Saturday, November 29, 2008

Evolution, We are Evolved

From an article in Science Daily headlined: "Evolution Of The Visual System Is Key To Abstract Art."

Abstract artists are still painting what we can see, we have inherited a basic visual system through genetics that provides very selective information about the world. We cannot see electromagnetic radiation or follow the leg movements of galloping horses. But just as soon as we enhanced and created prosthetics to view the micro, we have ways of visualizing the electromagnetic, we can "stop motion" the movements of horses. Because we use and expand these prosthetics, we can see more and more and imagine more and more in our art work.

“Artists were experimenting with abstract shapes long before scientists began analyzing our nature of perception. Through observation or trial-and-error, artists have been identifying these aesthetic primitives - critical shapes and arrangements - and have indirectly defined the nature of our visual processes. In purely abstract painting, as with much music, form is all we have. Popular works have shown that essentially we like looking at what we are good at seeing.”

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