The human brain has the remarkable ability to resolve the ambiguity in the world around it. We evolved to create form, shape, texture and colour from two tiny, upside-down and inherently meaningless images on the back of our retina. In fact, our brain is so good at this, that we sometimes see dragons in clouds on a summer day, or faces on the moon at night. Seeing the unseen reminds us that what we see normally is not a reflection of what is ‘out there’, but what proved useful to see in the past.
This project grew from a common interest in the area of perceptual ambiguity, shared by artist Madi Boyd and UCL neuroscientists Drs Mark Lythgoe and Beau Lotto, who have worked together on this mutually inclusive project – the Point of Perception. Boyd initially created a piece of work composed of lines in three dimensional space and digital projections. Many viewers are unable to ascertain the size and dimensions of the work and feel compelled to gaze at it, perhaps because without sufficient information about the limits of the work, they inhabit a perceptual tipping point of knowing and not knowing – a place where the mind can’t rest.
Boyd, Lythgoe and Lotto became interested in exploring this ‘tipping point’ together, to discover if they could combine science and art to identify a critical mass for perceptual information. In the first stage of research for their project, they used the tools of scientific observation to investigate the boundaries between form and formlessness, abstraction and representation, and the limits of depth perception. As the project evolved they expanded their collaborative base, calling on the expertise of material scientist Dr Mark Miodownik and developmental biologist Ben Martynoga. Together, they discussed ways of creating and presenting an artwork that would itself be a “laboratory,” an experimental arena in which to play with perception. After several meetings and hundreds of ideas, they set out to produce a spatial experience which would allow people to discover the ambiguity inherent in their own perception, as well as to tease out the emotions created by ambiguous spaces.
The group was determined to create a space with more than one possible perceptual resolution, such as a space which could simultaneously be big and small, or where the geometry could be restructured to perceptually shift dimensions. This type of ambiguous or malleable space would emphasize how an audience resolves perceptual ambiguity and what story the brain tells itself about such improbable environments.
Fusing art and science requires avoiding the pitfalls of relying too heavily on one field or the other, of using the art to explain the science or the science to validate the art investigation. To find this perfect fusion, it has been important that the project remain genuinely interdisciplinary, allowing the collaborators to exchange with each other the perspectives provided by their different fields of investigation. The journey of this collaboration is as important as the final work and as such the space represents an ongoing experimental conversation as well as concluding process..