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Boundaries of a Complex World pp 9–77Cite as

Boundaries in Visual Perception and the Arts

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Part of the book series: Springer Series in Synergetics ((SSSYN))

Abstract

In this chapter we study several examples and theories from the visual arts in order to analyze the importance of the boundary and frame for these types of artistic creations and perceptions. The main goal of this study is to investigate whether the ‘feeling and perception’ of a visual boundary is more of an artistic emotional effect, or a psychological effect, or whether it simply has a neurological and physiological explanation through the mechanism of visual perception.

Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, 1974

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, each eye projects onto three of the six layers of the primate lateral geniculate body in a very particular way: each half-retina is mapped three times onto one geniculate body: twice onto the parvicellular layers, and once onto the magnocellular layers [8].

  2. 2.

    Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu: nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.

  3. 3.

    When we rapidly turn off a smooth musical note generated by an electronic device, we hear a sort of snapping, crackling noise. This short signal contains many more wavelengths than the original note. This is just the mathematical effect of abruptly cutting a smooth harmonic signal. The shorter the train of notes, the more extra wavelengths it includes. If we try to listen to one pure musical note for a very short interval of time, we will actually hear only a crackling, which consists in a pulse of white noise containing almost all wavelengths on top of that note. In Sect. 2.4, we elaborate more on this effect, known as the Fourier uncertainty principle.

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  1. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Department of Mathematics, Daytona Beach, FL, USA

    Andrei Ludu

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Ludu, A. (2016). Boundaries in Visual Perception and the Arts. In: Boundaries of a Complex World. Springer Series in Synergetics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-49078-5_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-49078-5_2

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