Searching the Sky: Unravelling Perception
Perception has always fascinated me – aged nine I won a prize at the school science fair for two experiments on vision: colour detected in peripheral vision (what colour do we see first?) and the blind spot in the eye causing objects to disappear due to the entry of the optic nerve on the retina. My science career went downhill from there (defeated by lack of talent for math) and I found a better use of a burgeoning interest in optical phenomena in design later, and more fully, as an artist. Nature is ordered yet cleverly deviant: we must be alert to aberrations in patterns signalling new information.
Aged 9, winning the science fair with two experiments on perception
Alongside my research into the Euclid Mission and the development of the VIS (Visible Light Spectrum) instrument at MSSL, I have been investigating the nature of perception as a psychological and philosophical question. Euclid will peer deeper into space than ever before, recording millions of galaxies and giving us the opportunity to answer fundamental questions about matter and gravity on a cosmological scale. My interest lies in how perception, filtered through sophisticated instruments and scientific intention, comes to be constructed in the mind and influences our grasp of reality. What historical baggage do we bring to the process of perception and could our understanding of space require a shift in perception to accept the extraordinary view being offered by a plurality of satellites and probes exploring the universe?
I discovered the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty who, in 1945, wrote Phenomenology of Perception where he ‘emphasised the body as the primary site of knowing the world’ which couldn’t be separated from consciousness. His essay Eye and Mind focuses on aesthetic perception while also measuring qualities of the scientific gaze. As a compliment to this view, I found the writing of physicist and philosopher David Bohm useful in clearly outlining early 20th century behavioural research by Jean Piaget into a human infant’s awareness of space and itself while gracefully linking this to the relativistic view of the world established by Einstein in modern physics. He believed science must be open to the free play of creative thought by holding multiple theories at once, sparking one off the other until enlightenment takes place. This will be crucial if we are to expect a breakthrough in the current impasse in science, proposing that 95% of the universe is missing owing to the presence of dark matter and dark energy. Perspective is an essential part of perception.
Extending our sense of sight, through technological interventions such as the Euclid telescope, into previously unseen corners of the universe should result in a fresh understanding of the elusive structure of dark matter. Mapping three quarters of the universe (a gift to astronomers but baffling to the average man), it will produce 100 gigabytes of data per day, discovering a million new galaxies every 10 minutes before being calibrated, compressed and downloaded to earth for analysis. But will data analysis be enough? Bohm said:
‘The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.’ David Bohm
In the Eye and Mind, Merleau-Ponty says ‘It is by lending his body to the world that the artist changes the world into paintings’, meaning that through embodying sensations the artist finds a symbolic way to leave his vision in the world. By living in a body, not separate from the mind, he can weave a comprehension of the sensory rooted in his environment. Descartes wanted to place the mind away from the body but Merleau-Ponty saw that perception entwined the two – there is an ‘undividedness of the sensing and the sensed’ that unifies thought and sensation. However, the eyes see, take in the world, before thoughts emerge, and vision precedes analysis. Merleau-Ponty suggests that science must return to the original state of sensory experience – not the body as ‘an information machine’– in order to properly ground thought. He states ‘science manipulates things and gives up living in them.’
Sample Euclid data showing detected light levels of galaxies and cosmic rays etc as represented in numbers
While studying how the ultra sensitive VIS instrument will capture the delicate light from distant galaxies, it occurred to me that scientists no longer see these images with wonder. Streaming across the 36 CCDs of the naked focal plane of the telescope, these ancient photons are crucial data recorded numerically as light levels that will identify faint galaxies. Abstractly quite beautiful, as a numerical patterned field, this data spews from the system at 56 mega bits per second producing the equivalent of a football field of A4 sheets of data (see image). Galaxies, cosmic rays, stars and other ‘noise’ are recorded but then calibrated (or cleaned up) by ground stations making it ready for analysis. The wonder scientists experience is more likely bound up in the quantity and accuracy of the data. Perhaps this touches the core reason of why philosophers, poets and artists are valuable assets to such research. Marrying with science with sensation, they can create the ultimate visual experience where knowledge and feeling merge.
David Bohm understood the perceptual experience as a two-way process called a ‘circular reflex’. He carefully studied the research of psychologist Jean Piaget who, in the 1930s, looked at the cognitive developmental of infants, explaining perception as incoming reception of sensory experience complemented by outgoing impulses of action. The infant progressively builds up a mental map of the world by testing incoming perceptions (sight, sound, touch etc) through active impulses that meet with its environment in a constant feedback loop. There are ‘invariant’ objects forming expectations of the world (stored in memory) and these are adjusted as fresh information arrives. Incoming sensory information is placed on a mental map establishing a perceptual field of constant, stable objects (such as ‘six chairs sit upright on the floor’). This background field is challenged by inconstant information (such as a chair has fallen over). Forming our sense of reality, this process stimulates the intellect to form abstractions of these relationships such as mathematical laws describing, for example, the moment where gravity tipped the chair over. Everything is measured by what has gone before so naturally perception as a whole can become quite fixed.
Bohm goes on to say that ‘scientific investigation is basically a mode of extending our perception of the world, and not mainly a mode of obtaining knowledge about it’. Knowledge is the information that streams back into the feedback loop of perception – it is a higher-level abstraction of first hand experience. Astronomical instruments have the ability to extend our sense of perception by circumventing immediate experience and depositing additional (unsensed) information on our understanding of reality, thus creating expanded concepts of the structure and form of the natural world. The enormous quantity of data collected by Euclid may mean that it is possible no human will ever see all of the millions of galaxies detected on its mission. They will only exist as data. Through technology, information extends beyond man’s ability to sense it.
Yet Bohm is positive about this impasse. He believes the flexibility of the mind can overcome any fixed ideas by following curiosity in probing the perceptual structure of the world for falsities that hold us back. He mentions the ‘inner show’ of experience that plays back in the mind, and through imagination and memory creates hypotheses of meaning about the world. In early childhood, we are attuned to our environment in a flowing cycle of observation and experimentation that quickly grasps and then releases new thoughts and sensations. This process becomes habitual in later years as the general structure of the world is taken for granted. But, he says, if we are alert we sense contradictions when they arise. When this happens the brain is sensitive to the discovery of new relationships, leading spontaneously to further hypotheses, which are embodied in the appearance of new structures of the ‘inner show’. It seems relevant to describe here the shift in imagination I experienced while taking in the concept of the web-like structure scientists describe as dark matter in space. My inner show has been irrevocably altered and I no longer see space as an empty void.
Cyanotype workshop at MSSL Space lab: eyes, hands, curiosity
To conclude this brief philosophical journey, one thing has become apparent to me during this residency: the sensory is still essential to scientific endeavours and artists can share expert skills in this area. Many of the creative workshops I held with staff used extremely tactile materials to express aspects of their work such as galaxy shapes in glass granules or paper to bend into curves forming new spaces within. Visual stimulation took many forms during these sessions – photo printing, drawing, watercolours, a camera obscura in a dark room and a walk in the woods. Strangely, few were interested in the stargazing activities on offer. However, my core followers at the lab are curious how I will react to their important work. I’m eager to share the exhibition artworks that respond to all that I have encountered at the lab – staff will be able to assimilate fresh visions, perhaps merging with their own ‘inner shows’ describing the universe.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, (1962) Phenomenology of Perception. London. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
The Eye and Mind (L’oeil et l’esprit) was the last work of Merleau-Ponty saw published. It appeared in the inaugural issue of Art de Frana, no.1, January 1961. Available at: http://www.biolinguagem.com/ling_cog_cult/merleauponty_1964_eyeandmind.pdf
Carman, Tony and Hansen, Mark B. N. editors, (2005) The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Nichol, Lee, (2003) The Essential David Bohm: edited by Lee Nichol. London, Routledge
Bohm, David and Peat, David, (1987) Science, Order and Creativity. Routedge, Abingdon
Hoffman, Roald and Boyd Whyte, Iain, (2011) Beyond the Finite: The Sublime in Art and Science. Oxford University Press, New York
