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Introductory Remarks:

Battles over the inclusion or exclusion of works in the catagory art is not my concern, especially in an age when monkeys are trained to throw paint at a canvas which is then sold as art .

Visual art is a language which may be used as any language is used. For example modern english is a very sophisticated language that can be used to express immense subtly of thought and feeling. Visual art is no different. I will restrict myself to the language of easel painting (drawing and painting on a flat surface).

Now that you understand my position it is your choice to continue.

A drawing or painting takes place on a flat surface which I will refer to as flatland land - from the 19th century novel by the same name.

A painting or drawing does not move - both the artist's and the viewers eyes move over the surface of flatland and through that orchestrated eye movement the artist creates and the viewer detects the human feeling contained within the materials.

1) Through the process of illusion our eyes are tricked into looking through flatland into a three dimensional space - much like a mirror;
2) Our eyes may also be tricked into seeing objects suspended in space in front flatland - much like a modern three dimensional movie.

These are visual processes that we, who have normal vision, experience. As makers and viewers of visual art we will concern ourselves with the above three physical processes - restated for simplicity:
a) eye movement over the surface of flatland
b) the illusion of eye movement into flatland as virtual space
c) the illusion of eye movement in front of flatland

It should be noted at this point that we are dealing only with the activity of our visual perceptual system and that the subject in art, landscape, still life, portraiture etc., is not relevant to our investigation.

We cannot have visual art without eyes that see. Since much visual art is static, sculpture, paintings etc, our seeing eyes must move. Visual art becomes the orchestration of eye movement.

One way of developing an understanding of eye movement orchestration is to look at the following flatland stereogram example by Salvador Dali: from Cadance books : Sanfrancisco - I recommend you purchase this book.

Look in the centre between the two dots above the centre of each picture. Try to force your eye muscles to move your eyes to the outside corners until the two dots form one in the centre. There will now be three pictures. Hold your eyes in position then move your eyes into the middle picure.

This next flatland sterogram uses an abstract pattern of dots to create the illusion of pictorial space. click here for dot pattern

Sumation:

This concludes our introductory exploration of the flatland world of art. My purpose is to present the case that art is based upon our visual perception system and that our visual system can be manipulated to give us a view of the world which is in essence a lie - an illusion - since it is not a real world view.

Art therefor is the orchestration of ideas and materials on the surface of flatland.

Since the source of art is in the orchestration of eye movement through materials and ideas we will explore the complex methods used to orchestrate eye movement in this series of essays.

take care: keith