Phenomenology

Readings: Theory Text Ch. 6, Introduction,6:1, 6:5

Phenomenology (as a study of relations between appearances, perception, experience

& knowledge)

• Phenomenology (in philosophy) – Objective experience (shared things that are objectively true)– Despite the fact that we all perceive things differently– Because of self-consciousness it is possible to get at an understanding of

what “appears to be” that can be shared with others (and is common or trues)– Everything is not just an illusion or is subjectively experienced– In Philosophy there are technical arguments for how this happens

• Key notions: exploring connections between– appearances, self-consciousness, experience and reality

• Attempt to get away from notion that what you see is only in your mind• Used in a wide variety of ways, often to discredit psychological

interpretations of tensions between individual perception and notions of to possibility of understanding relationship between appearances and “truth” or “reality” that can be communicated

Martin Heidegger: Thing & Work• Essence of visual art : discovering the “truth of beings setting itself to work”• Ways of conceiving of the “un-concealment” of being through visual images

Vincent Van Gogh A Pair of Shoes 1883.

What do shoes consist of? What are their uses?

Shoes in General /Image of Empty unused shoes but with

traces of use

How do shoes serve as equipment for doing/experincing? Whose world(s)?

Experiencing world of the peasant women through the image of her worn shoes

What is the essence of the “Being” revelaed through the experience of viewing the image of the shoes?

• Work of art (or visualization) not a reproduction of a particular being but a way of getting at a more general “essence” through experience of appearances that are not only in individual minds but connected in deep ways to varieties of experience that can be shared

Don Ihde: Scientific Visualism

• not just a way of seeing– Anticipated discoveries that

could not been seen with technologies of the past

• Scientific “seeing” not just visual – multidimensional – Synesthetic (involves more

than one of the senses)• also a hermeneutic

(interpretative, meaning-making) practice

Leonaro Da Vinci (examples of anatomical drawing and flying machine)

Modes of Scientific Visualization• Translation (transforming non-visual

dimensions into visual ones like these population growth graphs)

• Isomorphic (reproducing visual elements, such as anatomical drawings)

Estimated population growth from 10000 BCE–2000 CE Past and projected population growth on

different continents. The vertical axis is logarithmic and its scale is millions of people.

Gestalt Features

• Interaction of “visual intentionality” with visual displays

• Constituted by context and field of significations

• Ex. figure-ground observations

Arcimboldii

Gilbert

Gestalt -emergence

More Figure-Ground Examples

“Trompe-l’oeil”• “Fool the Eye”• Often used to describe the effects of

painting that gives the impression of being the things they represent (in decorative arts too-- for example painting wood to look like marble)

Ingres

Ingres (detail)

Audrey Flacke Chanel (acrylic on canvas)

Other Images Referred to in the Readings for this week• Prehistoric cave paintings in Lascaux (France)

Lascaux

Cindy Sherman