If so then to what extent can this ‘model’ of visual perception be used to direct the development of vision science?
Is this proposition meaningful to a cross-disciplinary section of the research community?
Vision-Space is a new form of illusionary space that's based on perceptual structure and not the fundamentals of optics (or central perspective). It models both the data-strcutures and the dynamic of information exchange taking place within phenomenal field (experiential vision). As such we believe that it starts to model visual awareness. At present the programming architecture for Vision-Space is 'illustrative' in nature. It transforms optical record to accord with our understanding of perceptual structure. Vision it appears, is almost entirely non-photographically rendered. While this software can at present generate Vision-Space moving image media, to move the project forwards we need to create an 'academic' programming architecture advancing a 'generative' programming architecture. This architecture must take account of aspects of neural processing. Such an architecture could obviate the the requirement for optical projection as the basis for image generation and produce stimuli for experimentation to probe perceptual structure in detail.
http://www.pacentre.org
Perhaps the answers on the question
Can someone explain the intuition behind using probability in image processing?
elsewhere in ResearchGate might be useful.
cheers
Well I think this is probably linked to disorder? I and others don't think that 'blur' is a data structure that appears within phenomenal field. Disorder has a computational structure and this has been looked at by Prof Jan Koenderink at some length.
Koenderink. J. & van Doorn A 2000 Blur and Disorder Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation vol 11 pages 237-244
Koenderink. J. & van Doorn A 1999 The Structure of Locally Orderless Images. International Journal of Computer Vision vol 31 pages 159-163.
In Vision-Space this is set out increasing radially (like a field) from the object in fixation.
The structure of monocular vision http://youtu.be/AO71a8LzZSg
John I saw the referred web site..i confess it is clean over my comprehension but
nevertheless interesting. .. I really would like to understand the concept at least superficially.. is there a blog etc that would lead a novice.. holding hands.explaining .the terms used ..semantics are rather heavy.. I would really appreciate a very simple
example(explanation / reference ) of the difference between Vision Space and Photographically rendered image perhaps with reference to a black/white
pixel matrix. Is it not that we are seeing in the Youtube shown ordinary framed images? in any case it seems exciting as a concept.. thanks..
John,
I understand bits and pieces and I agree with these bits and pieces but still my understanding is much too fuzzy. I will keep reading.
The idea that visual artists reveals to us , make visible fundamentals perceptual structures is something I understood a while back in my own way. When the techology of photography was invented it created an artistic crisis in visual art. The impressionists asked themself what was the real purpose of their art. Was it photograhic reproduction? What is depicted on the canvas? Leonardo da Vinci, as usual ahead of his time, had already explored that aspect of art and had said that the painter essentially paints both the human body and the human mind.
I really apprciate the input Louis
All knowledge has its origins in perception- Da Vinci!
What I have put together (or tried to) is a dot-to-dot to establish a theme. It's running through the articles I refer to but under the counter. This type of activity is inherently dangerous and is unlikely to attract buy in for a host of reasons. The truth is I have run out of time. After 30 years I have to make a living! There are big holes in the theory but I am in position to try to close them. Vision-Space works. It should be 'out there' being developed into technologies. To make any real headway would require multidisciplinary input. Every discipline would have to swallow something nasty! Art, at least in the UK, is no longer a credible discipline and I am an artist!
I think these ipRGC will prove to be the straw that breaks the back. When the retinal circuitry is put together it will not suggests the 'transference' of deconstructed pictures but dynamic systems etc?
Dear John,
I am not a specialist of your field, but I have some tools that could be useful to you.
1. Whenever one conceive a theory one uses some model, if it is quantitative it can be represented in a Hilbert space, and we have many useful properties
2. Whenever similar systems interact together, from the interactions (whatever they are) come organized structures : interactions create order.
So one can represent any "picture" by a mathematical map (with arguments location of the pixels and values the pixel), it must belong to some vector space, and the whole of the picture is represented by a single vector in a Hilbert space. Now if one looks at a movie one can see each pixel as a system, with some evolution, and the elementary pixels interact. A pattern appears in the process. Probabiilist method can be used to give an interpretation to the process.
See my paper on this site (it is short and without too much maths) "common structures in scientific theories".
In general terms I, as an artist, perform to the Experiential Ontology (paper on this site). This is essentially pre-cognitive (well the implicit aspects certainly!) pre-conceptual and prior-to knowledge and its constructs and models. The experiential takes place with our multi sense 'perceptual structure'. I think this is essentially fired up by light supported by sound as vision and audition. Interestingly when this perceptual structure is rendered visible it appears to be essentially Hilbert space driven by attractors? Should we be surprised? I don't think so! We are part of the perceptual system as the host both generating and controlling it's formation. We see the world in relation to ourselves. Given that the system is fired up by light we should be paying very careful attention to it. If we want to 'observe' the world remotely via instrumentation we need to understand what's involved in an act of observation. I think we need to start with this prior to us spending a lot of time forming hypothesises 'about' the world and then attempting to 'measure and test' them. All theories are images to me, not 'objects'. If we think of them as 'objects' and assume 'objective status' towards the world we are not reflecting upon the nature of our 'relationship with the real'. I would not see the role of science to 'solve' the mystery but to help to deepen our relationship with the real? The same with Art? Knowledge is ephemeral. So by studying the world with exacting science we should in the end find ourselves (within the results as players)? I think Hilbert space and QM have done just that. I think we can start to apply this knowledge to some sort of model of our own structure and use what that tells us about ourselves to 'look afresh' at the world?
To John,
What I have found is that whenever we conceive of some representation we get a specific structure, rendered by Hilbert space. There is no assumption as to what is studied, or about the relations that could exist between the objcts which are represented. Science cannot tell us what is reality, it can at best provide an efficient representation of reality.In some way it seems that our brain is attracted to some specific mathemtical structures. And of course these structures are found in Quantum Mechanics, but it goes further than physics.
I agree. For me it starts to look like this: That as its light that brings us our information about the real setting WE become a manifestation of the macro/macro divide? Our mind self organises and performs to Hilbert space and that all occurs within us as a macro biological system. Our impressions of the macro setting or environment are brought to by its relationship to a micro particle hence we have to deal with a fundamental duality. We can understand how the micro particle interacts with the macro setting or environment and how we bodily relate to the macro condition or environment. So I would say that our mind is not just attracted to some specific structures its formed by them and operates in accordance with them. We are truly embedded in the universe! We shouldn't make an 'observation' or 'measurement' without taking that into account? Using a devise that is not embedded in this way and capable of reflecting this duality will necessarily only provide 1/2 the story. The double slit experiment simply illustrates this! (Having the courage of your perceptions - on this site). As an analogy, as an artist I learned a long time ago that in painting a still life I had to ware black clothes otherwise light reflected off me onto the set up. A form of feedback that at the time I wanted to rule out. I think its very important now to model perceptual structure and understand how it is that we from our relationship with the real because hidden in there will be the insights as to how to 'embed' our technologies that are currently standing in for us in remote observations? So in this sense its all physics but we need to really understand the reality of it that involves us and then reapply that understanding?
Jean, I have tried to summarise (attached) what I mean by our relationship with the real. It involves the recognition of an independent macro real (independent of our conscious involvement in it) and also how light as a micro particle bringing us the information of our environment (the physical real) embeds its relationship with the real (macro) in us through perceptual structure. Perceptual structure embeds us in the universe - its more real that the real and in understanding it we can understand how to be 'objective' at any scale? Our current technology fails to do this hence its records have limited meaning to us?
Dear John,
I have read your presentation. My comments :
1. I do not think that the nature of light (the phenomenon which is at the origin of the sensitive perception) matters. What is important is that light acts on cells on the retina which organized to anlyse the input and transmit this input into the brain.
2. We know that vision proceeds from an organized, and global way : we do not "see" pixels, we perceive a pattern which is strongly reorganized in the brain, notably by assimilation of the perception from both eyes, and by actualisation of past images
3. As such one can represent the cells as a set of interacting systems, whose output is a global state. The state of each cell can be represented as the value of a variable (the excitation I believe). And the global state is more than the separate states put together. From my paper one can tell that actually the possible global states are in a finite number : whence the idea of pattern, vision proceeds from patterns.
4. The fact that the states can be represented in a Hilbert space is both not signficant (this is just some mathematical structure) and relevant (mathematicians have identified this structure and aknowledge its importance because it has something to do with way our intellect works).
Hi Jean,
Thanks for the above I will read now. This is what I have been working on reading your interesting article. Thanks!
Perceptual structure would appear to conform to Hilbert space. We (a biological system) generate it. The perceptual system is capable of multisensory integration as all sensory input ‘performs’ in Hilbert space. Hence perceptual structure is independent of signal. We generate it, however it's essentially a self-organising structure made possible by the onset of light. Our biological system is entangled with the physical realities of macro objects and the micro condition. Hence our perceptual structure is capable of ‘interfacing’ separately with both light as a micro particle within the macro context of our bodies. Experiential reality necessarily involves the micro/macro divide with the retina acting as the membrane. The membrane segments two ‘takes’ on reality, what and where, leading to an implicit form of spatial awareness (environmental noise realised within Hilbert space) and an explicit transcription of the real (optics projection modulated within Hilbert space but not commensurate with it?). Mind has to ‘deal’ with the duality in forming experiential reality. Hence, experiential reality tells us ‘what’ is bodily in the world and also ‘how’ we constitute from the duality of conditions our perception of it. The functioning of the perceptual system should tell us what’s involved in being objective given the duality at all scales?
A temporal context can be found in each of the individual visual pathways (dorsal and ventral) It’s the dorsal stream that populates perceptual structure conforming to Hilbert space). It provides the potential for interface. Impressions of ‘time now’, implicit spatial awareness etc. However Perceptual structure is generated by us and has essentially its own biological temporal dimension. The conditions are not relative, but distinct and entangled. With this system (perceptual structure) ‘up-and-running’ it becomes possible interface it with other systems /inputs even if they derive from different ecologies (sound becoming audition etc). Multi-sense integration?
I would see your work as being essentially commensurate with perceptual structure, the system that we generate to (and through which we) perceive of the world? Rather important to Vision-Space! The mathematical basis for the next generation of Vision-Space technologies where we move from ‘illustrating’ perceptual outcomes by transforming optically structured media to one where we generate a system capable of ‘realising’ input direct from the environment and ‘presenting it’ a way commensurate with our perceptions of the world. (No ‘pictures being formed to re-present!) This ‘engine’ would form the basis for perceptually structured ICTs?
I have close to zero understanding of the mathematics but I can follow the logic through the descriptions to some extent as you intimated I might. These I ‘map’ to my visual mind and the fundamentals of Vision-Space. It's a bit (very) haphazard and hence hit and miss. I understand only flashes of the detail within you paper at present. Have I hit or missed?
The one point I am not sure about is the ‘unity of the world’. This as I try to explain in ‘Having the courage of your perceptions’ is a matter of which way you are looking. I have had to spend a good deal of time working out the duality involved in the phenomenon of vision.
"The unavoidable discrepancy between the sophistication of our mathematical tools and the limited capability of our measures leads to the introduction of probabilist laws, not as the recognition of some random behaviour of reality, but as an efficient way to build a manageable representation of what it is."
1. It is because our tools do not reflect an understanding of what’s involved in an act of observation that they fail to stand in for us at remote scales and so fail to make ‘meaningful’ records. The shortfall in approach generates paradox.
2. Reality occurs to us and not our instrumentation.
3. The real (macro and micro states) is out there independent of us, but our visual impressions of the real (reality) involve and accommodate the independent takes (implicit and explicit) on reality that each state affords us of our environment.
4. Hence reality is more real than the physically real environment that surrounds us. Visual reality entangles us in both states (micro and marco). The flip side of this is that “There is nothing less real than realism”! Georgia O’Keeffe.
5. “All knowledge has its origins in perception” Da Vinci
In Answer:
1. Everybody tells me this! Prof Jan Koenderink (vision scientist from physics and astronomy background) and supportive of my efforts says "John , don't blame the photons!" I just can't see how on a monocular basis we could generate 'a 3D field' structure of the environment without 'blaming the photos'?
2. I make the point about pixels in: Visual cues appearing within the radial structure of phenomenal field http://youtu.be/kYqsdTgI-i4
3. Have you seen the recent work on ipRGC, Intrinsically photoreceptive ganglion cells?I try to summarise in: Our self-organizing mind, 1/f noise and a possible role for ipRGC receptor functions http://youtu.be/4xpk9f8M9vo
4. If we (as biological systems) are generating perceptual structure it would both explain the relationship to the way intellect works and establish linkages between through perceptual structure to 'information structure' within external signal.
There are now 3 presentations looking a self-referencing in imaging. Kind of relevant here I think?
Vision-Space: Self-reference Pt 1, within spatial texture http://youtu.be/xUGOD1g3dtI Vision-Space: Self-reference Pt 2, contributions from memory http://youtu.be/hDDoRGHaOwE
Vision-Space: Self-reference Pt 3, exploring the extents of phenomenal field http://youtu.be/SarFf6FA8Eg
Rudolf Arnheim
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2007/06/15/simplicity-clarity-balance-a-tribute-to-rudolf-arnheim/
Hi John,
About twelve years ago I threw in the garbages most of my books on visual perception but I kept six books and the second and third most important were the the two books of Arhneim
-Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye
-Visual Thinking
The most important :
A treatise on painting ,Leonardo, da Vinci,
One of my favorite quote from Leonardo is (from memory):
My interpretation is that the art of painting is basically the art of discovering the way the visual system (the mind) perceive. Learning to paint is thus learning to paint the mind. It is not an intellectual discovery but painting discovery that can translate in an enhanced capacity to paint sustained by an implicit visual knowledge. IN the philosophy of science, Michael Polanyi has a theory of discovery based on making explicit implicit personal knowledge. It has always been my way of learrning although I was not conscious of it. But the more one become conscious of it and the more bold (some would say crazy) one become. The more one instead of trying to learn with the intellect just let the body works the way it work and then the intellect cease to be the leader of the process but only what it evolved to be: a medium of communication, not a way to discover.
That Leonardo chap wasn't thick. Great quote, i an going to use it. You have alluded to not preceeding with visual perception research before. Jan K. Told me I was wasting my time in the visual perception forums! I know that I am not permitted.
It's a real struggle to keep going. How do you manage? I don't by the way! I am also not permitted in the art world either as the are all just illustrating thie ideas.
How about joining PAC and taking them all on?
John,
I recently realized that when in life you really feel like touching something important, to be into something and then life force you out of this endavor and carry you somewhere else and then again you get into something important but again life force you somewhere. But as long as you were really sincere in your past endevour you suddenly realizes later that there is a continuity and that even though you were force to interrupt your endevor and that you thought that this is over, gone, it is not. Sub-consciously these past endevors guide you in whatever endevor you do and then naturallyt later in life you put your life together and all these endevor gradually merge. Because living is trying to be one and all the subconscious process are struggling to get together in you sub-conscious and are working there. When you endevor in one area you get ideas because in the background these process send you ideas. Faith in spite of any obstacle is the key because faith in life keep alife all your past life and more and more it create a synergy. The more I advance and the more I discover the major life changing events of my past and see how they guided me in the sub-conscious. What I until recently were coincidences we guided by past events and sub-conscious process that were trigger by them. The reason I managed to defend successfully my Ph.D in spite of the total opposition of all the members of my committee including my supervisor is Ian. I did not knew him except for his papers. My impression at the time was than he was mathematically brillant and that he had a physicist based approach to vision but I admit that I found him thick in terms of intuition of visual perception staying secure with mathematic but no expression of gut feeling about perception. Just one year ago, I discover a few online paper from him that change totally my perception. Finally I saw that he speak his gutts and say blantly what he really think. It wondered why he never showed this side of him before. Maybe it has something to do with having nothing to loose in term of carreer anymore. I found it very interesting that like me he discovered Von Uexkull and Jason Brown.
Dear Louis Brassard
I am near the Biblical age limit.. my experience too.. reflects exactly what you have described .. on reflection it was possible to see how various dots ( incidents life) connected up...in fact curiously anecdotes of simple everyday life also reflects
this. It is my conviction that everyone experiences it but they are not conscious of
it most often. I would appreciate a simplified explanation of "The painter has to learn to paint two things : the human body and the human mind.". I take it by body is meant the external existential world .. but human mind ? Is it what is referred to as Qualia?
Is it what we Dream? Is it what we think we see ? Then what is hallucination?
I recall "Macbeth' .."Is this a dagger which I see before me proceeding from the heat oppressed brain ..Come let me clutch thee .. I have thee not .. art thou sensible to feeling as to sight.."
If so any thoughts on its origin .. is it packaged during conception ? After all
in the end life forms are just organic molecules put together which can be simulated by artificial means , and is there really a universal consciousness as believed by
Erwin Schrödinger ? The explanation (see below) of consciousness as given by Donald Hoffman (suggested in another thread by Vahid Bastani ) seems to be of interest here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqDP34a-epI
So I find John Lupes question highly fascinating and rewarding .. although I had
initial difficulty in interpreting it...possibly it might lead to a breakthrough
in Image processing (computer vision)
Cheers
Guys,
Its good to chat. I have had to change course many times - from art to science forums, to commercial (start-up companies raising investment) - back to the art. In all this time I have only met a handful of people that understand the core issues. By understand I mean more than read something in some paper that interests them, I mean at the coal face doing it! All are like me scraping along trying to keep going in the margins.
I learned this from the first section of the above - as an artist. This provoked me to make the journey towards developing new technology as the existing stuff was developed without the understanding. It was a hell of a fight to get the base technology up and running. The technology bit was relatively easy…its raising the money and dealing with the investor situation that's so difficult. They don't get platform technologies or what's required to introduce a paradigm shift. There is no long-term view any more - 7 times investment in 2 years max! No research, no planning for future tech development, just cash back NOW! They approach new businesses like a cash point! Absolutely no interest in technology or the benefice for society etc. Absolutely no interest in me either!
I keep this going because 'I know' there are very significant health issues surrounding our over immersion in our current virtual environments. They are causing neural redundancy. Especially important for the young and the old. We need perceptually structured technologies. There are VS presentation on this.
Vision-Space: Health implications of non-perceptually structured content and screen technology http://youtu.be/6gizIuLL9mg
Vision-Space: Typical and atypical perceptual structures-Potential links to ASD and stroke related conditions http://youtu.be/Pss3UOoiuyQ
The science community has no use for Vision-Space until the technology is there to evaluate. They had no interest in helping to develop it apart from Jan K of course. Thanks to his contribution and a lot of good will from others, we have just crawled into that category with our post-production tool and I hope this submission with Cardiff Uni (computer science ) gets through. We will then have 3 years to do some proper work on the technology front. Until then it's me in the studio with iMovie!
Leonardo's quote are very interesting. Try this one.
“Observe the flame of a candle and consider its beauty. Blink your eye and look at it again. What you see now was not there before, and what was there before is not there now. Who is it who rekindles this flame which is always dying?”
This can fit into the fires started by many people and I think this is the key. His quotes can slot into most fires as though they belong there. The trick is not to analyse the meaning to hard! Just marvel at how well they fit in. They are flames and we rekindle them?
"The painter has to learn to paint two things : the human body and the human mind."
Leonardo may be referring to his anatomical drawings as knowledge of the human physiology was very important to achieving a likeness? In his day this pursuit of 'likeness' was a new concept for art. Today I need to understand 'how' we see, not just 'what' there is to see. How we see is dictated by bodily constraints on multiple levels and this body interfaces with the universe through light. So the flame transcends the Centuries? Or did Leonardo know more than the art critics/historians give him creed for?
John,
Leonardo was so deep into observation and transformation and understanding that he was like a shaman or oracle or poet of nature. The observations he made on the flame capture the parallel between life and a flame. The permanence in the change. Living as constantly dying. Life as preparation to dying. There are so many things that are said in this single sentence. I built a conception of image structure on top of Jan scale-space-time geometrical framework based on the evolution of the crease structures. If you read the quote of Leonardo at the front of my Ph.D. thesis:
he mentioned these valleys and ridges that are everywhere and that are important for the painter imagination. I do not think that is over interpretation on my part. I am not saying that he saw it the way I see it but that he made observations leading to them. I did not come up with this mathematical notion directly. In the preface of my thesis, I told about a perceptual experience on a beach where I saw symmetry axes everywhere. But about one and half year before that when I realized perceptually again that the whole colour constancy problem was fallacious along with the whole explicit representationalist conception of vision was garbage, I then walk in the forest and deciding between completing my Ph.D. in colour constancy in what I did not beleive and had so much invested or beginning anew something worthy. Then when hope was the dimmest I observed a huge tree with milliions of leaves moving in the wind and understood perceptually what the gestaltist had understood that I was not perceiving the tree from the micro level to the macro level but that I was perceiving from the macro first to the micro after when needed. After that I started looking about what could be these macro aspects. The beach event sent me looking for the symmetry axis , this sent me looking for a computational approach which sent me to JAN which sent me to the ridge and river network and their structure. But I did not realized yet their evolutionary connections and it is the observation of developing fetus while my wife was pregnant of our third children that made me realized that what I was observing the body of my 4 years old son at different spatial scales was similar to fetal development. Then I went back to mathematics and found the connection and I went back to philosophy and found the connection between philogeny and ontogeny and finnally I end up with a tree of structure similar to the tree of life. In that tree of tree structure, there a structure which is the TREE STRCUTURE, the same structure that I was observing in the forest and on the beach and which was my image tree and the tree of life. And this is only a tiny fraction of what emerged from my inquiry, the notion of time in the NOW, at the end of my thesis, not the publishe one but the proposed one, I propose a sensacting loop with a generalized notion of image which is my own re-discovery of Von Uexkull, I also re-discover Aristotle,s notion of perception and cognition as the actualization of form, I discover the root of a theory of language based on mimetic imagination which I am completing now and connecting it to music. I am now able to see different forms bodily self-enactment going accross many sensorium modalities and the necessity for the mammalian brain to follow that evolutionary path and how this mammalian unconscious mimetic that was necessary for interfacing end up with a primate getting conscious access to the mimetic control room of the mammalian brain and thus getting a explicit expression power of the implicit interfacing narrative and thus creating the theatrical animal.
But I am absolutely unable to sustain my thinking activity from itself. Starting a business and trying to harness your ideas is really amazing. I tried it for a few years but gave up. So I work with my hands to sustain me and my family. After my Ph.D., I was totally exausted physically and mentally. I had to cut myself out of the idea world for 12 years and rebuild physically first and then mentally. I am back part time since almost three years now.
Dear Narasim,
As far as interpretation goes, yours is as good as mine. I like to think that Leoanardo when he was saying that the painter has to learn painting the mind, which he knew like anybody that we cannot see the mind with our eyes, he mean that painting is done by the mind for the mind and so learning to express through painting requires the mind to please itself in the visual media and that I interpret it to be a kind of self-knowing a painting of the mind that is possible because it is experiential and come about through long hours of tries and errors. By the way I am one of the worst painter there is but I was from a young age fascinated by those that master this kind of magical ability.
Hi Louis, I did try to download your thesis a couple of times but I could only 'request' it. Nothing arrived! Is the link working do you know?
The tree is exactly the point! I was just 14 when I realised that all the tools available to us to intuitively record a tree (and hence space) were totally inadequate. Take a look at: Vision-Space: The paintings and their story http://youtu.be/_Tj-r1XtWto
The implications are truly profound. It's what my whole life has been about really. You can do the same thing with a water fall. You can track the water (which is difficult) or allow yourself to appreciate the flow across all of visual field. Its a fantastic experience to toggle between conscious awareness of the implicit to the explicit. Entirely different ways of being with the world. We use both of course but we are only subconscious aware of the implicit and only occasionally come into contact with its processing system. It does however account for 90% of visual field and I think 90% of awareness (awareness being both conscious and sub conscious). I think implicit and explicit is better than Micro and Macro? I would suggest that they are left and right hemisphere dependent - characterisations of course, not a black and white scenario? The implicit takes from the explicit and vice versa.
The evolutionary aspects I link to the evolution of the eye. Implicit awareness came first with the eye cup. We needed spacial awareness and proximity awareness before a detailed capability. The explicit came after the implicit with the development of the lens and fovea etc. This evolution is likely to play out in brain structures so I look to the 'old brain' tectal vision for the implicit and then to cortex for the explicit and control mechanisms that mediate the two. Having 2 takes on reality requires mediation - requires dialogue - requires 'mind'?
I have had to dissolve the companies as despite raising £250k (in the US and UK) of the required £500k and getting the support of EADS, BAE systems, Quinetiq, The Welsh Government, multiple universities and a host of companies working in visual media they WILL NOT work with one another. It is impossible to put a viable team together around a developing patent space. Renaissance will not occur in Europe! We are culturally incapable of supporting it. The patents were accepted on a global basis - no prior art anywhere in the world. TRIZ patent analysis (conducted in the US) identified Vision-Space as a straight paradigm shift - seriously disruptive technology with over 200 commercial applications across 12 industries (we just analysed 1 of the patents!). Putting this together took 15 years of unpaid effort under extreme pressure. Thats after doing the independent painting and theory that I had fund through doing architecture. Needless to say I do not support my family - I am a drain on it and continue to be. Its a great feeling.
It is however ESSENTIAL to get perceptual technologies developed and 'out there'. So the VS code is now open source through Cardiff Uni and all the interested parties are still interested in using my work effort as long as I don't ask for or expect anything in return!! So I struggle on…..and on…….an on trying to get to the critical point. Who was the Greek who had his liver pecked out every day?
I have sold just 1 painting in my life when I was 18. I know that I have to get the evaluation data out from the Vision-Space project for any of the 'art world' to take any notice. They are all totally 'blind' now. Blinded by optical media and the returns they can secure from illustrating their very shallow ideas. No one expects, wants or will tolerate anything else. All the time the deficient technology that surrounds us re-enforces the situation. As the brain looses touch with the implicit our culture becomes more and more explicit in nature. More goal orientated and less and less empathetic?
Renaissance is going to take place in the East unless they import too much crap from our culture. Its a race against time?
John
I hear some echos of what you are saying in the second paragraph of ''Art and Visual Perception (the new edition)''. Arnheim writes: ''we find we are heirs to a cultural situation that is both unsuited to the creation of art and likely to encourage the wrong kind of thinking about it. Our experiences and ideas tend to be common but not deep, or deep but not common. We have neglected the GIFT of comprehending things through our senses. Concept is divorced from percept, and thought moves among abstractions, Our eyes have been reduced to instruments with which to identify and to measure; hence we SUFFER a paucity of ideas that can be expressed in images and an incapacity to discoverr meaning in what we see. Naturally we feel lost in the presence of objects that make sense only to undiluted vision, and we seek refuge in the more familiar medium of words.
The mere exposure to masterworks does not suffice. Too many persons visit museums and collect picture books without gaining access to art. The inborn capacity to UNDERSTAND THROUGH THE EYES has been put to sleep and MUST BE REAWAKENED.''
You can access my Ph.D. thesis: ''The Perception of the Image World'' at:
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape8/PQDD_0023/NQ51844.pdf
I remember vividly how I felt looking at the drawings of the kids who were able to draw in my classes in primary school. I was totally fascinated but I also felt totally unconfortable by it. I remember observing these drawing at the same time that I was admitting that the painting was beautifully rendering reality and then I was comparing the lines in the drawings and looking at the objects and were saying to myself ''it is totally different!!!'' and I was feeling a very disconfort into this and preventing me to touch the paper. I was a little plato, totally afraid of the power of visual representation because it was mysterious and not under the control of my intellect. In my early teenage years , I came to hate all visual arts and especially abstract visual art. Later I met my wife which love music and different visual arts and began a Ph.D. in computational vision and gradually I had to get closer to my perception and my wife made me less afraid of the visual art. During my Ph.D., I was constantly observing Nature and especially trees. I was a naturalist of the visual world with mathematics, with theory, with experiment in psychology, in neuroscience, in philosophy but above all through direct attention to my own visual experience and the trees have been talking to me. Goethe had similar experiences in Itally. He was trying to become a painter but was very bad. He was looking at plants and was wonderring why we can identify ''tree'' in this incredible varieties of forms and he came up with his famous papers on the growth of plants. The psychological visual experience of seeing juxtaposed objects perceptually fused as an evolutin of forms is totally in line with the way I came to see visual perception. Another Goethe's follower and Darwin's follower: Haeckel also went onto an Italic tree like Goethe and came up through his incredible drawing art to the first modern version of the tree of life and came up with the link between philogeny and ontogeny a link that also exist in the visual world. But the first that saw all these links was the first biologist: Aristotle. He had implicitly made the link between ontogeny and phylogeny and perception and understanding. And contrary to Plato who expulse the artists and primarily the visual artists from his city, Aristotle saw arts and visual art not as removing us from reality but as bringing it to us. It is not simply bringing it but is very similar in Nature to what bring everything into existence. Ravaisson a total admirer of Aristotle and Leonardo has some interesting things to say about that. Goethe was allergic to mathematisation scientific method, just the opposite reaction than the one plato had. The episteme (explicit) vs techne (implicit) opposition. Aristotle strike towards the consiliation of the two. The nature of mathematics is very interesting. Mathematics comes from both techne and language but it set itself free of the senses and of reality by the axiomatic method. It is a totally religious attitude where the unquestion beliefs here become the axioms. What is strange with mathematics is that it can be perceptually understood while it is self-standing in its form. It is the realm of the platonists but as all platonists they think with their senses but are not conscious of it and that their constructs has nothing to do with the senses. Read the intrro of ''Visual Thinking'' where Arnheim describes the separation of cognition and the senses made by Parmenides where senses are connected with changes and casted mere appearances and where cognition is connected to what is permanent. It is not a coincidence that this separation took place when writing of philosophical discourse was introduced. What could be written was the episteme and mathematic and the implicit had to remain unexpressed. A lot of the mis-understanding between the episteme and the techne can be traced back to the nature of mathematics, the citadel of the episteme . I liked you video he paintings and their story http://youtu.be/_Tj-r1XtWto. There is a lot to say on the presence of multiple viewpoints in our vision. Picasso had the idea of Cubism (Les demoiselle d'Avignon) from learning about comments of Poincarre on the perception of 4D surfaces from different 3D viewpoints. Visual artists of all ages have blatantly disregard objective viewing for multi-viewpoint picturing and it worked. It worked because it makes sense perceptually but not necessarily from the viewpoint of optic. We forget that vision is as much a constructive process than an analysis process. When we have access to one point of view this point of view enacts the mecanisms related to the other viewpoints, not at the same consciousness level but visual artists felt those and made use of them and it worked. I have identified some visual mechanisms involved in analysing trajectory of moving objects which have been taken advantage by visual artists for picturing movements in static image or static statue.
Regards
Thanks for the link - downloading now. Very interesting quote from Arnheim. I really must do some reading. I remember Jan K. recounting situations where he was asking vision scientists to look at some stimuli he had arranged and instead of letting him know what they were seeing asked him 'what they should be seeing'. As though it was some sort of an intellectual challenge.
I could draw 'in perspective' age 5 and could understand the system and the theory but drawing the lines as very unrewarding and if any real time was spent actually 'looking' at a real setting the geometry clearly had little to do with the experience. I can tell immediately if an artist has actually painted what they have seen as opposed to set out a 'picture'.
The way to view so called abstract art it to think about the processes of information exchange that take place within phenomenal field. Also the data structures and then retinal waves etc. Then add use of colour etc, its still visually based if it's any good!
I will read (and research as best I can) the rest of your insightful comments over the weekend. Have a good one! We still have much to discuss i think? Perhaps we should switch channels? Use email or catch upon Skype?
J
Hi Louis,
I can't get this to download? Is the problem with me?
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape8/PQDD_0023/NQ51844.pdf
"The episteme (explicit) vs techne (implicit) opposition. Aristotle strike towards the consiliation of the two."
To be clear - I don't study what people write. I do look closely at the work of some artists. What I mean is that I work as an artist and then look about to see if anyone else is doing stuff that applies. (I am a specialist in one area only - mine! - like a magpie picking up shiny bits and bods) I recognise in the work of others, aspects of what I am engaged in. Occasionally good people like yourself and Jan K. offer up clear associations that I would never have discovered and that's a hugely rewarding experience.
So when I look into my sense of vision I am fully aware that I am looking into the structure of mind as much as I am looking at the objects in question. When I 'discover' the implicit and explicit capabilities and how the mind works with them to compose the optimum arrangements to enable my intent in the world I aware that they can't be 'consolidated' or 'reconciled. They are juxtaposed. Independent takes on the real setting that have to be composed - together they form our experiential reality but they remain independent.
Hence reality is generated by us as a relationship with form with the real. Why is this the case? Well its turns out to be a very big question in my view but ultimately quite a simple one to answer which is a bit depressing as it took me a very long time to work it through based on what others have written! - mainly scientists.
The issue relates to our relationship to light. Vision is hallmarked with the issues surrounding the micro macro divide. This should not be a surprise really? While science (and mathematics) have been able to tell us good deal about the explicit take on reality the ontology required to realise this has ensured that it has failed to connect with the implicit in any meaningful way. The ontology that drives explicit investigation (3rd party observation) will at best discover 'noise' as the only trace of the 'implicit'. To understand the implicit we need to change ontology. You can't be explicit about the implicit. Vision is to some degree subjective.
I try my best to make the case for this in the two publications on my RG page - Having the courage of your perceptions and The experiential ontology. The catch is that understanding the nature of reality at all scales turns out to be to some degree subjective. We need to understand what's actually involved in an act of observation.
With the help and guidance of Frank Langbein at Cardiff Uni I have been looking at Bayesian process as a way of approaching the whole question of understanding the potential for their being signal in noise. And yes there are issues with calling this data potential 'signal'. Signals are sent between a receiver and a sender sharing a common code etc. Vision is diagnostic in nature - one way. (Thanks Jan!). In the same way an artist understands that there is no ,line, edge, or form, until we realise it. But I use it here for brevity.
So there can't be any 3rd party approach to the Implicit. We are involved in and integral to its formation. We can realise it. Our current technology and instrumentation cant.
Doing so is going to require new math? We create math - it doesn't have an independent existence - we create it (so I am in Lakoff's camp here). The new math is going to to need to understand 1/f noise in my view. There's noise 'out there'. There is noise in the brain, I would bet it's essentially the same/linked? Our brain is generating noise and is able to recognise the noise coming from the sense organs. In recognising it, (familiar) it's in a very good position to filter it from another 'signal' embedded in it? We don't have to penetrate the noise to extract the 'signal'. The signal drops out!
So while Bayesian math should be applied to the 'signal' (looking for anomaly) we should be aware that the subject/perceiver is a generator to facilitate the sifting process?
I think that its actually more complex that just 'sifting' of course. We end up generating a 'field' structure in which the 'values' that make up implicit awareness are 'articulated'. We can either see these values in relation to a fixation within the field that corresponds to the object being fixated on (through focus in the explicit pathway) with us factored into the field (like the VS paintings) or use our body/head as the fixation or locus with the field surrounding us or emanating from us. This allows us the freedom to think of something else while still being alert to the local spatial environment. Either way, its proximity awareness that results.
"When we have access to one point of view this point of view enacts the mecanisms related to the other viewpoints, not at the same consciousness level but visual artists felt those and made use of them and it worked."
So the implicit takes place within an 'all possibilities' field. Its no so much "different points of view" - its different loci in the formation of the field? Then perhaps the filed structure enables the relationships that hold with respect to 'previous points of view' that were the result of former fixations? Somehow these 'build' subconsciously. This is broadly what I will be trying to figure out in the next painting. Guess work mainly!!!
My first guess is that previous views are related to the body centred locus? So we can fixate within what's going on visual field but not with respect to contributions from memory that can populate the rest of phenomenal field. Here all spatial values will be understood from one central position, i.e. in relation the the body.
See what happens over the next month or so.
Cheers - J
Hi John,
Ph.D. The perception of the Image World
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape8/PQDD_0023/NQ51844.pdf
I could have written the same thing about my approach. I am only interested to what I can used. I tries to enlarge my vision and only what I already intuitively reach can be usefull. Intiution is always first. Outside of it I am blind.
Well I guess we could (should be able to) relate our work efforts? Watch what each other does and comes up with and apply it if it helps. If we are right then collective outputs should to some degree align and provide a more robust general trajectory?
I have the down load so will read today. Thanks
''Their approach presumes that people learn through countless eye movements over a lifetime to connect the coarse impressions of objects outside the fovea to the detailed visual impressions after the eye has moved to the object of interest.''
I am totally amazed when I read such statement. The blind state myth of empiricist. If we are born with eyes that are structured with acute resolution in the fovea and with a gradually decreasing resolution in the periphery than it is not a problem to overcome by learning but the very way our vision system since the time this time of vision system evolved back million years ago have been structured to operate that way. Evolution have evolved that solution to the visual problem a long time ago. The question for us to ask is: Why was this solution a good one? Why biological engineering converged many time towards that engineering solution? Then I read the answer from these author: '' her brain will compare this current blurred picture with memorised images of blurred objects. If the brain finds an image that fits, it will replace the coarse image with a precise image from memory.'' If someone believes that there exist some memorize images maybe such explanation make sense but I do not hold such belief. I do not hold it because I think it would be extremely bad engineering and such bad engineering would not have survive biologically.
I did not spend a lot of time thinking about this question but here is what I think. The visual field is analysed at coarse resolution first because you need to see the forest before the trees, you need to see the tree before the leaf, you need to see the head before the eye, etc... Since it is the case and that detail analysis is only necessary for specific objects given specific task and since the detail analysis require much more perceptual resource (it is not a question of resolution but of diversity of possible forms) than it is necessary to fixate these coarse structure of interest in order to get access to their full structure. When the fixation move , all that analysis is not lost but kept in memory. What is kept in short term memory is not the image but the state of structure detection activation in that orientation in the visual field but not in a way that is unrelated with the task at hand. Moving objects in the visual field are perceived at low temporal scale and so their trajectory are detected in the periphery. There is no need of any detail analysis of the moving object, what is necessary is to detect that a moving object has followed such a trajectory and to project where it is supposed to go in the near by future. If identification is required, then fixation can hold it fixed on the fovea region enough time for detail structural analysis to take place. In my way of seeing vision, memory is mostly a question of memory of a state of visual schemata tree activation. That state of activation does capture the visual awareness, is very very economical, and has nothing to do with remembering an image. We do not remember what was there but how what was there affected us and even that is exceptional,
Arnheim's book is on its way. Thanks for the ref.
I think their issue with so called 'detail' in peripheral vision gets sorted by using Jan K's disorder instead of blur! I also think that any increase in detail we may achieve in peripheral vision through past fixations occurs by us just being able to rule out other possibilities for the patterns we are processing to provide spatial awareness? There is no store of picture however. The point I am always amazed at when reading researchers ideas about vision is that they would all involve infinite memory and considerable time lag to 'compute'. As Jan points out the eye may have an input of around 10power 8-9 bits per second but perception would appear to run at 100bits per second. Something very simple is going on that we are entirely missing?
If I had my way we would ditch the whole central and peripheral vision labels. They are so misleading. They should be replaced with implicit space and explicit form awareness?
I agree with everything you say above. When I set the butterfly video sequence up it was done with 'trajectory' in mind. In the picture space version you can't understand where the butterfly is unless the occlusion cues establish this. i.e. it flies in front of the milk bottle. In the VS version is totally clear at all times where the butterfly is and we can 'anticipate' its future flight path. The occlusion cue is secondary.
What I would want to see is researches who buy into the former paradigm using their technologies and approaches to investigate VS. For example individuals should track the butterfly without having to look all over the media to work out where it is.
In the car video I deliberately placed a tree in the foreground left to see if in the VS version we 'felt' its 3D presence in implicit space as we looked at the car's explicit form! I really wanted the tree to move but we couldn't model that so I had to move the camera position to get the movement. it works for me.
I tried to get a car sequence going with a view through a windscreen and a car overtaking and then a passage through a tunnel. I was a very basic CG as we had no real cash. We ran it through an early version of the VS post production tool. The new software would do a much better job! I will see if it attaches. If not do you use drop box?
Its a shame you live in Canada! It would be good to meet up.
If we get this research proposal with Cardiff Uni would you be interested in making a contribution to the development of VS?
John,
This conversation made me think about an possible experiement. We do see artists drawing a scene by starting in the top left corner and drawing the whole scene in detail diagonally. The artist will make fast movements and larges scale one. The ones that are also efficiently done with his/her body. We also often see the scene appear gradually in a way that is reminder (at least from by biais point of view) of the coarse to fine scale-space evolution of the final scene. This can be test. The scale-space evolutin of the final drawing can be compare with the actual evolution of the drawing in the dynamic drawn scene. The sequence of appearance of the crease structure in the scale-space of the final picture can be compared with their sequence of appearance in the dynamic picture.
John,
I used to program a lot, douzen of programming languages and all kind of interfaces. But I left all that behind and totally unpracticed. Usually things come back with a good effort but I did not program for about 10 years. Not a single line. My father died three years ago and this pull me out of my job and my family since I had to go to Quebec and stay there for a month. I shaked me and when I came back one day I decided to browse the internet and I decided to look at what people had done in the last 15 years the fields I used to be my life. Out of knowhere different theory of the origin of life, origin of language came out and were logical consequences of my worked. I did not even had looked at my own thesis and I was reading it as if a stranger had written it. But now I did not have the time nor the need to do experimental work, nor do extensive reading but ideas were merging and new narratives about the world were flowing. Since then I had a sustain evolution of my views. Not much of these views and theories had much to do with vision although a lot of them stem of my experience in my Ph.D. But since a year my interested has moved to mimesis and the body and about one month ago a merging of my thought has occured. I do not have a theory yet but a mammalian mimesis evolution narrative is emerging and the complementary primate to human evolution narrative is emerging. This is the center of my attention but my attention is spread all over the place on the central theme unreachable northern star them of creating a single narrative of the evolution of everything. This is totally hopeless as a project, totally. If I had just one once of good sense, I would shutt down the whole thing.
I felt the same way when writing Having the courage of your perception. Eventually it kind of held together but there is still a lot of stuff that I shoild look at again. To be honest I am enjoying having a studio again and just getting on with painting. I have done enough on the theory to stop me wondering 'how this could be so'.
Is there any part of VS that you feel has an overlay with your work. I have had not had enough time to get in there!
John,
I defitively want to know more with VS. I do not know yet how much it will overlay but to know more and hopefully give you feedback that can be helpfull for you.
The perception of art and the science of perception
Robert Pepperell
http://www.robertpepperell.com/papers/SPIE%20paper%20final%20published%20small.pdf
Unfortunately I have nothing further to do with him. I approached him a few years back and he brought my company 'Perpetual Technologies' into association with Cardiff Metropolitan University. Once I had downloaded VS to him I was of no further 'use'. He is now intent of passing VS off as something that he is progressing and has a history in. He is desperate to 'compete' as oppose to assist. He is actually a solipsist at heart. i.e., We generate what we look at. His idea (well the one he has bought into) is that mind resembles the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics. Bit difficult that, as light decoheres at the retina! VS has nothing to do with all of that. Vision is a relationship we form 'with' the real. While it might be prior-to science it's reachable by science. It needs science. VS 'involves' decoherence. We don't form the real when we look at it. We can be shot in the back! I can fill you in off line if you are interested. I now work with Cardiff University and not Cardiff Metropolitan Uni but Pepperell is still using VS etc. He knows its important.
With respect to a possible linkage between our approaches: Our existing programming architecture is illustrative' in nature. i.e. we try to imitate aspects of visual awareness by artificial means. Its not linked to aspects of visual process or neural firing. This is the architecture we will be getting to real-time speeds to obtain some evaluation data in a simulator. However its essential for a host of reasons to develop an academic architecture. One that does build-in neural correlates. To even begin this contributors need to be fully aware that pictures are not part of the equation! The visual system is not processing images, its generating them. Behind this generation lies a perceptual structure through which all senses are 'realised'. So this proposed architecture has to acknowledge both the individual and the signal (and through that both the micro reality of light and the macro scale of objects that it has collided with). i.e. there is something in-place (within the perceiver) into which values (gleaned from the 'signal') appear. Visual and auditory process are segmenting the 'signals' for posting into a perceptual structure. With VS operational in its basic form we are not working blind! We know a reasonable amount about the outcome. From vision science we know a reasonable amount the processing. The linkage and cross-disciplinary support that will result should be doable with some people with the right mind set?
Could your quest you refer to above be the that of the holy grail! Perceptual structure and its origins? The structure of the receiver?
John,
I google search your name with Koenderink name and got this paper and a quick look strike me as related to what you were doing. So I posted it and only realized later that it was not news for you. He used the expression '' visual indeterminacy''. The topic of perception in ambiguious visual situation has fascinated me. As a young child I remember looking in the early morning when the light was still dim to the patterns on the old plastered wall and at the patterns emerging from the random patterns in the tapestry. I had a lot of fun seeing all kind of emerging faces and monsters in clould. And I quoted at the beginning of my thesis Leonardo and Battista were they related the importance for the painters in observing ambiguious patterns on cave walls, in mud, in stone. The quote of Leonardo even speak of valley and ridge which correspond to crease in my approach. These visual experience makes the underlying visual structure perception process visible directly because due to the ambiguious nature they compete against each other and are more under conscious control. Depending on where you focus your attention and partly what you are looking for then a pattern will emerge and will disapear when you look somewhere else. Some people see an opposition between direct approach to vision and constructive (in search of a better word) approach to vision. I first adopted the objective physicist attitude: vision detect image patterns. Vision as a pattern detection apparatus. But going deeper into what it means to detect patterns, when you start to classify the pattern, when you have to think how the detection has to rely on this classification and how it has to be done in practice then gradually you have to get to a constructive detection reflecting pattern ontogeny and at that point you realize that in the case where the image is ambiguious, in most cases, then it become an abuse of language to call this a processus of detection given that it intrinsically biais and that intrinsic biais is usually fruitfull. So there is no opposition between detection and construction (visual imagination). The visual imagination side is informed by the very typical structure of visual scene which is built-in. It is further constrained by the subsumption of the visual within the action. Jan has a nice Sherlock model that express how the visual task is constraint and thus render feasible by the context of the action being done. I am exploring how the visual world is also made richer by the other modalities. Against artists have been the pionneers. I visited the Walt Disney museum in San Francisco where we can see the early exploratory works of Walt Disney in animation. His sense of the importance of music for the animation of animal movements are really insighfull. Music and sound do enhanced our experience of whatching a movie in tremendous way. Our visual experience is much richer than what is there on the screen. The sound and music are involved and the two process are not being done in parallel. Dancing is related to our perception of music and is related to our body control and this is the basis of these arts and of many arts such as opera, musical, etc. These are major artistic discoveries.
Photography and cinema and television all cames from the visual art way of expressions. But most of it cames from the old type of visual art discoveries, most of the 19th century and early 20th century discoveries have not been tapped in and your VS is doing that. It can also the visual scientists to use it for them to phenomenally experiment in this new media. I think that the idea of a VS is a 21th century visual art media that can be used by all kind of artists for many uses but can also be used by visual scientists. I am only expressing my blurry vision.
Morning Louis!
''Visual indeterminacy'' is of some interests but don't forget the point of the visual system is to be determinate! '' Visual indeterminacy'' is certainly not a description of the nature of perpetual structure. It's also not linked to QM indeterminate state. Much of implicit field is based on probability resulting from texture analysis. Is this value greater than that?, can it be grouped?, or is the step change between adjacent values so denoting spatial discontinuity? etc. '' Visual indeterminacy'' is the fence-sit until a direction is forthcoming. When we are not sure of a form we in-fill (sift through memory) and extrapolate. As a result of that we can 'see' a rabbit and keep seeing it until it fails to move in a way commensurate with the way a rabbit would move. We then abandon that strategy and 'see' a lump of mud. If we don't look at it we simply get a spatial cue that forms part of the implicit spatial field - no interest in rabbits or mud! I want to know about the structures of vision. It's easy to keep a moron in suspense………………………………………………………(that's a joke Louis!)
As you appreciate well, we create the saliency of vision as much as we detect it. Either way, vision is 'one way' and diagnostic in nature. You won't be able to trace a picture back to the retina just as you won't be able to trace a 'picture' being transposed to 'mind'. This is why disorder is interesting as structure? You can't reverse engineer that either!
For me I think there has to 'a' perceptual structure through which we understand the world irrespective of modality (sense organ - ecology etc). Even touch is understood in terms of 'what' and 'texture -context'. The interesting thing is that fixation (explicit attention) in vision is the same device as that used to 'attend' to a particular sound. What's happens to the structures of vision when we are attending to a particular sound? This is what interests me. The implicit field of Vision would appear to become body centred - set out from us as the locus so still providing spatial proximity cues but no explicit form cues. It's vital to first appreciate the field structure to sensory perception and then how we use it. This will tell us so much about what's going on in visual process.
If we can 'crack' vision - the rest will follow.
This is why I think its essential to get VS up and running in a form that scientists can test, evaluate and develop (even if they don't want it!). We need VS stimuli and when we have investigated we need it deployed in our technologies.
The new painting is going well and I think there will be a good deal to discuss when completed. I am rendering phenomenal vision outside of visual field as the body centred proximity field. So the live view in visual field centred around fiction sits within prior acquired information in the rest of phenomenal field that's body centred.
We have got this body centred (camera centred) algorithm set up in the Post Production Tool but haven't tested it yet. If we can just get some funding we can get it all operational.
Best - J
Louis,
Got hold of Art and Visual Perception today. I have read 7 paragraphs and I can see why you are so impressed. How is it that the world has failed to apply this understanding to what is passed off as visual art these days?
Have you read the recent book by Ian McGilchrist - The Master and His Emissary?
http://www.iainmcgilchrist.com
Hi John,
Thank for pointing your finger to Ian McGilchrist - The Master and His Emissary? I read the preface and it describes the world I live in. I am familiar to everything that was said. This theme of the master and the emissary I articulated it recently in a post about the relation between the episteme and the techne
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_there_a_better_range_of_metaphors_for_education_than_the_technological_engineering_manufacturing_metaphors_that_seem_currently_to_dominate
I articulate this in many ways. I think that what attracted me to Pascal when I was 12 years old .
The metaphor of the paradise lost is one I think applies to this troubled relationships between what we can expressed and what we are. The troubled relationship between the knowledge found and the search. The european renaissance is the time where the balance collapsed towards the episteme. The marvelous epistemical discoveries and the new tools of the mind have created a break in the psychological balanced. Vico felt it accutely. The romantic period is a weak attempt to regain this balance but it was just a short period before the crisis of the modern mind really hit hard. Lord of the Ring is about that. The hobbits love things that grow and Sauron burns trees. The ring of power. The followers of Saurons, servant of power and whose body leaves this world.
Regards
John,
I re-read the introduction. All sentences have weight.
''All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuitions, all observation is also invention.''
'''No longer can we consider what the artist does to be a self-contained activity, mysterious inspired from above, unrelated and unrelatable to other human activities. Instead, we recognize the exalted kind of seeing that leads to the creation of great arts as an outgrowths of the humbler and more common activity of the eyes in everyday life. Just as the prosaic search for information is ''artistic'' because it involves giveing and finding shape and meaning, so to the artist's conceiving IS AN INSTRUMENT OF LIFE, A REFINE WAY OF UNDERSTANDING WHO AND WHERE WE ARE.''
I attach a very brief summary of the TRIZ patent analysis (patents all allowed to lapse). You may be able to follow the logic. The paradigm shift is identified here (Len Kaplan- TRIZ master) by establishing a mechanism for 'contextualising' information in a way that appears to conform to that in place in perceptual awareness. This analysis covered just the 1st patent and actually the paradigm shift is far more involved with far greater depth but this is what Len K. was presented with at the time.
In relation to this I have underlined a line from Art and Vis Perception. "Words can wait and must wait until our mind distills, from the uniqueness of the experience, generalities that can be grasped by our senses, conceptualised, and labeled." (Pg 2) The tenor of this is right on the metal. The issue with the implicit is that it remains in the experiential. To realise it we need to understand who we are and the role that we play in realising it. Then we can start to explore its contribution. Its conceptualisation requires a totally different approach, that has to date entirely eluded us?
In achieving this we will understand more about the explicit contemplation of form and re-evaluate the role this take on reality plays. We will reassert the balance. It will be essential to factor this into our information display technologies.
We are just at the very beginning of this but its essential that we establish the bridgehead. This has to be more than meaningful well intentioned words now discussed in fringe forums. To establish the bridgehead we are going to have to be really focused on some specific tasks. For me this has to be to progress the VS programming architecture and to seed the technology containing the kernel? The words can follow - this is usually 50 years after the event!
However with VS we are very close - its already been to SIGGRAPH. We have a beta test software offering that can be improved on quickly. We know that multiple industries will adopt it. Our initial technology will however have to be replaced with an offering that works to an academic architecture. This is the one that will run through long-term operating system like development. This is also the element that investors refuse to contemplate - too much work and too many parties required to work together. The infrastructure is just not in place to seed the paradigm shift.
Through a managed research initiative making open source code available as it progresses it could be possible.
Cheers - J
Just come across this in Art and Vis Perception (Arnheim)
"I believe many people of be tired of the dazzling obscurity of arty talk, the juggling with catchwords and dehydrated aesthetic concepts, the pseudoscientific window dressing, the impertinent hunt for clinical symptoms, the elaborate measurement of trifles, and the charming epigrams. Art is the most concrete thing in the world, and there is no justification for confusing the mind of anybody who wants to know more about it."
Right on button and the situation has got far worse since he wrote this. The discipline has been all but wiped out by the likes of Nick Serota and the Tate Modern is nothing more than a glorified theme park for the half-baked. Art 'education' is now a thing of the past.
Vision-Space: What’s in an artificial stimulus? http://youtu.be/9ryFnuFCGys
Vision-Space suggests that we need to think very carefully about what we ‘mean’ by our stimuli. To what degree does the structure of the stimuli we feed into the visual system reflect prior beliefs we hold about vision? To what extent does the structure of our stimuli affect experimental ‘results’ and reinforce prejudice? Does the current structure of stimuli actually negate any pretence of experimental objectivity with respect to the system under investigation? Have we constructed a hall of mirrors? The answer to the question in the title is, our limited understanding.
It was a nice presentation, requires heavy pondering to understand fully..It seems
to me that this theory/ philosophy(?) contains possibility of resolving and unifying many
dichotomies that we know e,g particle / wave theory, Quantum effects (Scroedinger cat),
reality/ imagination,and even religion and science.I expect new knowledge to emerge if this is fully comprehended.
Cheers
Thanks for that Narasim. Cardiff University (computer Science) and PAC are applying for funding to take Vision-Space software to realtime speeds. Use in a simulator should demonstrate that we interact with an experiential reality system better than we do a virtual one. However this is not touching the really important issues as to how the observable structures are forming and how the data supporting them gets there in the first place! One thing is for sure…..I can do little more than read between the lines of existing research and guess!
John
This should generate more discussion, would you like to consider following tags:
DSP, Image processing, Electrical engineering , Sociology, philosophy,
Applied mathematics and Physics incase you have not already done so,,
There were many who actively participated in the discussion with many
valuable points of view. I am reproducing below the tags from that discussion.
Cheers
Quantum Computing ×
Robotics ×
Artificial Consciousness ×
Consciousness ×
Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence ×
Artificial Intelligence ×
Electrical & Electronics Engineering ×
Analytical Sociology ×
Applied Psychology ×
Mathematics ×
Physics ×
Narasim, Would you be interested in working with us on the technology side? We have a post production tool that is a fairy serious bit of kit and are looking to get that working at real-time speeds with Cardiff University through a research project. Still need the funding to come through! However there are a host of technology possibilities. A long time ago now I took the first patent (now lapsed as the UK is just not interested in developing technology, There was no prior art and it was passed on a global basis) to Houston and had it analysed by TRIZ experts. Straight forward paradigm shift with over 200 commercial applications across 12 industries. Seriously disruptive. We stopped at 200 just because the point was made! I could send you this report summery if you want.
John , thank you for the invite. If I could help in some small tasks (perhaps verification,
simple modeling etc ) maybe you might find it useful.
Cheers
That's very kind Narasim,
Am I right in thinking that you have read the VS publications on RG?
There are 2 areas at (opposite ends of visual process) for initial testing I think:
1. The first is dependent on us securing the funding to take VS to real-time speeds. We aim to establish an 'experiential' reality simulator as opposed to a 'virtual' one. The production of the VS presentation being displayed in our simulator will be linked to an eye-tracker so the user (user intent) will give the instruction as to how the VS stimuli is set out. The user will set the fixation point dictating the composition of the presentation of phenomenal field displayed. Obviously we believe that the VS display will enable spatial judgements in line with those developed from a real setting etc. So this will involve specialist psychophysical evaluation. I say specialist as evaluation will require new approaches to psychophysical experimentation. The people closest to this type of activity are Prof. Jan Koenderink (now retired but working again at Utrecht Uni) and his scientific colleagues and associates. However, new approaches can often be best taken by those non-encumbered with too much prior knowledge (less teddies to throw out of the pram!).
2. The second may be more up your street as it resides in signal processing. VS develops a field structure and through that implicit awareness of where things are in space via proximity cues. The VS theory 'requires' there to be something in the light array from which that can be generated (by us a biological systems). The data potential has to get in from the environment. I have tried to thread a story together that I realise is likely to be radically altered. It serves as a 'lost leader' really. Something to work on and then through to the truth. So the retina has to be able to stream the raw data potential from which this attribute of the phenomenon can be generated. I say 'stream 's I don't think that its 'detected' as such. The field is a 'presentation' it's not a process involving re-presentation. So that data potential passes through the retina suggesting passive absorption? We need to find evidence of this.
This will require us to abandon approaches based on the rectilinear propagation of light (optical projection). Again, at this point we are not looking to solve the puzzle, we are just looking for evidence of the data-potential and its streaming. Something other than a data stream based around detection of light intensity. Given the following two conditions relating to the nature of the attribute appreciable within the phenomenon; the data structure 'disorder' (replacing blur) and the field structure, I think we are looking for a spatial information derived from a noise function linked to radiance. It's this noise that I think we need to be picking up from a structure that's actually based on the physiology of the eye that has next to nothing to do with camera optics and a plate.
We need a spherical device (these spherical camera plates are now in production I think?) with receptors devised to stream radiance. I hasten to add that we are not expecting to find any 'picture' data at this stage. I think that 'realisation' from the noise is done in deeper brain structures (dorsal stream, superior colliculus). A metaphor like 'neural lens'? The retina will at most be sifting 'pattern' from 'intensity'. The dorsal stream being more about pattern recognition extracted from noisy source data. We will see noise being isolated from 'signal' at the retina but retained.
Another relevant factor is that I think the lens (at least the hard lens in a camera) acts as a form of phase filter. I would suggest that the 'signal in noise' may be linked to coherence and phase like formations and hence a device incorporating a hard lens could be problematic? Focus relies on coherence at the surface of the lens to refract the light I think and this could amount to loss of the phase signal potential to the collection plate? Perhaps the 'spatial disorder component' is reduced to the purely optical function 'blur' resulting in depth of field in the process? An observation from the experiential (i.e. me!) is that wearing glasses affects spatial awareness. Corrective lenses my sharpen focus but they screws about with proximity awareness! When I first put glasses on I felt devoiced from reality but in a way I couldn't articulate (an uncomfortable feeling). This is not actually a laughing matter of course. Deficiencies in visual processing within the Dorsal stream are linked to chemical imbalances associated with Alzheimer's. How many old people ware glasses?
We also have to think about receptor function on the retina. ipRGC measure radiance and new work suggests that they are actually making a contribution to vision (not just night and day neural functions) and are linked to rod function. Rod function is now also linked to cone function at photopic levels (i.e. they are not saturated so inoperable in daylight).
Finally We are looking for a data potential that describes spatial arrangements in the environment so we need to be sure that any device is exposed to environmentally conditioned light (not one of our range of artificially structured light stimuli).
Is this something that interests you and if so could that work be undertaken as a way of setting up a platform for the subsequent interrogation of that noise (linked to neuronal function/activity in the dorsal stream)?
This is highly speculative but worth a punt? I apologise for the lack of a properly worked up painting but I'm brassic! (skint, broke, financially embarrassed, penniless!)
Vision-Space: Awareness is a dance mediated and augmented by ‘mind’ within a multidimensional space
https://youtu.be/-DCx5kLS2MQ
Hi John,
I watch the video one time and I will have to watch it another time. My first impression is that you come to greater integration of you view in this one. The cave painting should not be seen as a rendering of a scene but as visual artefact providing an occasion of experience for an human observer. What is experience here a idealized hunting experience. It is a hunting show. It was probably as fantastic for the first viewer than the viewer of the first movies, or the viewers of the first animation movies and when today we look at this cave, we have a sense that those that created it are really people like us.
The creation of cubism by Picasso is related to the scientific and mathematical concepts being developped around 1905 by Einstein and Poincarre. It was while reading Poincarre's Science and Hypothesis about 4 dimensional spaces and the difficulties of imagining such spaces that Picasso began to imagine presenting the same object from different viewpoint. So Cubist is a kind of synthetizing perceptual presentation of a reality of mutliple dimensions. It is not unlike the cave painting trying to synthetize the hunting experience.
Visual experience involves such mutliple synthesizing. When we look at familiar animals or objects from an angle we are also aware but in a weaker presence of one or two other viewpoint on the same object. So the controled hallucination is constrainted by the actual retinal projections and by all our implicit knowledge of this situation. Visual artists can created occasion of experience making us aware of these because they can like the cave artists and Picasso. They are not limited to render only the optical constraints but can painted full synthesized visual experiences.
Regards
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