Contemporary Considerations


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Form-Process: The Performative Act of the Image

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Evi Roumani  

Formalism, traditionally tied to notions of essence, purity, or aesthetic pleasure, is redefined in contemporary thought as a dynamic, open-ended process. This renewed perspective reframes formalism not as an adherence to static structures but as a performative and material configuration that embodies becoming. Through the correspondence of W.J.T. Mitchell and Gottfried Boehm, we explore form as a visualization process that aligns with the Iconic/Pictorial Turn and engages with New Materialist frameworks. This perspective redefines form not as a static entity but as a performative act, dynamically constituting the iconic through material processes. Instead of focusing on the abstract end product, a new formalistic materialist framework emphasizes on the abstractness of the process of becoming whilst engaging with the very personal and distinctive particularities of each form. The present argument situates form within the performative spectrum, linking its evolving character to the materiality and embodiment of matter. Forms, as the visual configurations intrinsic to the image, can both parallel and serve as a methodological tool in the Iconic/Pictorial Turn, contributing to the new paradigm shift in contemporary discourse around images. In this context, form signifies an embodied condition, directing our attention to performativity and materiality.

Lux & Looks: An Art Installation and Artistic Research on Light, Reflection, Images, Perception and Memory View Digital Media

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Patrick Ceyssens,  Johan Wagemans  

Although the physical and physiological laws of light are well-known, many questions at the intersection of art and science remain: What properties are revealed by allowing light to reflect on a surface? How do we describe distortions, density, scratches,… in our perception of them? How do reflective color patches relate in a space full of specific shapes and meanings? What minimal or maximal density does an image need or allow for its perception or memory? In this zone lies the invitation for an interesting collaboration between art and science, a light reflection between fleeting moments, between reflection and absorption, between present and past. Starting from the old stained glass windows in a chapel at KADOC Leuven (Belgium), we explore the scope of reflection, absorption and radiation of light, and its possible meanings. We focus on the layered interplay between light colors, iconographic details, the density of the stimuli, and their interaction as a source of new perceptual experiences. We challenge the visitors to capture these ‘images’ and thus let their gaze (their looks) reflect. We invite them to collect their static and dynamic images on an Instagram page (@lux&looks), thus creating a mosaic of visual perceptions and experiences, a brilliant universe: in time, in space, in radiation, in direction, in color, in recognizability, … but always different.

Getting Language Out of the Picture: Isolating Contributions of Visual Processing in Empirical Aesthetics

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Ben Van Buren  

We see the world not only in terms of lower-level features such as orientation and motion, but also in terms of properties which are typically associated with language and higher-level thought. For example, a landscape’s colors and shapes might look wistful, lugubrious, or aesthetically pleasing. Yet in most art perception studies, it is unclear whether observers’ responses reflect what they visually perceive or simply what they think images *should* represent. To clarify this, my lab has developed two tools to isolate the role of visual processing in art experience. First, we demonstrate that it is possible to record one participant’s viewing pattern while they view an art photograph through a small aperture, and to ‘transplant’ their viewing pattern to a second participant to cause them to like the image similarly to the first participant. This method isolates the contributions of visual attention to aesthetic judgments. Second, I introduce a new ‘Blindfold Test’, which identifies experiments in art perception whose results may not reflect visual perception at all, and which may instead reflect participants’ post-perceptual reasoning about how they should respond to images. I show that several published experiments yield identical results even when replacing the original visual stimuli with (mere) verbal descriptions. For these experiments, I conclude that higher-level reasoning is sufficient (and that visual processing may not be necessary) to observe their results. In summary, I discuss experimental strategies which can be used to study the perception of art images while controlling for language and higher-level interpretation.

Digital Media

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