesis@hotmail.co.uk
Faces being easily recognised because of the synesthetic stimuli they produce - as for example manifest in the Mc Gurk effect where the visual cues of faces are inseparable from the auditory cues.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis particular focus of synesthetic connectivity and connectivity between visual and auditory perspectival views perhaps revealing the fundamental power of linguistics in representing - predicting - expressing and experiencing the world. So determining our conscious experience and marrying it to unconscious process.
Reflectogenesis@hotmail.co.uk
So - yes I disagree in toto with the premise of the article that face recognition is essential pattern recognition from a visual stimulus.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI posit face recognition to be fundamentally synesthetic and linguistic perspectivism formaing templates which filter visual stimuli and assess for salience.
Reflectogenesis@hotmail.co.uk
Peter Reynolds
The beauty of such a model would be that each different perspectival sensory view could of itself project back or forward in time so to establish a synthetic representaion or synthesis of 'a priori' or 'before the fact' representations or 'preception' with 'postceptions' to produce a perception of the here and now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo the 'now' of the 'film in the head' being a synthesis and projection of future possible images with past memories or images(short and long in sequence arranged on linguistic lines) to produce an apparent approximation of the 'here and now' which has evolved to closely model the external world as it exists in real time and integrate it with the internal world of the body/brain.
I suppose one could say from this perspective that what evolution has really produced is the 'here and now'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd moreover it has in doing so produced the past present and future.
Peter Reynolds
Reflectogenesis@hotmail.co.uk
And because evolution produces the here and now - it is the way we see the world. The template through which we (have to or - have naturally come to ) model our conceptuality of life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut who knows what is outside of the 'here and now'. That is the deepest mystery of all.
Peter REynolds
reflectogenesis@hotmail.co.uk
reflectogenesis...nice train of thought...I would only add that I think that relationships(friends,family,...) are also part of what goes on in the head...ie. when you think a thought, it is bounced off of zero to many internal representations of external relationships(think of it as a proving ground) before being externalized...just a thought....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes I think undoubtedly that there are lots of things going on during thought and some maybe conscious and some not so. So like you say - there might be competition between different perspectival views of the world, and I suppose the brain might need more data to decide how it should incorporate relationsips into its ongoing existence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut the point I'm trying to hit home is that its not just visual pattern recognition (memory storage and access through the visual pathway) which allows us to identify faces. Rather it is the synesthetic connectivity between our senses which labels a face with an identity.
In accordance with what you say, I suggest there might be expected to be special or accentuated synesthetic connectivity which allows us to easily identify family members and loved ones. In such a case different rules might then be applied to the way in which conflicting data associated with such a family of views might be assimilated.
Indeed the fusiform gyrus is responsible for recognizing the faces of loved ones and even familar objects such as pets or even houses. So particular brain areas must kick in when we form perspectives which incorporate particularly salient and famiar objects and environments.
Likewise my guess is that there are particular synesthetic pathways that contribute to deriving and generating perspectival views of the world at various stages along the optical pathways depending upon what is judged to be salient within the multiperstival views that the brain must continually be generating.
Eureka.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've worked it out.
Consciousness first arose when deaf and blind first interbred. That is when a society had evolved sufficiently to support them.
The enhanced ability of the deaf and blind to detect motion and position in the remaining modalities would have been kept alongside their normal senses in their offspring. Hence synesthetic connections could for the first time represent movement with static images. These abilities would subtend the normal senses of the offspring to give rise to a 'subconscious' or sub-sensory ability which could guide the senses and integrate them at an unconscious level.
Thus we would become 'aware' that we had abilities outside those derived purely through our senses.
Later when we had mirrors in the age of metals those abilities would becoome tuned so that those sub or none conscious abilities to detect and control movement would become synergistic through the positive feedback with the mirror. These subconscious abilities would become more important in driving the senses and controlling attention.
We are effectively therefore super hominids.
reflectogenesis@hotmail.co.uk
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeter Reynolds
see also academia.edu Peter Thomas Reynolds
I've since read 'Country of The Blind' by H G Wells who describes exactly the scenario I imagine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf there was a 'Country Of The Deaf' in a parallel valley - and the two interbred- it would be possible for them to regain their primary senses and keep the enhancement of all sense modalities inherited from their parents.
I was puzzled by the the section of the article that read "[w]hy do we see a face in the arrangement, when we know it is a bunch of vegetables? And why only when the image is flipped?" I must be the exception that proves the rule, because I immediately saw an upside-down face wearing a bowl as a helmut when I first looked at the Arcimboldo painting, and then couldn't understand why the same painting was then shown right side up beside the original until I started reading the article. Perhaps the cause is an unusually wired brain: I underwent split-brain surgery to remove a central neurocytoma 18 years ago, and subsequently needed to retrain my brain to process information in a new way. One mental task that became slightly loopy and less than reliable was facial recognition.
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