This chapter reflects on the exhibition “Late Rembrandt” that ran in 2015 at the Rijksmuseum in A... more This chapter reflects on the exhibition “Late Rembrandt” that ran in 2015 at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which was the first exhibition ever to focus on the adventurous and experimental painting of the last eighteen years of Rembrandt's life. Many of the figures portrayed by Rembrandt seem to have opaque and unseeing eyes. As Rembrandt's near contemporary René Descartes argued, the soul is not present in the body the way a pilot is present in a vessel. The connection is tighter than that. And Rembrandt's pictures offer a kind of exhibition of this idea—one can encounter the manifest spirit of a living person in a picture even when there is no seeing “into” them, even when we are confined, as we are, to seeing them from the “outside.” Meanwhile, there are a group of portraits by Rembrandt that are in an entirely different key—his self-portraits. In these paintings, almost miraculously, there is no question of lifeless or unseeing eyes. The differences between the blank eyes one sees in almost every figure painting of Rembrandt in this exhibition and the animate gaze of the self-portraits is not so much a difference in what the viewer actually sees but a difference in the acts these paintings perform.
This chapter evaluates Rembrandt's 1631 painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. The... more This chapter evaluates Rembrandt's 1631 painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. The Anatomy Lesson shows Professor Tulp as he probes the anatomy of a cadaver's left arm with an instrument in his right hand, while, with his left hand, he demonstrates the movements of which the left hand is capable and illustrates their dependence on the anatomy. As Dr. Tulp lectures and dissects, he refers his students to graphical representations or verbal descriptions of the relevant anatomy and physiology in a textbook. The chapter then considers an idea—one with which Rembrandt may be experimenting—according to which there is no such thing as the direct inspection of reality; that is, there is no encounter with how things are that is not shaped or at least informed by our thoughts and pictures, and indeed by our scientific theories. Rembrandt's painting of a scientist at work may also be an argument for the irreducible importance of art to the scientist's basic project.
This chapter explains that when it comes to music, we like the novel to be familiar. That is, we ... more This chapter explains that when it comes to music, we like the novel to be familiar. That is, we like familiar varieties of unfamiliarity; we like things we have never heard before that sound like things we have heard before. If the music is too familiar, it is dull. But if it is genuinely new, if it really is novel, then it is obnoxious, or, worst of all, not even recognizable as music at all. We are attracted to music in the Goldilocks zone, as it has been called. And it is this that explains a familiar but nonetheless remarkable fact about musical style—namely, that styles change, and that therefore music has a history. However original, however diverse one's influences, the art we produce bears not only our individual mark but also that of the time and place where it originates.
This chapter highlights the Variation Effect, which is a very important yet poorly understand hum... more This chapter highlights the Variation Effect, which is a very important yet poorly understand human phenomenon. Variety occurs not only at the level of regions and populations. It is a mark either of stupidity or arrogance to be unable or unwilling to accommodate one's manner of speech to the circumstances in which one finds oneself. As variation plays a central role in biological evolution, it also plays a fascinating role in the evolution of languages. To perceive or cognize the world at all is to be sensitive to the way patterns of variation allow for invariance to show up for us. We achieve access to what is invariant not because we are blind to variation but because we are so fluent in our mastery of variation that we can let it recede for us and rest in the background. In these ways, we come to appreciate that perception is at bottom an aesthetic achievement.
This chapter evaluates Anri Sala’s video/sound installation Ravel Ravel Unraveled in New York Cit... more This chapter evaluates Anri Sala’s video/sound installation Ravel Ravel Unraveled in New York City in the spring of 2016. In the art installation, there are two rooms. In one, the audience is presented with two videos of two different piano players each playing Ravel's piano concerto for the left hand in D. The room is filled with a beautiful and almost correct-sounding cacophony; two distinct, different performances of the same music, played on top of each other at the same time. In effect, the audience hears a raveling of Ravel by Sala. The video in the next room ratchets up the astounding complexity of Sala's constructed presentation of the concerto. The audience now encounters a new performer, the French DJ Chloë, as she works at a deck mixing two LPs corresponding to the two recordings of the distinct performances the audience witnessed in video. Ultimately, agency and the way technology extends, enhances, transforms, and remakes human agency are (among) the themes of Sala's captivating installation.
This chapter describes the painter Adolph Menzel, who devoted himself to the task of making pictu... more This chapter describes the painter Adolph Menzel, who devoted himself to the task of making pictures. Plato thought of the painter as merely recording an image that was delivered to the senses. It is easy to make a picture of anything, he wrote; one simply holds a mirror up to it. The human action of seeing is, for Plato, also akin to holding up a mirror to the world. What one sees are nothing but images. Enter Menzel, whose work embodies a commitment to the refutation of this Platonic idea. The sketches of this compulsive and unstoppable artist, no less than his oil paintings and his gouaches, are not so much documentations of what there is as investigations of the way we manufacture our own experience. Ultimately, what Menzel teaches is that art can be a way of doing philosophy.
The philosophy of perception is a microcosm of the metaphysics of mind. Its central problems - wh... more The philosophy of perception is a microcosm of the metaphysics of mind. Its central problems - what is perception? What is the nature of perceptual consciousness? How can one fit an account of perceptual experience into a broader account of the nature of the mind and the world? - ...
In this commentary we review evidence concerning the true sensitivity of viewers to visual change... more In this commentary we review evidence concerning the true sensitivity of viewers to visual changes in scene images. We argue that the data strongly suggest that "change blindness" experiments, while revealing of a variety of important constraints on encoding and retrieval processes in visual memory, do not demonstrate the lack of scene representations assumed by O&N. Instead, the data suggest that detailed scene representations can be generated and survive relatively intact across views (e.g., across saccades) and over extended periods of time. Of course, as we have known at least since the seminal work of Sperling (1960) and Averbach and Coriell (1961), these representations are not "iconic" in nature.
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Aug 1, 2011
... fakt, że zwracam się teraz ku rzeźbie, po rozwinięciu prze-znaczonej do skrytykowania koncepc... more ... fakt, że zwracam się teraz ku rzeźbie, po rozwinięciu prze-znaczonej do skrytykowania koncepcji doświadczenia, związanej z rysunkiem Macha. ... Bois (1978: 52) zauważył, że „całokształt dzieła Serry jest niedosłowną odpowiedzią na tekst Michaela Frieda” (cytowane w: Taylor ...
This chapter analyzes Alvin Lucier’s performance of his twentieth-century masterpiece, “I Am Sitt... more This chapter analyzes Alvin Lucier’s performance of his twentieth-century masterpiece, “I Am Sitting in a Room. The performer—in this case the composer himself—records his voice making a statement about what he is doing. This is then played back and recorded again. This new recording is then played back and recorded again. Each playback sounds like a pretty faithful rendition of what came before. After about sixteen rounds of this, however, what the audience is given is sound that bears no recognizable relation to the original utterance. The subtle degradations of each recording cycle get compounded in the iteration and reiteration. At the end one must wonder: are we getting a degraded signal, or is the final message a signal imbued with unimagined new content—a disclosure of the room's very own resonant nature, as the artist himself suggests, or of the true essence of sound, or, indeed, of speech? The composition is also an interesting example of the way technology and art work together. Tape is an old technology, yet the work would be impossible without tape recording. In a way, this is a kind of investigation of what tape recording actually is.
... and Jeannerod's Ways of Seeing ALVA NOË University of California, Berkeley ... The probl... more ... and Jeannerod's Ways of Seeing ALVA NOË University of California, Berkeley ... The problem with the picture pic-ture is that it is difficult to see not only how it can do justice to the reality (if it is a reality) of perceptual experience as a mode of actual encounter with things. ...
This chapter reflects on the exhibition “Late Rembrandt” that ran in 2015 at the Rijksmuseum in A... more This chapter reflects on the exhibition “Late Rembrandt” that ran in 2015 at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which was the first exhibition ever to focus on the adventurous and experimental painting of the last eighteen years of Rembrandt's life. Many of the figures portrayed by Rembrandt seem to have opaque and unseeing eyes. As Rembrandt's near contemporary René Descartes argued, the soul is not present in the body the way a pilot is present in a vessel. The connection is tighter than that. And Rembrandt's pictures offer a kind of exhibition of this idea—one can encounter the manifest spirit of a living person in a picture even when there is no seeing “into” them, even when we are confined, as we are, to seeing them from the “outside.” Meanwhile, there are a group of portraits by Rembrandt that are in an entirely different key—his self-portraits. In these paintings, almost miraculously, there is no question of lifeless or unseeing eyes. The differences between the blank eyes one sees in almost every figure painting of Rembrandt in this exhibition and the animate gaze of the self-portraits is not so much a difference in what the viewer actually sees but a difference in the acts these paintings perform.
This chapter evaluates Rembrandt's 1631 painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. The... more This chapter evaluates Rembrandt's 1631 painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. The Anatomy Lesson shows Professor Tulp as he probes the anatomy of a cadaver's left arm with an instrument in his right hand, while, with his left hand, he demonstrates the movements of which the left hand is capable and illustrates their dependence on the anatomy. As Dr. Tulp lectures and dissects, he refers his students to graphical representations or verbal descriptions of the relevant anatomy and physiology in a textbook. The chapter then considers an idea—one with which Rembrandt may be experimenting—according to which there is no such thing as the direct inspection of reality; that is, there is no encounter with how things are that is not shaped or at least informed by our thoughts and pictures, and indeed by our scientific theories. Rembrandt's painting of a scientist at work may also be an argument for the irreducible importance of art to the scientist's basic project.
This chapter explains that when it comes to music, we like the novel to be familiar. That is, we ... more This chapter explains that when it comes to music, we like the novel to be familiar. That is, we like familiar varieties of unfamiliarity; we like things we have never heard before that sound like things we have heard before. If the music is too familiar, it is dull. But if it is genuinely new, if it really is novel, then it is obnoxious, or, worst of all, not even recognizable as music at all. We are attracted to music in the Goldilocks zone, as it has been called. And it is this that explains a familiar but nonetheless remarkable fact about musical style—namely, that styles change, and that therefore music has a history. However original, however diverse one's influences, the art we produce bears not only our individual mark but also that of the time and place where it originates.
This chapter highlights the Variation Effect, which is a very important yet poorly understand hum... more This chapter highlights the Variation Effect, which is a very important yet poorly understand human phenomenon. Variety occurs not only at the level of regions and populations. It is a mark either of stupidity or arrogance to be unable or unwilling to accommodate one's manner of speech to the circumstances in which one finds oneself. As variation plays a central role in biological evolution, it also plays a fascinating role in the evolution of languages. To perceive or cognize the world at all is to be sensitive to the way patterns of variation allow for invariance to show up for us. We achieve access to what is invariant not because we are blind to variation but because we are so fluent in our mastery of variation that we can let it recede for us and rest in the background. In these ways, we come to appreciate that perception is at bottom an aesthetic achievement.
This chapter evaluates Anri Sala’s video/sound installation Ravel Ravel Unraveled in New York Cit... more This chapter evaluates Anri Sala’s video/sound installation Ravel Ravel Unraveled in New York City in the spring of 2016. In the art installation, there are two rooms. In one, the audience is presented with two videos of two different piano players each playing Ravel's piano concerto for the left hand in D. The room is filled with a beautiful and almost correct-sounding cacophony; two distinct, different performances of the same music, played on top of each other at the same time. In effect, the audience hears a raveling of Ravel by Sala. The video in the next room ratchets up the astounding complexity of Sala's constructed presentation of the concerto. The audience now encounters a new performer, the French DJ Chloë, as she works at a deck mixing two LPs corresponding to the two recordings of the distinct performances the audience witnessed in video. Ultimately, agency and the way technology extends, enhances, transforms, and remakes human agency are (among) the themes of Sala's captivating installation.
This chapter describes the painter Adolph Menzel, who devoted himself to the task of making pictu... more This chapter describes the painter Adolph Menzel, who devoted himself to the task of making pictures. Plato thought of the painter as merely recording an image that was delivered to the senses. It is easy to make a picture of anything, he wrote; one simply holds a mirror up to it. The human action of seeing is, for Plato, also akin to holding up a mirror to the world. What one sees are nothing but images. Enter Menzel, whose work embodies a commitment to the refutation of this Platonic idea. The sketches of this compulsive and unstoppable artist, no less than his oil paintings and his gouaches, are not so much documentations of what there is as investigations of the way we manufacture our own experience. Ultimately, what Menzel teaches is that art can be a way of doing philosophy.
The philosophy of perception is a microcosm of the metaphysics of mind. Its central problems - wh... more The philosophy of perception is a microcosm of the metaphysics of mind. Its central problems - what is perception? What is the nature of perceptual consciousness? How can one fit an account of perceptual experience into a broader account of the nature of the mind and the world? - ...
In this commentary we review evidence concerning the true sensitivity of viewers to visual change... more In this commentary we review evidence concerning the true sensitivity of viewers to visual changes in scene images. We argue that the data strongly suggest that "change blindness" experiments, while revealing of a variety of important constraints on encoding and retrieval processes in visual memory, do not demonstrate the lack of scene representations assumed by O&N. Instead, the data suggest that detailed scene representations can be generated and survive relatively intact across views (e.g., across saccades) and over extended periods of time. Of course, as we have known at least since the seminal work of Sperling (1960) and Averbach and Coriell (1961), these representations are not "iconic" in nature.
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Aug 1, 2011
... fakt, że zwracam się teraz ku rzeźbie, po rozwinięciu prze-znaczonej do skrytykowania koncepc... more ... fakt, że zwracam się teraz ku rzeźbie, po rozwinięciu prze-znaczonej do skrytykowania koncepcji doświadczenia, związanej z rysunkiem Macha. ... Bois (1978: 52) zauważył, że „całokształt dzieła Serry jest niedosłowną odpowiedzią na tekst Michaela Frieda” (cytowane w: Taylor ...
This chapter analyzes Alvin Lucier’s performance of his twentieth-century masterpiece, “I Am Sitt... more This chapter analyzes Alvin Lucier’s performance of his twentieth-century masterpiece, “I Am Sitting in a Room. The performer—in this case the composer himself—records his voice making a statement about what he is doing. This is then played back and recorded again. This new recording is then played back and recorded again. Each playback sounds like a pretty faithful rendition of what came before. After about sixteen rounds of this, however, what the audience is given is sound that bears no recognizable relation to the original utterance. The subtle degradations of each recording cycle get compounded in the iteration and reiteration. At the end one must wonder: are we getting a degraded signal, or is the final message a signal imbued with unimagined new content—a disclosure of the room's very own resonant nature, as the artist himself suggests, or of the true essence of sound, or, indeed, of speech? The composition is also an interesting example of the way technology and art work together. Tape is an old technology, yet the work would be impossible without tape recording. In a way, this is a kind of investigation of what tape recording actually is.
... and Jeannerod's Ways of Seeing ALVA NOË University of California, Berkeley ... The probl... more ... and Jeannerod's Ways of Seeing ALVA NOË University of California, Berkeley ... The problem with the picture pic-ture is that it is difficult to see not only how it can do justice to the reality (if it is a reality) of perceptual experience as a mode of actual encounter with things. ...
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