Painting Perception R Pepperell |
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Cardiff School of Art and Design, Cardiff, United Kingdom
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| For many centuries artists have studied the nature of visual perception in order to better understand, and therefore better represent, how they see the world. I will argue that in doing so they have discovered several interesting features of visual perception that are yet to be fully investigated by the relevant sciences. In this talk I will discuss some of these features and show how I and other artists have explored them through painting and drawing. I will present the results of some recent empirical studies on pictorial double vision and the depiction of the full field of view. Pictorial double vision, which simulates the everyday experience of physiological diplopia, is not generally recognised as one of the monocular depth cues. Yet some artists have used it in their paintings and drawings, and we have shown that under certain conditions it can effectively enhance the perception of depth in pictures (Pepperell and Ruschkowski, in press). The problem of how to fit the contents of the field of view into the boundary of a picture while retaining the perceived scale of the objects being depicted is one that has long troubled artists. Zoom out too far from the object of interest and it shrinks into insignificance; zoom in too close and the surrounding space is cropped. I will argue certain artists have found a unique solution to this problem that may also tell us something about the visual perception of space. I will close by considering the implications of this work for the future of image making and by stressing the need for art and science to work closely together in order to widen and deepen our knowledge of visual experience. |
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