|
What is the essence of visual perception and facial expression?
Like a portraitist, I try to reveal what my subject is feeling/expressing, and imagining in various states of consciousness, including sleep. My paintings and photography portray the activity of the brain and the explorations of neuroscience.
What is true observation?
In my work I use technologies, both traditional and digital, that transform non-visual phenomena inaccessible to direct perception, into tangible visualizations. The diverse range of materials and processes used is determined by the nature of the subject matter.
Does artistic truth differ from, or parallel scientific truth?
Can one image, sound, or idea be both art and science? What then is true observation? My work is informed by painterly concerns and interest in rhythm, patterning, and spatial shifts. I am concerned with the contrast between what "reality" looks like through a fly's eye and what we may think it looks like. My activities are intended to challenge assumptions about contextual and environmental meanings.
Is painting a direct cognition of nature?
There are profound similarities between the underlying exploration process of scientific research and traditional approaches to painting and photography. Both are complex filters, a struggle to achieve understanding. I have painted how a blowfly sees and visualized how humans see the life cycle of flies.
We do not, primarily, see with our eyes and hear with our ears; seeing, hearing, interpreting the structure of physical reality in our vicinity, is done primarily with the brain. And our brains are constructed from neurons that are hardly different than a fly's.
How do we recognize faces?
What is a face? How do our eyes construct a three-dimensional reality from a two-dimensional image? I am now collaborating with a number of scientists to visualize some of the possible connections between art and facial expression and recognition. My current work represents our ability to see pattern in the presence of visual noise.
Pamela Davis Kivelson
|
|
