ART AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE

From the exhibition “Aspects of Perception”
curated by Betty Collings
for Virginia Commonwealth University and Bard College in 1982-83.

Associated symposia “Relationships Between Art and Cognitive Science.”  Proceedings edited by Marilyn Zeitlin.
Presentations at Virginia  by
Howard Risatti;
Michael Kubovy;
Bruce Goldstein.
At Bard by Morse Pechham and Arthur Danto.

Artists – Enrique Castro-Cid,
Benni Efrat,
Thomas Macaulay,
William Ramage,
John Davies,
Nahum Tevet,
Heidi Gluck,
David Leach.
See “Aspects of Perception”  1982 Anderson Gallery,  Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond Virginia.   Library of Congress No. 82-73584.

ART AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Betty Collings.

“For theories and schools, like microbes and corpuscles, devour one another and by their warfare ensure the continuity of existence” [1]

            Aspects of Perception brings together visual artists and cognitive scientists in an open forum to consider the role of the visual in perception.   Two postulates precipitated its instigation.   The first was that the procedures of perception and one’s capacity to know coordinate both physical and mental processes in equal partnership. [2].    The second has to do with the observation that insofar as their work seeks to reveal aspects of higher brain function, the interests of some cognitive scientists and some artists appear to overlap.  It was thought that drawing attention to the ways in which mental processing proceeds and is recorded by means of the visual arts might be an effective way to test the hypothesis that at the present moment an opportunity exists for mutually profitable interdisciplinary collaboration.

            Although each discipline tackles the task of revealing the mechanisms and the effects of human cognition according to its internally derived conventions, at the present time there are at least three reasons for bringing them together.   (A) These days some artists are able to accept the expressive and subjective expectations for art as a priori and show an unusual willingness to quantify visual experimentation.  (B) There has appeared on the scene an increasingly multi-disciplinary realization that intelligent action may be grounded upon capacities for pattern identification rather than the linear accumulations of logical deduction. [3].  Pattern recognition is implicit in artistic process.  (C) There is widespread implementation of the methodology of operational structuralism.[4] Initially established in the physical sciences, subsequently sporadically developed in many social sciences, sometimes creatively approached in the arts, this methodology does not concentrate upon an analysis of specific objects.   It is directed towards an understanding of the procedures that underly the development of forms of thought as well as material form; and it studies the relations that arise as a consequence of all kinds of multiple interaction.    As it becomes increasingly refined, it unfolds its potential to be a means whereby significant parallels, even homologies, may be established between disciplines previously thought to be irreconcilably different.

            If the function of art is to transform the way we see rather than to gratify the visual sense, [5] then the artists’ observations on perception must become part of a comprehensive theoretical construct encompassing all aspects of seeing and understanding. Such a theory of perception would take into account its physiological determinants, the relevant cultural modifiers, and the means of expression.   In other words it would account for the whole of Western culture in so far as it is concerned with the relationship between experience and the mind.   Such comprehensive theories of behavior have traditionally been the intellectual province of philosophy and psychology, art’s main contribution to which was to furnish expressive and adjunctive examples.   However, in the last 25 years, in both psychology and art, an accelerated production of data has combined with changes in methodology to create the possibility for a redrawing of intellectual boundaries.  In the social sciences, for instance, as experimentation in artificial intelligence has progressed, questions have been raised concerning the relationship between the mechanics of computer information processing and human information processing.   In seeking answers to these questions it became desirable to fuse elements of the disciplines Linguistic, Logic, Computer Science, Mathematics, Experimental Psychology, and Philosophy into a new science called Cognitive Science. [6]   This development is so recent that the first national conference on Cognitive Science was held in 1980. [7]

            According to Herbert A. Simon [8] the common ground between artificial intelligence and computer simulation of cognitive processes stems from the fact that cognitive science no longer relies upon the number-crunching capacity of the computer to model the complexities of human cognitive process.   It has been found necessary to study the selective heuristics that humans use in sifting usefully from peripheral information.   Simon postulates that when the computer program simulates the human mind it acts as a theory for the physical process; as such it is analogous to the role of a differential equation in a theory of physical process.   This extreme form of abstraction is in contrast to the work of those traditional cognitive psychologists whose models of human information processing are designed to predict specific responses. [9]

            To put all such theories to the test would require a wide range of experiments on human subjects.  Computationally this is frequently accomplished by comparing the verbalization and the actions of humans who are thinking out loud while at work on a task, with the data produced by computer simulation programs performing similar tasks.  [10]  The results of such experiments, now combine with those of behavioral psychology in an extensive dossier on human thinking in a variety of situations.    A consequence of the increase in the range of conditions surveyed, and of the links established between such procedures and the study of the organization of basic elementary information processing, is the opportunity to formulate hypotheses about long-and-short-term memory.   Furthermore there is a convergence of the mainstream psychology that has examined discrete tasks with the research directed toward understanding higher mental processes. Simon predicts that in the near future it will become absolutely necessary to forge a link between such psychological research and studies of the chemical and neurological actions of the brain. [11] This approach, and the expansion of predictive modeling theories in disciplines as varied as linguistics and perception, are uncharted territories [12,13]. open to innovation and speculation.   In exploring them it may be appropriate to heed the words of D.H. Horrobin who urges that the insights of the non-expert frequently reveal valuable lines of action. [14]  Certainly, for those scientists with re-activated interests in pattern-matching, the highly developed skills of the twentieth century visual arts community—especially those honed by the formalism of abstraction—provide likely sources of raw material.   Also, it is conceivable that these skills could become the means whereby new cognitive methods might develop.   Further, for those interested in the integration of higher brain functions, or the way in which accumulated knowledge informs intuition, [15 16] the artists, whose skills are directed toward an intensive examination of how we develop, select, represent, and communicate our limited understanding of phenomena provide a well-developed extra-disciplinary example. [17]

            Recent changes in the arts, especially those instigated by artists pursuing a theoretical stance, have been as momentous as the developments in cognitive science.  To place this in perspective it is necessary first to note that, throughout the century, all relevant art has responded to its context within an intellectual climate that is the sum of the ideas of all disciplines.   As examples, for the first quarter of the century there are demonstrable links between Surrealism and the early period of psychology; [18]  Impressionism and Post-Impressionism experimented with surface color mixing  at a time when the scientific community was examination alternative theories of light;  Cubism in 1910 may be considered as the first visual metaphor for newly advanced theories of the discontinuities of time and space.[19] In the last 25 years the interaction between art and other forms of culture has been accelerated by those artists who pursue theoretical constructs. [20]  Through their works, the lines of artistic enquiry have expanded to include structuralist methods and concepts;  this has precipitated extra-disciplinary interaction.  For instance, in the 1960s Minimalist artists collaborated with behavioral psychologists and the terms of phenomenological philosophy were used by artists and historians in the interpretation of art. [21]  After 1968 those aspects of Conceptual Art and Post-Minimal Art which applied procedural sequence and analysis  to idiosyncratic behavior, [22] those artists who applied systematics to visual organization [23] or operational structuralism to sculpture, [24] and those for whom the techniques of structural-linguistic analysis could be applied to subconscious and subliminal visual order in film, [25] made a group contribution  to the existence of a present day ambience within which “objective” artistic examination of the parameters of perception is conceivable. [26.27.28]

            In the present context, especially since it is of particular relevance to this exhibition, an important example is the work accomplished in the 60’s and early 70’s by artists such as Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Robert Morris, Richard Tuttle, Agnes Denes, Barry LeVa, Vito Acconci, Mel Bocher, Richard Serra, Sol LeWitt and Dorothea Rockburne.  In terms of both ontological and epistemological source material, [29] these artists posited a provocative and potentially fruitful line of inquiry when they presented visual forms as practice and theory for mental and behavioral process.

            When considering the implications of the work of a visual artist one now assumes that the preferred method of modeling is visual and experiential.  In today’s context it is possible to extrapolate from Simon’s analogy about the way in which the computer model of human thought compares with the relationship between q differential equation and physical process to postulate that artistic thought and action may be a theory for cognitive process. [30] ] However, in the case of art—especially since Abstract Expressionism—it has become the conventional expectation that theory, procedure and the object of study will finally merge.  In this respect the second-order implications of Jackson Pollock’s declaration that “Painting is a way of being” [31] are so seductive that even artists professing an extreme rationality—for example Minimalists Judd, LeWitt or Andre, or the Post Minimalists Bochner, Rockburne or Serra—readily accepted the residual heroics.    Therefore, even as late as the mid-70’s, subliminal acceptance of the mythical aspect of art by most of the art world contributed to preference for action and intuition and subordination of analysis and theory.  This acted to inhibit appreciation of sustained artistic probes into the way the analytical and experiential work together in mental processing.  This truncated ambition combined with expressive, decorative, pseudo-political and formalist alternatives to create the principal components of the artistic pluralism of the early 1980’s.   By way of contrast, the theoretical effectiveness of art of the kind exhibited here derives from the fact that each artist has been willing—at least temporarily and clearly to varying degrees—to quantify the subject and the procedures of inquiry.   In so doing it still maintains the tradition of art as an imaginative translation of independent, intensely observed subjective experience.

            Paradoxically, it is through the combined effect of countless examples of just such independent, intense, private, personally internalized efforts that general intellectual advancement occurs. The diligent and intelligent pursuit of a single problem—that is, a focused attempt to understand a discrete and minute portion of physical phenomena—has two important effects.  First, it generates, in the artist, a perception of the cultural context of the work.  Second, it shows that independence, isolation and precision are prerequisites for the construction of a distinctive contribution to collective knowledge.  Thus, in the arts it may be that it is those who most believe in communal progress who are required to work in isolation.

            Rudolph Arnheim postulates that the Fine arts, which deal with the sensory aspect of knowledge, tend to be neglected when attempts are made to describe the mechanics of knowing.  It is in order to explore the contribution that both art and the senses make to the sum total of human cognition that we have constructed an exhibition and brought together some of the artist in the exhibition with such active and curious workers in the field of Cognitive Psychology as Michael Kubovy [32] and Lynn Cooper {33].

Of course to suggest that there are areas of art that may, in their specificity as well as in the generally accepted sense, have significance for alternative disciplinary enquiry, raises fundamental questions as to what society expects from art.  Should the analysis and the presentation of an individual theory of perception become the province of Perceptual Psychology, does it then cease to be Art?  If it is seen that Art lies in the aesthetics of the methodology, is the “art” not then integral to the science?  Alternatively, in those instances when it is a collective of artistic effort that transforms the way we see, is it possible to regard the collection—in toto—as great art?

            Insofar as the present exhibition is concerned, a transformation of cultural perception might occur, if, through its examples, it can be shown either that the experiential is a form of thought, or that visual selection, presentation and processing, inevitably tap both the digital and the analog—or pattern matching and analytical—capacities of the human mind.   Alternatively it might be seen by some as a persuasive illustration of the hypothesis that, as a consequence of the adoption of abstraction in the early years of the century and the following 75 years of practice and theory, visual art has acquired a powerful new instrument.   This instrument, abstraction, is integral to the development of operational structuralism in the arts.  It is the key to a shift in methodology that now allows art to play a role in the multi-disciplinary mapping of the mechanisms and effects of mental processes.   It remains to be seen whether the role that art assumes in this endeavor is markedly different in character from the role that it has traditionally played in such omni-cultural purposes.   It may be that while the methods and conditions change, the job remains the same [34] and that it is via a reflexive interest in the aesthetics of mental processing that the arts transform the way we see.

1:    Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain. Random House. 1982. p. 155
2:  `Rudolph Arnheim, Visual Thinking.  University of California Press, 1969. p.3.
3    Bernard Rimbaud. “Infantile Autism. The Syndrome and its Implications for Neural Theory of Behavior      as discussed in Morse Peckham’s “Man’s Rage for Chaos:  Biology, Behavior and the Visual Arts” Schocken reprinted 1876, p. 319.
4:   Jean Piaget, Structuralism.  Harper reprinted 1970. p.8.
5:   Arthur /Danto, “Art Attacks”  Soho News supplement, September 23-29, 1981. p.1.
6:  Herbert A. Simon.  “The Behavioral and Social Sciences”  Science, July, 1980. pp 72-77.
7:  ”Proceedings of the First National Conference,” Cognitive Science. 1980.
8:  H.A. Simon. op.cit.
9:   John R. Anderson. Language, Memory and Thought.  Erlbaum. 1976. p.2.
10:J. Larkin. J. McDermot, D Simon, H.A. Simon. “Expert and Novice Performance in Solving Physics Problems”  Science, Vol. 208. June 20. 1980. pp 1335-1342.
11: H.A. Simon. Op.cit.
12: Ibid
13: John R. Anderson. Loc. Cit.
14: David Horrobin.  “In Praise3 of Non-Experts” New Scientist, June 24, 1982. p. 842.
15:J.Larkin, J.McDermott,D.Simon, H.A. Simon. Op.cit
16: David Leach, ed. Generative systems, York, 1981.
17:Betty Collings, “David Leach” 10 Solo Exhibitions Catalog, Wright State University, 1982.
18:Andre Breton. What is Surrealism? Monard Press, reprinted 1978
19: Marshall McLuhan.  “T.V. and Society,” Lecture delivered at Milton Eisenhower shymposium Johns Hopkins University in 1977 and broadcast by National Public Radio.
20: Maurice Tuchman, ed.  “Robert Irwin, James Turrell,” Art and Technology.  A Report, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1971. pp 127-143.
21: Marcia Tucker.  “PheNAUMANology,”  Art Forum, December 1970.
22:¨Robert Pincus-witten,  Post Minimalism, Out of London Press, 1979.
23:Edward Henning, John Pearson= Works from 1968-76.  Exhibition catalog, Ashland College, Ashland Ohio. 1977.
24:Madeline Burnside, “Betty Collings,”  Arts Magazine, September 1979, p.19.  See also Betty Coli9ngs, Drawing on Sculpture, Exhibition Catalog, Bertha Urdang Gallery, New York City, 1979.  Se also Philip Huneke, “Smooth Tesselations of a Sphere and Other Surfaces” paper delivered at the Pattern, Tiling and Symmetries Session, American Mathematical Society Conference, Seattle, Washington. 1977.
25:Peter Wollen,  “Signs and Meaning in the Cinema”,  Indiana University Press. 1969.
26 Betty Collings.  “Judy Pfaff,” Arts Magazine, November, 1980. p.4.
27Betty Collings.  “John Davies.” Arts Magaxzine, September, 1981. p. 22.
28:Betty Collings, “David Leach,” op cit.
29:Robert Pincus-Witten. loc.cit.
30: H.A. Simon. Op.cit.
31: Italo Tomassino.  “Jackson Pollock” Grosser and Dunlap, 1968.:
32:Michael Kubovy. “the Arrow in the Eye” Cambridge. 1983.
33:Lynn A. Cooper. “American Psychologist, January 1981. p. 78.
34:Marshall McLuhan op.cit.