μετὰ τὰ ϕυσικά: Vision Far Beyond Physics

TL;DR

This paper explores how natural vision and visual perception can be studied beyond traditional lab settings, using art and experimental methods.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel approach to studying vision in natural contexts using experimental phenomenology and art analysis.

Findings

Natural vision involves the copresence of primary and secondary visual processes.

Pictorial art can serve as a tool to study perceptual and mental visual processes in open scenery.

Color and light measurements in paintings reveal insights into natural visual perception.

Abstract

Vision Science is an area of study that focuses on specific aspects of visual perception and is conducted mainly in the restricted and controlled context of laboratories. In so doing, the methodological procedures adopted necessarily reduce the variables of natural perception. For the time being, it is extremely difficult to perform psychophysical, neurophysiological, and phenomenological experiments in open scenery, even if that is our natural visual experience. This study discusses four points whose status in Vision Science is still controversial. Namely, the copresence of distinct visual phenomena of primary and secondary processes in natural vision; the role of visual imagination in seeing; the factors ruling the perception of global ambiguity and enigmatic and emotional atmosphere in the visual experience of a scene; and if the phenomena of subjective vision are considered, what kind of new laboratories are available for studying visual perception in open scenery. In the framework of experimental phenomenology and the use of pictorial art as a complement and test for perceptual phenomena, a case study from painting showing the copresence of perceptual and mental visual processes is also discussed and analyzed. This has involved measuring color and light in specific zones of the painting chosen for analysis, relative to visual templates, using Natural Color System notation cards.

Figures