→ between the reader and the world is the lens

An instrument of natural magic may reappear as a philosophical instrument, as an instrument of entertainment, or as a practical "invention" in a new guise" (Hankins and Silverman, 1995)

 

I. 

and all we are left with is the world
window vinyls and a set of three artists’ books, including viewing devices



On Wednesday, February 25th, 2015 In a Bookshell opens at Milton Gallery @ St Paul's School, SW13 9JT, London. Among many wonderful, innovative, surprising and creepy pieces of bookworks Collective Investigations will also have two pieces on display: 1. between one hand and another (a video installation) and 2. and all we are left with is the world (book installation). This blogpost refers to the first one.

and all we are left with is the world is an installation about perception. It consists of three artist's books and three viewing lenses on the window sill. The books contain scholarly quotes on optics, solipsism, and sensory experience. The lenses guide viewer’s attention to the book and then through it and into the warped space beyond, inviting us to consider the systems of perception as part of our relationship with the surrounding environment.

II.

Books and spectacles go together like horse and carriage, strawberries and cream, oysters and champagne (not quite, but always worth mentioning). Stereotypical geeks carry books and wear glasses. Bill Gates does, for example. Apparently, 53% of university graduates are nearsighted and require reading aids, as compared with 24% of those, who did not even complete secondary education.

Glasses, like books, feature often in portraiture of academically accomplished individuals and those would would wish to be considered as such. For ages men have used spectacles as props to embellish the aura of their professionalism in painting and photographs, says William Rosenthal, a collector of visual aids (Rosenthal, 1996).

and all we are left with is the world (see above ↑ ) deals with the metaphysics of looking through a lense and the sensory-perceptual experience of it. Below, ↓ I will mention a few fun, curious and wonderful devices that are part of the history of spectacles.

Apparently, there is no such thing as concise history of spectacles, because there is no agreement as for who and where invented them. Marco Polo observed elderly Chinese use spectacles in 1270. Chinese claim, that spectacles originated in the 11th century Arabia. (1)  In the meantime, in Europe Vikings were already able to grind lenses out of rock crystal. However, "proper" first spectacles are often attributed to the Italians of the Veneto region. (2)

With the invention of mechanical printing and subsequent rapid growth of publishing industries, the need for reading devices increased and inexpensive spectacles became widely available from peddlers. Finally, in the 1600s the spectacles as we recognise them now were born: the two lenses were finally fixed to a rigid bridge allowing them to stay in place on top on the nose. (1)

Here are a few fun, curious and wonderful devices from the history of spectacles:

a.)
  ↓

From 17th century spectacles were were sold by instrument makers, who also traded in compasses, zograscopes, telescopes and other fantastical "scientific toys", that coexisted together with a range of other more or less useful instruments. Among them, were faceted lenses - multiplying glasses - which were used for entertainment and were treated as a luxury commodity: they were produced in expensive materials and were generously decorated (Stafford and Terpak, 2001).


b.)
 ↓

 

Another use for faceted lenses came in the form of perspective glass, or vue d'optique, which produced a convincing sense of perspective. The trick was, to have the faceted side of the lens facing the viewer, so the concave produced a slight warping effect to the image beyond it.


 c.)
   ↓

Personally, I find optical fans most fascinating! Some fans had tiny telescopes set into the centers, others had lorgnette frames folding away into the guardsticks. However, the most exciting were spyhole fans. 

For short sight a single concave lens could be mounted in one of the spyholes, effectively forming a Quizzer or Quizzing Glass. This was then further developed into a Galilean telescope by mounting a convex lens in the outer guardstick and a concave lens in the inner guardstick. Lining up the holes in the intervening sticks, when the fan was closed and the blades rested upon one another, produced a simple tube with a lens at each end. The resulting spyglass could even be adjusted for focus by varying the separation of the closed sticks. (3)

III. 

Lens devices used in art, including book art, are varied, but not abundant. Here are a couple of the works that I found most interesting. I have chosen one work of each (kind of) category.


a.) installation lens/vision
  ↓

Haruka Kojin explores the distortion of reality through her piece "Contact Lens". Two types of lenses are used, one completely flat and clear and the other with a warped surface to create interconnected circles of varying sizes. As the light travels through the acrylic, the images on the other side are flipped and contorted, changing the experience of the space. since the elements are clear with no frames or distinct features of its own, the physical material merges into the environment, only visible through the transformation it causes. 
 
b.) installation lens/light
  ↓

IPOcle by Candas Sisman is a light installation produced with lenses, light, mirror, sound, container, and fog. It simulates the way we perceive the physical reality and the various layers, variables, cycles that are present in this process of perceiving. These perceptions draw our perceptual schemas and these schemas in turn shape the reality we perceive. Our perceptions and what we perceive, therefore, constantly reshape call each other into being, as in a vicious cycle. At this point, how can we define what reality really is, what constant can we refer to, and aren’t we supposed to look at this issue in a more holistic and intertwined manner?

c.) book lens/vision
  ↓ 

Strictly speaking, this is not a work that uses lens in the optical sense of it. Artist's book READ by Jackie Batey is about the act of reading. The book was inspired by Our Mutual Friend and takes the first 20 pages of this novel but hides within them a Dickens' quote on reading. The quote describes reading as being like a code, whereby the initiated can open the world of books. The quote is hidden word by word on each page in pale turquoise that can only be seen clearly when viewed through the red lens on of the magnifying glass.

c.) artefacts lens/surprise
  ↓ 

A Glimpse of Heaven by Keith Lo Bue is an optical device made of industrial shop ruler, clockspring, brass, brass hardware, steel, engraving, book end paper, glass bead, lenses, paper, text, soil. Keith Lo Bue's works connect disparate phenomena: reality and surreality; preservation and decay; memory and forgetting.




.

An instrument of natural magic may reappear as a philosophical instrument, as an instrument of entertainment, or as a practical "invention" in a new guise" (Hankins and Silverman, 1995)

 Sources:

(1) Ophthalmic Heritage & Museum of Vision
(2) The College of Optometrisists
(3) Online Museum and Encyclopaedia of Vision Aids 
 


Hankins, Thomas L. and Robert J. Silverman. 1995. Instruments and the Imagination. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. p. 221.
Rosenthal, William J. 1996. Spectacles and Other Vision Aids. San Francisco, CA: Norman Publishing. p. 358.
Strafford, Barbara Maria and Frances Terak (eds.) 2001. Devices of Wonder: from the World in a Box to Image on a Screen. Los Angeles: Getty Publications. p185.

[Egidija]

the false azure in the windowpane

I went to the V&A to see 'Double Space' this week that forms part of the London Design Festival. I went with the specific aim to see this installation, as we have been talking a lot together about reflections for a piece of work we are putting together for Art Language Location in Cambridge that is coming up in Ocotber. We have been having conversations about what is seen, what is experienced and what is real. Focusing in on a quote from Vladimir Nabokov's 'Pale Fire': 

'I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane;' (1)

A bird tricked by the seemingly lifelike reflection of the sky in the window flies straight into it and dies. 

We will be installing work on the widow of the philosophy library, that draws on the dual nature of a widows ability to reflect the world around it and also at the same time to be seen through. It is then our point of perception that interprets this layered reflection and transparency. Pulling apart the different spaces and trying to make sense of them. What is outside the window can appear inside, through its reflection and vice versa. What we are working on has become an exploration in destinguishing the truth of spaces and how we know a reflection as a reflection and the room beyond the window as the room. Nabokov goes on to say: 

'And from inside, too, I'd duplicate

Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:

Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass

Hang all the furniture above the grass,

And how delightful when a fall of snow

Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so 

As to make chair and bed exactly stand

Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!' (2)

Peter Jones - 'that crystal land' (3)

It suggests that the reflection can construct a parrelel space identical to the one that you are in, confusing the genuineness of the reflection and merging it with what is beyond the glass. 

This brings me nicely to the installation at the V&A. Two large aeroplane wing shapped mirrored pannels are suspended from a structure in the gallery. They are positioned high up in the eaves in the Raphael galleries and rotate in a choreographed pattern. The work has been created by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, it reflects everything in the room, the ceiling, the paintings and the people moving about below them. Of the work they say this: “It will amaze the visitor and enable them to appreciate the space in a totally new way, the visitor becomes part of the room for a fleeting moment. Through movement and reflections, the static display of the paintings are brought to life while inviting the viewer and the gallery to be part of the performance.’’ (4)

It is an amazing experience, a mirror that moves like a boat on the sea bobs back and forth reflecting a distorted room. It highlights parts that you may never have noticed before. The ceiling gets pulled down into the room, the floor gets pulled up into the ceiling. Its a strange phenomenon. The room all of a sudden has doubled in size but no extra space has been created. But this doubled space is not a true lifelike representation. The fact that it moves for one, but also the fact that the mirror is curved. the reflection is a distortion. It puts me in mind of the Nabokov quote. The way a window can project a reflection of the room you are in outside, these mirrors rather than project out project into themselves whats below them. Everything is absorbed but unlike the bird in Norbokov's pale fire you are not tricked into the illusion, you can see the room and the reflection in one glance. A double space that is more about the experience rather than the ilusion. Edward Barber says: "We wanted people to come in and take something away that was an experience rather than an analysis of an object." (5) 

You are experiencing the room in a new way and seeing parts you may never have seen before. The artwork that is already in the space almost becomes irrelevant. It is the room that is important and reinterpreting it on that scale is something you have to experience yourself. The reflection brings attention to yourself in relation to this space and you become central to everything. With your interpretation the room stretches out from you in and then again in the reflection 

Through this work and through the Nabokov texts I have learnt that the body is essential to the construction of this experience. It is your perception of the reflection that creates it as a space.

I strongly advise you to go and experience this work for yourself, as there is little you can gain from seeing the images. The design festival runs from 13th to 22nd September. For more information visit: http://www.londondesignfestival.com/ You can see our work in Cambridge from 15th October to 2nd November for more information visit http://artlanguagelocation.wordpress.com/

[George]

1. & 2. NABOKOV, V. Pale Fire. 1962

3. JONES, P. the crystal land. 2012 http://instagram.com/p/QczUo9q-7J/?modal=true

4. http://www.vam.ac.uk/ 2014 http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/london-design-festival-at-the-v-and-a-2014/installations/

5. www.dezeen.com 2014 http://www.dezeen.com/2014/09/15/barber-osgerby-double-space-rotating-mirrors-installation-va-museum-london-design-festival-2014/