By Rolf Aamot
The human being, the ape and information technology share our unique colour vision:
RGB: Red / Green / Blue. Corresponding to our three types of rods in the eyes’ retina.
The RGB of nature and the curvilinear tone system exist as a unity.
Sight, brain and motor skills are activated simultaneously in any creative process. With conscious and subconscious processes fulfilling each other. The visual system has a central place in our ability to survive. We experience in order to live and survive. It is the very potential of aesthetic community and collective experience.
The visual sense is as a rule associated with our eyes, but the brain in truth playing the decisive role when it comes to creation of meaning from all the visual impressions we are receiving. Sight and mind are sensing and reflecting in several dimensions. Mind and motor skills must be activated simultaneously in any creative process, in our incomparable biological informational machinery – our very own brain. Less than half of our brain is used for processing and interpreting visual impressions. It is highly energy consuming. Among living creatures no more than a third can actually see. Another third are able to distinguish between nuances of light and darkness, the last third being blind. The body makes hard priorities with its energy.
The eye comes into being as a brain protrusion of the developing fetus and for the grown human being eyes and brain are closely connected.
The brain sets its own goals, finds how to achieve them and executes its own plan; records, interprets and relates to the meaning of actions and emotional reactions, and responds adequately. The brain improvises and makes absolutely independent decisions.
In 1981 the two neuroscientists David H. Hubel of the neurological department at Harvard Medical School and Torsten N. Wiesel in Sweden, was awarded the Nobel Prize for their joint discovery regarding the information processing of the visual system. They discovered how brain cells decode nerve impulses from the eye. They also found the ability of brain cells undertaking this decoding to be depending upon the reception of visual impressions made immediately after the moment of birth. The brain is a true master when it comes to sorting objects in rapidly accessible categories. All human beings are, for example, put into a box for «faces».
The infant brain prioritizes vision as necessary for breastfeeding and recognition of parents. The area for language is, at first, not strictly necessary, and can thus be postponed until later. From the very first the child uses every single one of its senses. Studies faces, listens and recognizes voices, and smells its mother, tastes skin and feels when touched. The infant seeks the breast immediately after birth. Imitates facial impressions.
Once birth has found place, the newborn’s struggle for survival begins. Once born, after a couple of minutes the foal or calf lifts its head in order to orientate itself. After about an hour it will get up on its legs. The brain challenged by the movements of this new «life». Mental and physical processes are on its way.
The neurologist Benjamin Libet’s experiments led to a reassessment of the idea of free will in 1983. He found that the brain activity preceding conscious decision-making is a contingency potential. In 2007, the Berlin-based neurologist, professor John Dylan Haynes performed brain scans showing that some of our decisions are registrable up to 7 – seven – seconds ahead. For example, when we make a decision based on what we see, groups of brain cells starts gathering evidence fitting different outcomes. All of our thoughts, feelings and experiences are the result of electrical and chemical reactions in the brain. When this neural noise reaches a crescendo, it is crossing a threshold and reaches a conclusion. This constant neural noise is involved in all of our decisions. Those with the largest capacity for neural noise make the fastest “spontaneous” decisions. The American Professor and Psychologist Daniel Wegner, (1948 – 2013) argued that our sense of self-control is simply self-deception. He presented countless examples showing that we are not in control of our own actions, though we may think we are. In the unconscious mind, brain and motor movement are directing our feelings, thoughts and actions.
In 2001 the neurologist Marcus Raichle of the Washington University School of Medicine in the United States was one of the first to understand that our conscious actions are negligible as compared to the total activity of brain. Previously, conscious nerve signals had been the primary focus of research, all other brain activity viewed as noise on the measuring devices. But Raichle discovered that what formerly was considered background noise came from a huge network, which he named the Default Mode network, an idleness network, also called a task-negative network, active whilst we are observing and relaxing.
A small part of this network is, according to Raichle, responsible for daydreaming that constantly tears us away from work against our will. But the main part of the network is most likely busy with activities we know nothing about. Activity that, independent of consciousness, determines reactions to our surroundings.
In 2013, the researchers managed for the first time to survey this network in detail.
A team from Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung in Germany, led by Anders Horn, examined the brain activity of 19 adults. The subjects were placed in a large body scanner, relaxing whilst the team of German scientists were scanning deeply into the brain of each one of them. The scanner captured the shapes and position of individual nerve cells and simultaneously mapped brain region energy consumption down to the smallest detail.
Neuroimaging revealed which nerve cells exchanged signals with each other when the brain was relaxing. Its activity was concentrated in a few thick bundles of nerve cells connecting the main center of the task-negative network in the posterior singular cortex deep within the brain, the prefrontal cortex at the forehead and the temporal lobes on the side of the brain. But this network is not static. A group of Chinese and American researchers in 2017/2018 surveyed for the first time how it constantly adapts to the world around us. They scanned the brains of 14 subjects who were set up to perform various tasks. They were were first to remain quiet and relaxed, then asked to press various buttons, depending on the type of geometric shapes they saw on the screen. Finally, they would relax again. The experiment revealed that the task-negative network uses different nerve pathways when the brain is engaged in active action than when resting. But the most surprising discovery was that the network structure was different after the action than before. The researchers concluded that the network can expand along the way, accounting for new impressions.
Other research has shown that consciousness has amazingly little control over what is going on around us.
Our eyes and ears are constantly bombarded by a jumble of light and sounds. Researchers have found that our eyes transmit about six million signals to the brain every second. Nevertheless, consciousness probably receives about a hundred of the impressions, that is, 0.002 percent.
To reach consciousness, sensory impressions must pass through a so-called importance network, which from the areas of the insula and the anterior singular cortex deep within the brain monitors our perception network. This network sorts impressions deserving access to our conscious networks. The activity in the idleness network is thus shut down, and the so-called action network comes on track. The action network connects the brain’s frontal lobes with the movement center at the back of the temporal lobes and ensures that you are in action mode. But here we are 7 seconds later than the conclusions of our subconscious. The unconscious networks have in practice full control, and our consciousness has little say in the brain’s decisions. We have reason to be happy that the unconscious network of the brain relates as it does to the outside world. Other research has shown that our consciousness does not have to worry much about what is going on around us.
Of all the art forms the visual ones come closest to the field of tension Life – Death. Therefore, visual art of any kind is a challenge, for society and for the individual. Power is control over others. Physical violence a defeat. Victory can only be won by visual means. Refer the Chinese «Art of War». Conceived 7000 years ago, containing texts going back 14000 years.
The written language and visual art of China relate to a common heritage of visual culture, with sight, mind and motor skills elevated into a higher unity from the moment of birth. Nerve cells decode nerve signals received from the eye.
The number of brain cells stays more or less the same from birth to death and is significantly larger in humans than among animals – with the number of interconnections rising drastically through childhood and adolescence. It concerns, as shown in a number of studies, areas controlling association and integration. A human being is born with a greater associative ability than any ape can develop. Vision, brain, motor skills must be activated in unison, with conscious and subconscious processes fulfilling each other.
The visual system will convey information about colour frequencies and form,
The auditive system sound frequencies and their localization.
Sight and brain open up the possibility of visual pitch.
The brain evaluates impressions within a fraction of a second, ordering and analyzing every detail.
Visual pitch means 3D vision – an ability to perceive, and act on, light – electromagnetic radiation, among which colour frequencies, curvilinear tone relations, and musical image structures. Absolute visual pitch – the ability to assess absolute tonal pitch for colour frequencies and curvilinear tones.
All life in nature has its form given by curvilinear tones.
The sensitivity of the human eye covers a span of frequencies from 380 to 760 nanometers (nm); visible light a narrow sector of the electromagnetic wave spectrum perceptible to the eye. With artificial light the limits of visible light may be expanded sligthly towards ca. 312 – 1050 nm.
But the eyes also convey other properties than the purely chromatic, such as visual depth, form, position, relative size and movement. Visual pitch a parallell to auditive pitch; pitch the ability to fathom sound frequencies / tonal relations and musical structures. Absolute pitch: The ability to assess absolute tonal height and localization.
Visual and auditive pitch have parallell tonal spans : colour and sound frequencies. Decoding by brain cells of nerve signals received from the eyes and the ears being a precondition of mental and physical training within the visual arts and music, contained within our strategies of life and survival.
Visual and auditive tonal art forms a unity on the basis of diverse combinations of frequencies:
Pitch – Reverberation – Cluster – Noise – White noise – Overtones – Limitless tonal space.
RGB, the foundation of man’s colour vision. The tonal sequence: Horizontally = The Surface. Vertically = Space.
Our way of relating to space is our relation to each other. The flattened surface is a wall against nature.
The age of machines has led to a devalutation of the relation of sight/hearing and brain. For the visual artists it came to mean a concensus that painting exists on a surface. The relation of vision and mind to space was suppressed and displaced. As noted by Professor Øyvind Storm Bjerke of the University in Oslo in the article «Rolf Aamot – Digital photopaintings», Preus Museum, 2003:
«Whichever choice any of the individual artists made, there was a fundamental agreement among them that a painting was two-dimensional and that whatever found place in an image existed on a surface. Respecting the flatness of a painting became a central concern. A successful image would appear in the form of a decorative pattern on a flat surface, before being any other thing – such as for example a tree. An accomplished image would come together as a visual unity of matter, colour and form conforming to the idea of its two-dimensionality».
The eyes and the brain, together, see in three dimensions, strongly concentrating on movement in space, able to focus with the speed of lightning on changes in our field of vision. Every single time we are moving there is a complex cooperation of brain, nerve cells and muscles. The process involving several brain centers finely adjusting and correcting the movement prior to the activation of muscles by nerve signals.
The visual system will carry information about colour frequencies and form,
The auditive system about sound frequencies and their localization.
The visual field contains an enormous abundance of details, whereof merely a very small fraction has any interest for the observer. The interpretation of images by the brain therefore happening as fast and efficient as possible, including the linkage of images with our memory. The brain is a true master of sorting objects in easily accessible categories, assessing impressions by the fraction of a second, regrouping and analyzing them in every detail.
The two cerebral hemispheres consist of four parts, lobes: a frontal lobe, the parietal and temporal lobes, and the occipital lobe. The surface of each of them is covered by the cerebral cortex. It is superior to the rest of the nervous system. Consciousness, thoughts, emotions, memory, sensory impressions and will -controlled movements, are just some of the examples of everything the cerebral cortex is responsible for. But since it has so many different tasks, a division of labor is natural, between different parts of the cerebral cortex. Therefore, diverse functions are controlled from different areas, appearing like a jigsaw puzzle over the cerebral cortex.
We may locate many very specific tasks to particular locations of the cerebral cortex. There are however still large areas where we are unable to assign any singular function. These are important for awareness, thoughts, feelings, ingenuity and much more. We call the mass occasion areas.
But these locations, in diverse parts of the brain, also have different tasks. Interesting in this context are the large association areas in the frontal lobes.
In humans, the association areas make up as much as 80% of the total cerebral cortex. The more defined functional areas are constantly in contact with the association cortex and cooperate with them. They interpret sensory impressions and relay from experience. They are responsible both for various intellectual functions and for our personality. Personality, a collective term for the character of a person’s way of thinking, feeling and acting. We are using the whole of our brain all the time. Precisely the use of all the association areas in the cerebral cortex is absolutely necessary to make us independent thinking individuals. If we compare the brain from different species, it is obvious that the frontal part of the brain -the frontal lobes -is relatively much larger in humans, where they are making up the largest part of the brain. It is precisely the frontal lobes that are responsible for many of the qualities that make man special, and each of us completely unique. Here the central elements of our
personality is determined, such as self-awareness, conscience, moral considerations, judgment, coping with problems, analyzing the consequences of action, self-criticism, initiative, mood, and much more.
We may say the frontal lobes are connecting intellect, memory and emotions, ensuring a person appears wholesome, sensible and controlled. In many ways, the function of the frontal lobes shapes the person, as such – the frontal lobes are you: you are the frontal lobes.
Genes received from our mother and father is crucial for much of the structuring of the brain. But environmental factors are also important. It all depends on the fertile conditions for the fetus and the fetal brain throughout pregnancy, whether birth goes well, and the conditions received by the brain throughout childhood. At the same time, every experience throughout life will help shape both structure of and function of the brain. It is however our innate qualities along with early experience in life that is most important for the formation of personality.
Therefore, most of us will roughly remain the same person throughout life, provided nothing injurious happens to the frontal lobes. How important they are, we may observe in people with injuries to this part of the brain or where they are diseased. In such cases, a person may change completely. Since the frontal lobes are the seat of personality, personality disorders and serious mental illnesses will also have their origin there.
CREATIVE MENTAL AND PHYSICAL TRAINING AND EXERCISE
Mental and physical exercise is important. In particular for artists, scientists and athletes. Our most important precondition for further studies, from recent research on human conciousness and decision-making, is that neuroscientists have established that we are not playing predetermined roles exempt of thought as if we were robots. Our brain performs endless complex processes, adapting to the infinitely rich experience of being human. The brain coordinates movements. We may train a desired movement by imagining or visualizing its motor performance. By exercising movements in our mind, the same happens as if we had performed them in reality, a strengthening of the neuronal patterns in our mind.
In other words, the neuronal connections necessary for the performance of movement are strengthened in our mind. The brain thus becoming better at signaling to our muscles precisely what we want them do do.
The brain functions as a biological computing machinery. The neuron = the nerve cell reacting by yes – no (1 – 0).
It is a parallell to RGB - red – green – blue.
Before the age of electronics the RGB colour model already had a solid theoretical foundation, based on man’s perception of colour.
A combination of mental and physical training is the best life challenge for us all.
«Small brain, bad eyes». The brain shrinks.
Within the last 10.000 years the brain has been shrinking by 18 percent for men and women. The reason being that technology has been taking over some of the brain’s functions. As the brain is highly energy consuming, it is reduced by the body in order to save resources.
Sense of balance is just as important in the creation of visual forms as for the body as such. By standing up and walking on our two legs we have made it challenging for the brain to keep its balance. For the body, mind and the visual sense as a whole, balance is a complex interplay between our vestibular system, our proprioception and our sense of touch.
These systems are conveying information to the brain about where we are, in reality and in the visualizations of our mind, about muscles stretched or contracted, in reality and in the subconscious and conscious preconceptions of our mind. If brought out of balance, centers in the brain are brought to attention and immediately sends off countermessages to muscles and joint tendons for the correction of movements.
The same goes for an idea or the development of a line, shape, light or colours.
We are confronted with the same electronic force controlling all life processes on earth and in the universe. Electromagnetic energy, a founding force of life, surrounds us everywhere. Energy carried by photones between charged particles. The interchange of photones creating attraction or repulsion, but forces also working their influence on the atomic scale.
Surrounding atoms clouds of electrones are circling, and due to their electromagnetic attraction interconnecting with those of other atoms. These forces thus playing a major role in any chemical reaction, including man’s biochemical life processes and those of any other living beings.
A force of boundless reach and the foundation of phenomena like the sun and electrical light sources, and by way of colour frequencies and curvilinear tonespans giving organic form to visual impressions.
The retina of the eye has 130 million rods, giving us our night vision, whilst 6 million cones provide us with colour vision. We have three types of cones for photon reception, each sensitive to light within different parts of the visual spectrum: RGB, -Red -Green -Blue.
The sharpness of our vision is focused by the Fovea Centralis, a tiny cavity in the center of the macula lutea, the «yellow spot» of the retina. The depth of the fovea may function as an autoindicator similar to the autofocus of a camera.
Visual impressions to the macula occupies a significant part of the brains’ visual ability. Without colour vision the surroundings become blurred and sunlight bothersome.
The signals received by the visual cortex consist of pulse activity in local neural circuits, and it is difficult to understand how our sensory experience through sound and vision arises.
We do not currently know how, each in their own way, they are given a «qualitative» character of experience explained by signal activity.
Noone has been able to point out a specific area of the corticothalamic system with a separate responsibility for consciousness. Consciousness being an emerging essence.
Consciousness, our ability to experience and register whatever impacts upon us, and successively happens between us and our surroundings or the images created by our brain.
Consciousness is characterized by a regular, if not continuous, experience of the self, as a person, and/or as a creator of images, relating to important events in ones life. Consciousness shows a tendency of interpreting visual impressions, many of our visual experiences are, for example, not an exact replica of the image registered by our eyes.
The blind spot of the retina corresponds to the area where the visual nerve leaves the eye.
But noone has found a particular area within the thalamocortical system supervising consciousness. Still, if the thalamocortical system is partitioned, consciousness is also divided.
Different parts of the thalamocortical system contributes to diverse aspects of conscious experience, in particular when it comes to the processing of sensory information. Thalamocortical pathways will for example be carrying information about form and colour, and for the auditive system about sound frequencies and/or their localization.
We do know something about how the brain works. But we still do not understand how weak electrical currents streaming along nerve cells can become consciousness and free will.
We do not know what consciousness is, nor exactly where it exists. Consciousness makes use of all of the brain. Consciousness arises as a result of processes in different areas of the brain. First of all the cerebrum and the brainstem.
Consciousness belongs to phenomena difficult to understand.
The subconscious do also belong to the phenomena difficult to understand.
The subconscious, a common designation for psychological processes, notions, movements of thought, tones, physical acts, of which a person is lacking awareness.
Noticing the end result of a process comes easier than the process itself or its causes. One may be aware of what one is doing, but not why, what is being felt, nor always the causes of sensation.
Sigmund Freud defined psychoanalysis as the «science of the subconscious». Visual tone art may be defined as «the science of the subconscious and the conscious».
The brain coordinates movements. In our mind we may try out a movement / a sequence of visual tones by imagining or visualizing it. And so we may develop a particular sequel of colour/line/form. The precondition being an organic interplay of subconscious and conscious, mind and physical movement.
Subconsciousness, a common designation for psychological processes, conceptions, sequences of thoughts and motor movement, of which a person is unaware.
Mental exploration/exercise improve the performative function of the brain.
For a visual and auditive artist both the mental and the physical processes are important.
Mentally, we may explore a desired movement by imagining or visualizing how we want it performed/created.
We are losing between one and two percent of the bloodstream supply through the brain per decade.
Mental exercise has been shown to improve the performance of the brain by up to 18%. The implication being that the brain can become decades younger.
This opens up a liberating process beween experience and work of art by way of the viewers’ subconscious/conscious sight and hearing. The seeing and hearing observers making the work their own.
SOURCES.
Sources of knowledge that are so well established that they may be found in professional literature and encyclopedias are not included.
MENTAL AND PHYSICAL STUDY/EXERCISE
Mental and physical study/training are each a necessary precondition for the other.
In order to study this article mentally and physically you will need a drawing/writing pad and a pencil or primary colours.
Let your vision programme your mind:
Draw a short curvilinear theme or motive, a twelve-tone sequence, a quarter-tone series, and an improvised sequel of tones.
Paint a short theme of colourtones or an improvised tone sequel.
You will be programming chosen tones into your brain by seeing, consciously and subconsciously. It will lead onto a physical motor reaction in arm and hand. A complex interplay has found place between brain, nerve cells and muscles. Several areas of the brain have contributed to the fine adjustment and correction of movement prior to the the activation of muscles for drawing or painting by way of neuronal impulses.
The process a mental and physical challenge, as the visual arts more than any others have been activating us from the moment of birth and keeps on activating us all the way through our lives. Our visual traces are releasing strong emotions in society, and in the single individual, within the span of life and death.
BIOCHEMICAL CIRCULATORY SYSTEM OF THE BRAIN
A living being may resemble a computing machine. Software providing hardware with the acts to be performed. But in the human being there is no hardware made from electronics, but instead a biochemical circulatory system. A circulatory system consisting of a variety of DNA molecules releasing yet other molecules given the right conditions.
Animals activate their newborn from the moment of birth.
The human brain may respond when stimulated in a number of areas – without preprogramming. The nerve cells are charged with receiving impressions from the body and its surroundings, processing them, sending off necessary signals to muscles and glands, making the body’s adaption to current conditions possible.
We are not aware of any other single object more complex than the brain. It contains about a hundred billion neurons. A neuron being the cell characteristic of the nervous system.
The circulatory system in any living being – including the human – evolves from an egg.
For the evolution of all life forms the coupling of genes, their crossing over and mutations are important. Biological knowledge will increasingly come to influence the workplace and our daily lives, its impact on culture will change our view of ourselves and of nature.
We are living in the century of biology.
The human being, the ape and information technology share our unique colour vision:
RGB: Red / Green / Blue. Corresponding to our three types of rods in the eyes’ retina.
The RGB of nature and the curvilinear tone system exist as a unity.
Sight, brain and motor skills are activated simultaneously in any creative process. With conscious and subconscious processes fulfilling each other. The visual system has a central place in our ability to survive. We experience in order to live and survive. It is the very potential of aesthetic community and collective experience.
The visual sense is as a rule associated with our eyes, but the brain in truth playing the decisive role when it comes to creation of meaning from all the visual impressions we are receiving. Sight and mind are sensing and reflecting in several dimensions. Mind and motor skills must be activated simultaneously in any creative process, in our incomparable biological informational machinery – our very own brain. Less than half of our brain is used for processing and interpreting visual impressions. It is highly energy consuming. Among living creatures no more than a third can actually see. Another third are able to distinguish between nuances of light and darkness, the last third being blind. The body makes hard priorities with its energy.
The eye comes into being as a brain protrusion of the developing fetus and for the grown human being eyes and brain are closely connected.
The brain sets its own goals, finds how to achieve them and executes its own plan; records, interprets and relates to the meaning of actions and emotional reactions, and responds adequately. The brain improvises and makes absolutely independent decisions.
In 1981 the two neuroscientists David H. Hubel of the neurological department at Harvard Medical School and Torsten N. Wiesel in Sweden, was awarded the Nobel Prize for their joint discovery regarding the information processing of the visual system. They discovered how brain cells decode nerve impulses from the eye. They also found the ability of brain cells undertaking this decoding to be depending upon the reception of visual impressions made immediately after the moment of birth. The brain is a true master when it comes to sorting objects in rapidly accessible categories. All human beings are, for example, put into a box for «faces».
The infant brain prioritizes vision as necessary for breastfeeding and recognition of parents. The area for language is, at first, not strictly necessary, and can thus be postponed until later. From the very first the child uses every single one of its senses. Studies faces, listens and recognizes voices, and smells its mother, tastes skin and feels when touched. The infant seeks the breast immediately after birth. Imitates facial impressions.
Once birth has found place, the newborn’s struggle for survival begins. Once born, after a couple of minutes the foal or calf lifts its head in order to orientate itself. After about an hour it will get up on its legs. The brain challenged by the movements of this new «life». Mental and physical processes are on its way.
The neurologist Benjamin Libet’s experiments led to a reassessment of the idea of free will in 1983. He found that the brain activity preceding conscious decision-making is a contingency potential. In 2007, the Berlin-based neurologist, professor John Dylan Haynes performed brain scans showing that some of our decisions are registrable up to 7 – seven – seconds ahead. For example, when we make a decision based on what we see, groups of brain cells starts gathering evidence fitting different outcomes. All of our thoughts, feelings and experiences are the result of electrical and chemical reactions in the brain. When this neural noise reaches a crescendo, it is crossing a threshold and reaches a conclusion. This constant neural noise is involved in all of our decisions. Those with the largest capacity for neural noise make the fastest “spontaneous” decisions. The American Professor and Psychologist Daniel Wegner, (1948 – 2013) argued that our sense of self-control is simply self-deception. He presented countless examples showing that we are not in control of our own actions, though we may think we are. In the unconscious mind, brain and motor movement are directing our feelings, thoughts and actions.
In 2001 the neurologist Marcus Raichle of the Washington University School of Medicine in the United States was one of the first to understand that our conscious actions are negligible as compared to the total activity of brain. Previously, conscious nerve signals had been the primary focus of research, all other brain activity viewed as noise on the measuring devices. But Raichle discovered that what formerly was considered background noise came from a huge network, which he named the Default Mode network, an idleness network, also called a task-negative network, active whilst we are observing and relaxing.
A small part of this network is, according to Raichle, responsible for daydreaming that constantly tears us away from work against our will. But the main part of the network is most likely busy with activities we know nothing about. Activity that, independent of consciousness, determines reactions to our surroundings.
In 2013, the researchers managed for the first time to survey this network in detail.
A team from Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung in Germany, led by Anders Horn, examined the brain activity of 19 adults. The subjects were placed in a large body scanner, relaxing whilst the team of German scientists were scanning deeply into the brain of each one of them. The scanner captured the shapes and position of individual nerve cells and simultaneously mapped brain region energy consumption down to the smallest detail.
Neuroimaging revealed which nerve cells exchanged signals with each other when the brain was relaxing. Its activity was concentrated in a few thick bundles of nerve cells connecting the main center of the task-negative network in the posterior singular cortex deep within the brain, the prefrontal cortex at the forehead and the temporal lobes on the side of the brain. But this network is not static. A group of Chinese and American researchers in 2017/2018 surveyed for the first time how it constantly adapts to the world around us. They scanned the brains of 14 subjects who were set up to perform various tasks. They were were first to remain quiet and relaxed, then asked to press various buttons, depending on the type of geometric shapes they saw on the screen. Finally, they would relax again. The experiment revealed that the task-negative network uses different nerve pathways when the brain is engaged in active action than when resting. But the most surprising discovery was that the network structure was different after the action than before. The researchers concluded that the network can expand along the way, accounting for new impressions.
Other research has shown that consciousness has amazingly little control over what is going on around us.
Our eyes and ears are constantly bombarded by a jumble of light and sounds. Researchers have found that our eyes transmit about six million signals to the brain every second. Nevertheless, consciousness probably receives about a hundred of the impressions, that is, 0.002 percent.
To reach consciousness, sensory impressions must pass through a so-called importance network, which from the areas of the insula and the anterior singular cortex deep within the brain monitors our perception network. This network sorts impressions deserving access to our conscious networks. The activity in the idleness network is thus shut down, and the so-called action network comes on track. The action network connects the brain’s frontal lobes with the movement center at the back of the temporal lobes and ensures that you are in action mode. But here we are 7 seconds later than the conclusions of our subconscious. The unconscious networks have in practice full control, and our consciousness has little say in the brain’s decisions. We have reason to be happy that the unconscious network of the brain relates as it does to the outside world. Other research has shown that our consciousness does not have to worry much about what is going on around us.
Of all the art forms the visual ones come closest to the field of tension Life – Death. Therefore, visual art of any kind is a challenge, for society and for the individual. Power is control over others. Physical violence a defeat. Victory can only be won by visual means. Refer the Chinese «Art of War». Conceived 7000 years ago, containing texts going back 14000 years.
The written language and visual art of China relate to a common heritage of visual culture, with sight, mind and motor skills elevated into a higher unity from the moment of birth. Nerve cells decode nerve signals received from the eye.
The number of brain cells stays more or less the same from birth to death and is significantly larger in humans than among animals – with the number of interconnections rising drastically through childhood and adolescence. It concerns, as shown in a number of studies, areas controlling association and integration. A human being is born with a greater associative ability than any ape can develop. Vision, brain, motor skills must be activated in unison, with conscious and subconscious processes fulfilling each other.
The visual system will convey information about colour frequencies and form,
The auditive system sound frequencies and their localization.
Sight and brain open up the possibility of visual pitch.
The brain evaluates impressions within a fraction of a second, ordering and analyzing every detail.
Visual pitch means 3D vision – an ability to perceive, and act on, light – electromagnetic radiation, among which colour frequencies, curvilinear tone relations, and musical image structures. Absolute visual pitch – the ability to assess absolute tonal pitch for colour frequencies and curvilinear tones.
All life in nature has its form given by curvilinear tones.
The sensitivity of the human eye covers a span of frequencies from 380 to 760 nanometers (nm); visible light a narrow sector of the electromagnetic wave spectrum perceptible to the eye. With artificial light the limits of visible light may be expanded sligthly towards ca. 312 – 1050 nm.
But the eyes also convey other properties than the purely chromatic, such as visual depth, form, position, relative size and movement. Visual pitch a parallell to auditive pitch; pitch the ability to fathom sound frequencies / tonal relations and musical structures. Absolute pitch: The ability to assess absolute tonal height and localization.
Visual and auditive pitch have parallell tonal spans : colour and sound frequencies. Decoding by brain cells of nerve signals received from the eyes and the ears being a precondition of mental and physical training within the visual arts and music, contained within our strategies of life and survival.
Visual and auditive tonal art forms a unity on the basis of diverse combinations of frequencies:
Pitch – Reverberation – Cluster – Noise – White noise – Overtones – Limitless tonal space.
RGB, the foundation of man’s colour vision. The tonal sequence: Horizontally = The Surface. Vertically = Space.
Our way of relating to space is our relation to each other. The flattened surface is a wall against nature.
The age of machines has led to a devalutation of the relation of sight/hearing and brain. For the visual artists it came to mean a concensus that painting exists on a surface. The relation of vision and mind to space was suppressed and displaced. As noted by Professor Øyvind Storm Bjerke of the University in Oslo in the article «Rolf Aamot – Digital photopaintings», Preus Museum, 2003:
«Whichever choice any of the individual artists made, there was a fundamental agreement among them that a painting was two-dimensional and that whatever found place in an image existed on a surface. Respecting the flatness of a painting became a central concern. A successful image would appear in the form of a decorative pattern on a flat surface, before being any other thing – such as for example a tree. An accomplished image would come together as a visual unity of matter, colour and form conforming to the idea of its two-dimensionality».
The eyes and the brain, together, see in three dimensions, strongly concentrating on movement in space, able to focus with the speed of lightning on changes in our field of vision. Every single time we are moving there is a complex cooperation of brain, nerve cells and muscles. The process involving several brain centers finely adjusting and correcting the movement prior to the activation of muscles by nerve signals.
The visual system will carry information about colour frequencies and form,
The auditive system about sound frequencies and their localization.
The visual field contains an enormous abundance of details, whereof merely a very small fraction has any interest for the observer. The interpretation of images by the brain therefore happening as fast and efficient as possible, including the linkage of images with our memory. The brain is a true master of sorting objects in easily accessible categories, assessing impressions by the fraction of a second, regrouping and analyzing them in every detail.
The two cerebral hemispheres consist of four parts, lobes: a frontal lobe, the parietal and temporal lobes, and the occipital lobe. The surface of each of them is covered by the cerebral cortex. It is superior to the rest of the nervous system. Consciousness, thoughts, emotions, memory, sensory impressions and will -controlled movements, are just some of the examples of everything the cerebral cortex is responsible for. But since it has so many different tasks, a division of labor is natural, between different parts of the cerebral cortex. Therefore, diverse functions are controlled from different areas, appearing like a jigsaw puzzle over the cerebral cortex.
We may locate many very specific tasks to particular locations of the cerebral cortex. There are however still large areas where we are unable to assign any singular function. These are important for awareness, thoughts, feelings, ingenuity and much more. We call the mass occasion areas.
But these locations, in diverse parts of the brain, also have different tasks. Interesting in this context are the large association areas in the frontal lobes.
In humans, the association areas make up as much as 80% of the total cerebral cortex. The more defined functional areas are constantly in contact with the association cortex and cooperate with them. They interpret sensory impressions and relay from experience. They are responsible both for various intellectual functions and for our personality. Personality, a collective term for the character of a person’s way of thinking, feeling and acting. We are using the whole of our brain all the time. Precisely the use of all the association areas in the cerebral cortex is absolutely necessary to make us independent thinking individuals. If we compare the brain from different species, it is obvious that the frontal part of the brain -the frontal lobes -is relatively much larger in humans, where they are making up the largest part of the brain. It is precisely the frontal lobes that are responsible for many of the qualities that make man special, and each of us completely unique. Here the central elements of our
personality is determined, such as self-awareness, conscience, moral considerations, judgment, coping with problems, analyzing the consequences of action, self-criticism, initiative, mood, and much more.
We may say the frontal lobes are connecting intellect, memory and emotions, ensuring a person appears wholesome, sensible and controlled. In many ways, the function of the frontal lobes shapes the person, as such – the frontal lobes are you: you are the frontal lobes.
Genes received from our mother and father is crucial for much of the structuring of the brain. But environmental factors are also important. It all depends on the fertile conditions for the fetus and the fetal brain throughout pregnancy, whether birth goes well, and the conditions received by the brain throughout childhood. At the same time, every experience throughout life will help shape both structure of and function of the brain. It is however our innate qualities along with early experience in life that is most important for the formation of personality.
Therefore, most of us will roughly remain the same person throughout life, provided nothing injurious happens to the frontal lobes. How important they are, we may observe in people with injuries to this part of the brain or where they are diseased. In such cases, a person may change completely. Since the frontal lobes are the seat of personality, personality disorders and serious mental illnesses will also have their origin there.
CREATIVE MENTAL AND PHYSICAL TRAINING AND EXERCISE
Mental and physical exercise is important. In particular for artists, scientists and athletes. Our most important precondition for further studies, from recent research on human conciousness and decision-making, is that neuroscientists have established that we are not playing predetermined roles exempt of thought as if we were robots. Our brain performs endless complex processes, adapting to the infinitely rich experience of being human. The brain coordinates movements. We may train a desired movement by imagining or visualizing its motor performance. By exercising movements in our mind, the same happens as if we had performed them in reality, a strengthening of the neuronal patterns in our mind.
In other words, the neuronal connections necessary for the performance of movement are strengthened in our mind. The brain thus becoming better at signaling to our muscles precisely what we want them do do.
The brain functions as a biological computing machinery. The neuron = the nerve cell reacting by yes – no (1 – 0).
It is a parallell to RGB - red – green – blue.
Before the age of electronics the RGB colour model already had a solid theoretical foundation, based on man’s perception of colour.
A combination of mental and physical training is the best life challenge for us all.
«Small brain, bad eyes». The brain shrinks.
Within the last 10.000 years the brain has been shrinking by 18 percent for men and women. The reason being that technology has been taking over some of the brain’s functions. As the brain is highly energy consuming, it is reduced by the body in order to save resources.
Sense of balance is just as important in the creation of visual forms as for the body as such. By standing up and walking on our two legs we have made it challenging for the brain to keep its balance. For the body, mind and the visual sense as a whole, balance is a complex interplay between our vestibular system, our proprioception and our sense of touch.
These systems are conveying information to the brain about where we are, in reality and in the visualizations of our mind, about muscles stretched or contracted, in reality and in the subconscious and conscious preconceptions of our mind. If brought out of balance, centers in the brain are brought to attention and immediately sends off countermessages to muscles and joint tendons for the correction of movements.
The same goes for an idea or the development of a line, shape, light or colours.
We are confronted with the same electronic force controlling all life processes on earth and in the universe. Electromagnetic energy, a founding force of life, surrounds us everywhere. Energy carried by photones between charged particles. The interchange of photones creating attraction or repulsion, but forces also working their influence on the atomic scale.
Surrounding atoms clouds of electrones are circling, and due to their electromagnetic attraction interconnecting with those of other atoms. These forces thus playing a major role in any chemical reaction, including man’s biochemical life processes and those of any other living beings.
A force of boundless reach and the foundation of phenomena like the sun and electrical light sources, and by way of colour frequencies and curvilinear tonespans giving organic form to visual impressions.
The retina of the eye has 130 million rods, giving us our night vision, whilst 6 million cones provide us with colour vision. We have three types of cones for photon reception, each sensitive to light within different parts of the visual spectrum: RGB, -Red -Green -Blue.
The sharpness of our vision is focused by the Fovea Centralis, a tiny cavity in the center of the macula lutea, the «yellow spot» of the retina. The depth of the fovea may function as an autoindicator similar to the autofocus of a camera.
Visual impressions to the macula occupies a significant part of the brains’ visual ability. Without colour vision the surroundings become blurred and sunlight bothersome.
The signals received by the visual cortex consist of pulse activity in local neural circuits, and it is difficult to understand how our sensory experience through sound and vision arises.
We do not currently know how, each in their own way, they are given a «qualitative» character of experience explained by signal activity.
Noone has been able to point out a specific area of the corticothalamic system with a separate responsibility for consciousness. Consciousness being an emerging essence.
Consciousness, our ability to experience and register whatever impacts upon us, and successively happens between us and our surroundings or the images created by our brain.
Consciousness is characterized by a regular, if not continuous, experience of the self, as a person, and/or as a creator of images, relating to important events in ones life. Consciousness shows a tendency of interpreting visual impressions, many of our visual experiences are, for example, not an exact replica of the image registered by our eyes.
The blind spot of the retina corresponds to the area where the visual nerve leaves the eye.
But noone has found a particular area within the thalamocortical system supervising consciousness. Still, if the thalamocortical system is partitioned, consciousness is also divided.
Different parts of the thalamocortical system contributes to diverse aspects of conscious experience, in particular when it comes to the processing of sensory information. Thalamocortical pathways will for example be carrying information about form and colour, and for the auditive system about sound frequencies and/or their localization.
We do know something about how the brain works. But we still do not understand how weak electrical currents streaming along nerve cells can become consciousness and free will.
We do not know what consciousness is, nor exactly where it exists. Consciousness makes use of all of the brain. Consciousness arises as a result of processes in different areas of the brain. First of all the cerebrum and the brainstem.
Consciousness belongs to phenomena difficult to understand.
The subconscious do also belong to the phenomena difficult to understand.
The subconscious, a common designation for psychological processes, notions, movements of thought, tones, physical acts, of which a person is lacking awareness.
Noticing the end result of a process comes easier than the process itself or its causes. One may be aware of what one is doing, but not why, what is being felt, nor always the causes of sensation.
Sigmund Freud defined psychoanalysis as the «science of the subconscious». Visual tone art may be defined as «the science of the subconscious and the conscious».
The brain coordinates movements. In our mind we may try out a movement / a sequence of visual tones by imagining or visualizing it. And so we may develop a particular sequel of colour/line/form. The precondition being an organic interplay of subconscious and conscious, mind and physical movement.
Subconsciousness, a common designation for psychological processes, conceptions, sequences of thoughts and motor movement, of which a person is unaware.
Mental exploration/exercise improve the performative function of the brain.
For a visual and auditive artist both the mental and the physical processes are important.
Mentally, we may explore a desired movement by imagining or visualizing how we want it performed/created.
We are losing between one and two percent of the bloodstream supply through the brain per decade.
Mental exercise has been shown to improve the performance of the brain by up to 18%. The implication being that the brain can become decades younger.
This opens up a liberating process beween experience and work of art by way of the viewers’ subconscious/conscious sight and hearing. The seeing and hearing observers making the work their own.
SOURCES.
Sources of knowledge that are so well established that they may be found in professional literature and encyclopedias are not included.
MENTAL AND PHYSICAL STUDY/EXERCISE
Mental and physical study/training are each a necessary precondition for the other.
In order to study this article mentally and physically you will need a drawing/writing pad and a pencil or primary colours.
Let your vision programme your mind:
Draw a short curvilinear theme or motive, a twelve-tone sequence, a quarter-tone series, and an improvised sequel of tones.
Paint a short theme of colourtones or an improvised tone sequel.
You will be programming chosen tones into your brain by seeing, consciously and subconsciously. It will lead onto a physical motor reaction in arm and hand. A complex interplay has found place between brain, nerve cells and muscles. Several areas of the brain have contributed to the fine adjustment and correction of movement prior to the the activation of muscles for drawing or painting by way of neuronal impulses.
The process a mental and physical challenge, as the visual arts more than any others have been activating us from the moment of birth and keeps on activating us all the way through our lives. Our visual traces are releasing strong emotions in society, and in the single individual, within the span of life and death.
BIOCHEMICAL CIRCULATORY SYSTEM OF THE BRAIN
A living being may resemble a computing machine. Software providing hardware with the acts to be performed. But in the human being there is no hardware made from electronics, but instead a biochemical circulatory system. A circulatory system consisting of a variety of DNA molecules releasing yet other molecules given the right conditions.
Animals activate their newborn from the moment of birth.
The human brain may respond when stimulated in a number of areas – without preprogramming. The nerve cells are charged with receiving impressions from the body and its surroundings, processing them, sending off necessary signals to muscles and glands, making the body’s adaption to current conditions possible.
We are not aware of any other single object more complex than the brain. It contains about a hundred billion neurons. A neuron being the cell characteristic of the nervous system.
The circulatory system in any living being – including the human – evolves from an egg.
For the evolution of all life forms the coupling of genes, their crossing over and mutations are important. Biological knowledge will increasingly come to influence the workplace and our daily lives, its impact on culture will change our view of ourselves and of nature.
We are living in the century of biology.