Monday, January 09, 2006

proposition#1


proposition#1
Originally uploaded by lhombre.

4 Comments:

Blogger reader_iam said...

These images are, to use highly technical and insightful art-appreciation terminology (haha), way cool. I've come to look at them a couple of times.

One thing I'm noticing is that they tend to make my eyes jerk about a bit, and there's a corresponding mind-snap as the each individual piece shifts in my brain.

This is hard for me to explain. The best way is by way of a very famous image having to do with perception and frames of reference. Darned if I can think of the name of it off the top of my head, but it's the one in which a depiction of an old lady and another of a young lady is subsumed into one image.

(Does this ring a bell? If not, I'll try to look it up and give you a link. Otherwise, what I'm about to write won't make much sense, I fear.)

People generally see only one or the other of the depictions and have a very difficult time discerning the one they didn't initially perceive. I'm one of those rare people, I'm given to understand, who actually saw both pictures--the first time I was presented with the image--in almost an alternating, back and forth way. Very disconcerting. I had to pick a specific reference point for each and then tunnel-vision on that to keep just one in focus.

I don't know what that's about or what it comes from, except that I suspect there may be a hard-wired component involved. Why? Because, funnily enough, as part of my gig as a freelance editor of a foreign policy journal, I edited an article (interestingly enough, on CIA information analysts and fixed mindsets) a year or so ago--maybe longer--in which this image was included.

(Note: This was NOT the first time I had been exposed to the image; just a coincidence that I had call to revisit it in a different context.)

ANYWAY, my son happened to be hanging out in my office at the time and the picture on the computer screen caught his eye, and he asked how they "got two faces in one head. I was so taken aback that I printed out the page and asked him to trace the faces--which he did! So maybe it's a mental tic based on genetics.

Sorry for the long post, but the way this relates is that the images you have posted here sort of do the same thing to my eyes and brain. They keep shape-shifting, as it were.

It's been so long since I've read any Wittgenstein that I can't comment on that aspect at all, except that I'm gathering from what you wrote that "simultaneity" is referring to experiences such as mine?

Does all of this make any sense at all?

In any case, thanks for the posting these. Good stuff.

2:42 PM  
Blogger reader_iam said...

There should be a close quote after "... one head" in the paragraph referencing my son.

2:44 PM  
Blogger Lhombre said...

Thanks for stopping by. I don't recall the image that you described that had the old woman in it. These images are structured literally around a neckercube. I lnked to the neckercube in the post if you are not familiar with it, but my guess is that you are.

As to simultanaiety, that has to do with my reading of witt.'s Tractatus. I developed an argument using the neckercube and simultanaiety in my Gaduate Thesis paper at the University of Chicago; a requirement of the program.

There are two early articles/reviews on my work that speak to the issues that I dealt with. The "Axionmatic Image," and "The Philosophy and Accomplishment in the Works of Daniel Ramirez." If your interested you can link to them through my web site at the Articles/reviews section on the home page. They are rather longish.

In any case, I really appreciate your looking at the work. And I am especially pleased that you have a point of reference from which to comment. That's very helpful. Thanks again.

5:58 PM  
Blogger reader_iam said...

lhombre:

I did find a link to the Boring image to which I refer here and e-mailed it to you. I think you will find the information interesting and at least somewhat related to what you're tackling.

I am familiar (not deeply, but just in the way that I tend to pick up info on all sorts of things) with neckercubes. I did google the word and click images--and a number of the images did provoke the same eye-brain reaction, though not all. Thanks for point me in that direction!

I look forward to seeing this develop, as with your other current projects!

8:47 PM  

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