Action in Perception (by Alva Noe) and the World in a Glance (by Edward Casey)

Recently I came to know the works of Alva Noe  and his colleagues and the work of Edward Casey
So I ordered Action in Perception and The World in a Glance .
The first work is a refutation of the classical way of seeing things; image in retina, then signals to the brain and then hoopla we see things.
Alva Noe refutes this by saying  and this is also what we experience, we see the image or object (what is it? That's another question ) where it is and not in our head.
This work is the fruit of substantial work with other colleagues and empirical research. To read the book obviously needs hard work and is fairly demanding. Also it shows that the whole affair about how we see (and learn to see!) is complicated. Luckily he writes in a lively way, what makes it lighter.

In contrast The World at a Glance  Edward Casey writes in a more accessible way, less intellectual certainly, and how we experience it.
The subject is, to put it very simply, to give attention to the fact that when we e.g. drive through a country side and glance around, without giving special attention to anything, we instantly know and experience a landscape in all its facets; forms (mountains, hills, plains) , structures (field forms or houses etc.), season etc. without thinking about it. Or we see a certain social situation, when we enter a house, by just glancing around. So in a certain way we just skim with our eyes, the coloured surfaces of things. This is also a light activity and we nearly do it all the time, but totally ignored in serious studies or science. No reference of Casey's work have I found in Alva Noe's work so far.
The book is a real pleasure to read and it is about everyday experiences, but Edward Casey is such a good observer that he brings them to light and into consciousness.  Thank you

Drawing

Last week I started drawing practices, and I thought to keep a diary with some notes of my experiences
Every day I placed an object, from simple to more complicated, but in the expectation that is not too difficult; this was not always successful!

The first was a bunch of daffodils in a glass square pot. I concentrated on the outline of the objects, fully aware that in fact you only see a boundary with on one side a shade of yellow, in case of the flowers, or green, in case of leaves, and the other side whatever the background was.

I became soon aware off is that your vision, in the form of image, does not coincide with your experience of a three dimensional object. It is fairly easy to draw a flower what is facing you, apart from the centre which comes towards you! But more difficult is the drawing of a flower facing to the right or left. How does one know what is further away or nearer? I come back to this question later.

Even more difficult is to draw a flower which is half facing you.

In the whole exercise I learned that to draw properly, or let me say it more clearly, to see how the object presents itself to sight only, it to ignore the 3 -dimensions and see it as an flat image.

What you can draw or better perhaps with colour (paint) is to depict the various shades of colour, which at the same time shows the shadows or reflections. This makes one realise that how an object shows itself depends very much on external circumstances (light, shadows). 

An interesting fact was that the inner petals are darker yellow, nearly orange, (So in the drawing I make them darker) but when the flower is facing you, it is light at the far end, as it is transparent. By the way the larger petals are bright yellow, also because they are partly transparent.

So how does one know or better said, experience from a 2-dimensional drawing a 3-dimensional ??? what shall we call it? Experience? Is it imagination? Or it is the way we see things in it strict and narrow sense of the word? That was the way people spoke when they saw for the first time Brunelleschi's painting wherein  he used his perspective technology.

Next day I thought I draw something more simple, but alas, that was not to be!

Again it is difficult to differentiate between what you experience (round forms)  and draw them as ellipses! Top right is nicely done, but the rest no good. The dark bit at the bottom is the shadow, but also that is not very successful. The coffee pot was ceramic and glazed. And so one could see a lot of reflections, and the whitish square is actually the mirror image of my drawing paper. All the shining edges and other reflections I left out. But it again show that any object shows how it is related to its environment and we can see it even in the narrow sense of the word.

First I did a copper dish with lid and again troubles with circles and ellipses. And again all kind of reflections (shining copper) but manage to depict shades.

Then the apple. The apple had so many fine graded colours on the skin, that one cannot do justice to it. However the general patterns were vertical, but they were accentuated by ridges, so one one side they were more light then other; that is more facing the light then the other side.

This was a fossil of a piece of wood and the side facing you, very smooth and polished.

The dark bits are dark brown and mainly the inside and light bits the outside of the fossil.

One could see reflections in the smooth surface, but did not attend to them.

Another bunch of flowers, this time wild hyacinths, also in a glass pot. Here again the main problem was to depict flowers facing side ways. This time aware of the different stages of the flower. Buds bursting to go open, simple single flowers and on the right a whole bunch totally open.

An interesting part of the exercise was that once one depicts the stems in the vase, the border of the water level becomes visible. Nearer stems are continuous, but further back they are discontinuous! or better said they continue, but more to the left.

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1-day workshops 2011

Excursion 3rd April 2011

As I went a week before with the Lerandoneur (Walking group from Leran) on a very enjoyable walk from Bastide sur l'Hers to St Colombe sur l'Hers via Miraval I thought to repeat this with my group.
In Bastide Amanda told us the story behind a historic building. Inside this building is a stairway build in a peculiar way so that the owner could go to his rooms upstairs (bedroom?) by horse!
Anyway we went along the old railway and then along a fairly steep footpath direction Miraval.

Valley with old railway track

On the way we could see the valley below and we shared what were the first impressions.
Again they were for each very different, but together we formed a more coherent picture.
Also we collected each a plant on the way and when we were at the top we had a drawing session and a coffee.
We found peculiar roundish beads and we discovered they were seeds from Purple Gromwell.
They are fairly local here, you see them everywhere in partly shaded places.

We continued our walk through Miraval with splendid views on the area around Lac Montbel to the north and facing south to the high mountains still covered with snow.

Path

Miraval

Then we continued on a very nice path aligned with mainly oak trees, along the edge of the hill, to a place called St Hugo, a very nice place to have our lunch. St Hugo is the patron saint of the hunters.

Path

St Hugo

On the way back we found a place so we could draw the area around Lac Montbel.

Lac Montbel

 But it began to rain a bit and as we had to walk back a fair way, we packed our bags and left.

Excursion 8 May 2011  Confronting a mystery in a landscape and revealed on the same day!

This time I had the idea to show people a piece of landscape with a mystery attached.

We live near Sautel and there is an  area where you find small huts and small to very small areas of land, parcelled of by walls. Also small terraces and we always asked ourselves what has taken place here.

Near Sautel

Near Sautel

So I positioned the people so that there back was turned towards that area and we discussed the landscape we saw and we came to that in that landscape there were no mysteries, although we might be nosy to what is behind the hill or to other areas in the landscape we could not see.

Then I asked them to turn around and straight away they asked: what is this?

We wandered around and came up with all kinds of ideas. Sheep gathering, pig enclosures or Self-sufficient community with gardens and animal enclosures?

Small terraces

So we wandered around for a time and then sat down to do some drawing and having coffee!

Drawing the huts

Then we drove to Lieurac, from where we walked to a picnic table with excellent view on Lieurac and surroundings so a good spot to have an observation exercise and drawing session and lunch.
The owner of the piece of land was around and so my wife started to have a conversation with him and in the mean time we had a discussion about the various dimensions of landscape (vertical, horizontal, seasonal and historical dimensions)
Then my wife returned with the exiting news that the place we saw in Sautal had been a leper settlement and that there is another one near St Girons, also in the Ariege.
We are talking about the time of 1800.
Now somehow it all maked sense. Not that we knew everything, but a certain mystery was revealed.
And other things also became connected; Does this have to do that there are two churches, one in the village itself and one high above the village, where we find also some houses.
Sautel is also popular because of its water fountains.

Peter

Peter's drawing of Lieurac

After lunch we had a drawing session, shared our experiences and drawings and had a nice walk through village of Lieurac itself (visit the cemetery with some very old architectural features) and then end up with an easy walk back to Sautel.
Altogether it was a very exciting and beautiful day.

Why draw landscapes?

This article I received via the newsletter from Landscape Europe
It is written by Joahan Meeus and translated by Jean Tee

Why draw landscapes?

I don’t make drawings of the landscape because I like to make strokes across a paper. Quite the reverse: through my strokes I try to understand the three-dimensional structure of the space. This forces me to make sharp observations and be very focused for a short amount of time. 

My intention with a sketch is to depict the atmosphere of a landscape; to indicate the proportions of buildings and plants to the open space; and finally hint at the materials, all in about ten minutes. In order to do this, I need to confine myself to what I consider to be the essence of the landscape. 

I also have to restrain myself from overdoing it. If I take too long and try to put in too much at the same time, I lose sight of what is essential and the drawing gets ruined. My objective is not to depict all the leaves on a tree or all details of a building, but rather to portray these objects in their surroundings, making up the space together.

I primarily make the sketches for myself, to remember a landscape by what made an impression on me. When I’m finished with my observations in the field, I stop working on the sketches, because I’m afraid I would otherwise draw in so many details or jazz them up in such a way that the initial experience is lost. To me, the field-sketch is either finished or a failure. The first drawings of a series always fail. I’m not sure why, but only after some exercise, the sketching is done faster and more effectively. Besides, it turns out that the subsequent drawings of a certain landscape have already set my strokes across the paper, so that later drawings become much sharper. 

The aim is to use the smallest amount of lines as possible to still be able to give the impression of a landscape.

Postmodernism and Anthroposophy

Recently I came to the papers presented at the Conference on "Postmodernism, Anthroposophy and Spirituality" held in Norway in 2008. see  Doors to Dialogue   or go to their website www.doorstodialogue.net/
The contributions I found extremely helpful in understanding what has been going on in people during the 20th century and now, regarding new ways of thinking, experiencing the world and different levels of consciousness etc.
My main interest is to explore how to overcome our usual dualistic (I and the world) approach and at the same time find a balance between the world as a reality and the world as our construction.
I haven't read yet all the articles as I concentrated for the moment on 1) to get acquainted with Deleuze and Derrida (there are some nice clips on you-tube)  and 2) to get acquainted with Bo Dahlin's and Marek Majorek's excellent presentations based on a sound philosophical, realistic and scientific basis.
I found some other very interesting papers written by them.
Bo Dahlin and Marek Majorek; On the path towards thinking: learning from Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Steiner
Bo Dahlin, Aksel Hugo and Edvin Ostergaard: Doing phenomenology in science education: a research review
Marek Majorek; Anthroposophy and the spiritualized understanding of the human being as basis for education

Have a good time