Private perceptions and public images

Something I was thinking about while performing surgery on an artist statement:

 

Our cameras are devices which recieve and assemble physical information

(photons)into "public images".

 

Our bodies and brains recive and convert physical information (photons,

pressure/tempurature variations) into "private perceptions".

 

Perceptions = images?

Bodies = cameras?

 

The camera is used in an attempt to make a private perception into a public

perception.

Is it possible?

Is there any other purpose to photography?

Or is this worthless psychobabble?

 

 

Sorry, these are incomplete thoughts.....

Go and have a beer - sounds like you need one badly!

Interesting question, I think it boils down to this "Can you really ever show anyone exactly what you are seeing?". IMHO perception is everything. And with perception, you are then dealing with one's personal learned associations which are never exact;y like anyone else's.

"The camera is used in an attempt to make a private perception into a public perception. Is it possible? Is there any other purpose to photography? Or is this worthless psychobabble?"

 

A snapshot, my version of photographic life, in the simple.

 

The concept of the "camera," at inception was to aid the painterly artist; camera obscura; light (photo)/writing (graphy). "Tain't no thang."

 

The cliches were infused with content in 1915 with Steichen's "Milk Bottles"; Spring, New York, 1915. From the above, you have the advent of the Progressive Humanists, Surrealism; enters Andre Breton, stage right. In the 40's & 50's, Henri Cartier-Bresson enters stage left, breathing life, movement into photography and today, it's up to you and what you want to make of it all.

 

Look, it's a cliche (Weston), it's calender art (Galen Rowell); no, it's piss you off time (Andre Serrano); anything you want photography to be; Postmodern.

 

"I'll take Neomodernism Alex."

There are some remarkable analogies and dis-analogies between camera/ imaging systems and the way bodies and perceptions form useful pictures of this world and alternative worlds.

 

The analogy is strongest for digitally based imaging systems and surprisingly weak for film based picture making. Maybe this is why film based photography so often disappoints in the task of turning the picture in the mind into the picture in the hand.

 

The human eye is like a digital camera. It has a lens of about 25mm focal length, aperture range approximately f 2.8 to f 11, and is backed with a 100 megapixel fixed array sensor called a retina. Not all the retinal cells are equal in size, sensitivity, or colour discrimination but collectively they form an effective sensor. Strikingly the output from the eye (that is transmitted down the optic nerve) is a series of coded electrochemical pulses of a digital character. The digital camera also turns an image into a coded stream of data, ones and zeros, and stores the result in a memory module, CF card, SD card, or the like.

 

The film based camera forms an image just like the eye but effectively does nothing with it; no encoding, no data, no transmission. The image just sits there in the back of the camera until a chemical substance sensitive to the electromagnetic field of the image is introduced. Chemical changes happen and eventually a picture is formed. But the entire sequence happens in the physical world and the possibility of perception as a facet of consciousness does not happen. At least not a this stage.

 

The brain as receiver of data from the optic nerve stores that data as neurochemicals and axonic and dendritic interconnections. The data is in code. I have seen numerous brain sections under the microscope, including slices of the optic lobes, and there are definitely no pictures. Imagine for a moment if there were pictures. What implications!

 

Stored coded data, either in a SD card (say) or in the brain can be displayed either on a monitor screen (via video software) or in the minds eye by the process of conscious recollection. No hardcopy is needed. The photograph on film conversely exists only as hardcopy, brute matter, that you have to go and fetch everytime you want to look at it.

 

Even the production of hardcopy reveals nice parallels. SD card data can be interpreted by software (card reader plus printer-driver) to control the activities of a mark-making engine, say an ink-jet printer to produce a picture. The brain's memory can be used to inform a mark-making engine, say an artist's arm, hand, and brush to make a real picture. The software for this takes about three years to load at art school and it could be referred to as "How to paint."

 

Film based pictures never go into code, never enter cyberspace, control nothing. They are what they are, obdurate lumps of matter that can be perceived but cannot constitute perceptions. This gives them their iron grasp on physical reality but closes off the possibilty of picturing imaginative fancies. And the world of things that can be imagined is far richer and often a lot nicer than the world of things that just are.

Huh?

It's like seeing my world and giving my perception to them. They may not look at a photo and see the world I see, or they may look and say," wow, yea I never looked at it in that way". They may read something into the photo that I never realized while taking it. It's always the viewers perception. Different everytime.

Yes, it's "worthless psychobabble".

<i>The analogy is strongest for digitally based imaging systems and surprisingly weak for

film</i><p>

Please explain that. I simply do not understand unless you mean that it is more difficult to

make pictures with anything but an auto-everything camera. If that's what you mean, then

you are ignoring the mastery of the medium, removing the human element.<p>

<i>The human eye is like a digital camera.</i><p>

The eye is not a camera.<p>

<i>he output from the eye (that is transmitted down the optic nerve) is a series of coded

electrochemical pulses of a digital character. </i><p>

Not even close. The signals from the eye are thorougly analog, and they are transformed

dramatically in various parts of the brain.<p>

Your analogy is interesting only in its uninformed impressionism.

<i>Yes, it's "worthless psychobabble".</i><p>

No, it's an artist's statement which is literature, not the art it speaks to, and valuable when

understood for what it is.<p>

OP - keep on it.

You're pretty much defining photographic art - the attempt to

make a public image as close as possible to your private

perception. It depends on mastering the techniques of taking,

manipulating and printing the image - whether the result is

interesting to others or not depends on the originality and

"added-value" of your private perception (about which much is

already written).

I believe that Ernst Haas said it best, "A picture is the expression of an impression." The rest, in my opinion, is all commentary.

Pico,

 

Maris is right. The eye and resulting vision is very much like a digital camera both in the way the sensor detects and transmits it's information and the fact that the sensor is not altered. There are analog-like components to the processing in the retina itself (via gap junctions) but the transmission of information to the brain is very much digital in nature, as it is in all neuronal tissue.

As for conscious recollection: close your eyes and try to imagine two colors side by side. Say, red and green. Not a very good digital data storage system, is it.

"As for conscious recollection: close your eyes and try to imagine two colors side by side. Say, red and green. Not a very good digital data storage system, is it."

 

Not a very good analog storage system either.

The brain isn't really digital although impulses are sort of digital. There is a whole lot of analog stuff going on in the cells that determine when a cell fires.

 

I think the OP's comments are right on the mark. At least I use the camera to capture things that I saw and wanted to make into something to discuss.

"The brain isn't really digital although impulses are sort of digital. There is a whole lot of analog stuff going on in the cells that determine when a cell fires."

 

Digital electronics also have a great deal of analog modulation as well. The point is that the transmission ('impulses') are by and large 'all-or-nothing'. Don't forget that the gating of many of the ion channels have definite voltage thresholds.

<i>Maris is right. The eye and resulting vision is very much like a digital camera both in

the way the sensor detects and transmits it's information and the fact that the sensor is

not altered. There are analog-like components to the processing in the retina itself (via

gap junctions) but the transmission of information to the brain is very much digital in

nature, as it is in all neuronal tissue.</i><p>

Nonsense. When the paradigm was clay for everything, the mind was likened to clay. When

electricity prevailed, it was like electricity. Now it's digital. Bullocks.<p>

The eye's "sensor" is indeed altered by the light entering it. Study up on that. <p>

And just because cells, synaps and so forth are discrete does not make the system digital.

Some signaling is slow chemical, and some is fast electric (believe it - yes, true electricity,

microvolts) and although I am not convinced, it has been posited by some very bright

people that some of it is quantum. Quantum is not digital, either.<p>

"Nonsense. When the paradigm was clay for everything, the mind was likened to clay. When electricity prevailed, it was like electricity. Now it's digital. Bullocks.

 

The eye's "sensor" is indeed altered by the light entering it. Study up on that.

 

And just because cells, synaps and so forth are discrete does not make the system digital. Some signaling is slow chemical, and some is fast electric (believe it - yes, true electricity, microvolts) and although I am not convinced, it has been posited by some very bright people that some of it is quantum. Quantum is not digital, either."

 

Where do I start on this one! I have studied how the eye works as well as neuronal signalling. I also worked in the field of neuroscience for 10 years measuring the ionic currents of single cells in brain tissue (including human) as well as tissue culture.

 

The point about the retinal cells not changing was referring to the fact that they are not permanently changed when exposed to normal light levels. This is very much like a sensor in a digital camera whereas film IS changed permanently. The cells do send out discrete signals which, depending on the cell type, will carry information on the colour and intensity of the light. Put together this will form a complete image after processing in the brain. If you are going to compare the eye, and how it transmits it's information, to anything man-made then a digital camera would be it. The currents may be different (ionic versus electronic) but the actions are the same.

<i> If you are going to compare the eye, and how it transmits it's information, to anything

man-made then a digital camera would be it. </i><p>

It is not helpful to attempt such an analogy. It is far too much of a reach.<p>

You must understand the fallacy of argument by analogy. It is misleading.<p>

The retina is analog, as you know. To leap into "it is like a digital camera" because the

brain might have a signaling method somewhere that strikes one as "digital" is incautious

at best.<p>

So going back to the top of this thread, I suggest to the OP that he use no such analogy as

Perception = images, Bodies = camera.

"To leap into "it is like a digital camera" because the brain might have a signaling method somewhere that strikes one as "digital" is incautious at best."

 

Might? It is digital in nature Pico. If you've taken any courses at all about neuronal signalling or even action potentials you would know this. Everything from single ion channels to synaptic vesicles are discreet entities.

<i>Might? It is digital in nature Pico. If you've taken any courses at all about neuronal

signalling or even action potentials you would know this. Everything from single ion

channels to synaptic vesicles are discreet entities.</i><p>

Synapses work via chemistry to create microvoltage at the location, correct? That just

doesn't seem digital to me.<p>

I can live with this mutual disagreement. No problem.<p>

However, I'll be a bit of a stickler if someone posits that the brain is a digital computer. :)

Pico, you're missing the point, splitting hairs and forgetting that transmission of information (via AP's) is not a continuous function. It's a discrete event that is heavily modulated by many inter and intracellular processes. Most of the modulation, at a basic level, is not only if an AP will be generated but also the frequency of the generation. Even synaptic transmission is a fairly discrete event since the vesicles containing the neurotransmitters are relatively constant in size and will produce a repeatable effect. Have a look at some of the basic research on synaptic transmission and also of single channel recordings - which will give a good graphic represenation of the voltage changes at a very minute level.

Andy, if we deconstructed the brain to an absurdly microscopic part and ignore the whole

it strikes me as oversight, a real stretch. Fairly discrete is not discrete. Digital is binary,

perfectly discrete. Maybe it is a modestly useful analogy but I don't find it a compelling

one.

 

If we go smaller we can get into microtubules which with the right medium inside might be

able to sustain quantum interactions.

 

How does a single-cell animal interact with its environment if it is not purely chemical,

analog, and possibly via quantum communication?

<i>Digital electronics also have a great deal of analog modulation as well. The point is that the transmission ('impulses') are by and large 'all-or-nothing'. Don't forget that the gating of many of the ion channels have definite voltage thresholds.</i>

<p>

Andy, I don't agree. Digital computers were invented because people wanted computers which give exact answers and work reliably, not subject to analog effects or noise. Thus we now have computers which have two signal levels, 0 and 1. They're distinctly different voltages, this together with discretized time (the system clock) prevents noise from affecting the result of the computation. How is "analog modulation" present in digital electronics?

<p>

In the brain, while some signal transmission is carried out in impulse trains, essentially for the same reason, to enhance reliability, a lot of stuff is carried out by processes which I would have a hard time describing as digital. Yes, there is a threshold, but there are multiple inputs to a cell and the membrane potential is affected by them in various ways. The "addition" is performed in form of ion transfer, and there is a great deal of randomness in this process. Sometimes when you give a person a stimulus, such as an electrical pulse to the median nerve, you get a response in the somatosensory cortex. Sometimes you do not. It's very unlike how a digital computer would process things.

<p>

Unlike the computer, the brain is very flexible. It changes itself in response to external inputs. Its calculations are erroneous. I am sure everyone here will agree that sometimes we just don't calculate correctly. How often do you get a wrong result when using a computer to crunch numbers?

<p>

The analogy between digital technology and the brain is IMO without foundation.