Brian May the seeing blindman.... maybe it's time to consider all the senses?

In my 2D paintings, I currently rely on evoking the senses through seeing, but this documentary has made me think that I may be able to enrich the experience by employing the other senses with sculpture, taste and smell, and 'other than music' sound. Brain May's story in this film shows seeing to be of limited use without everything else thats in play. If I suddenly lost my signt, what use would my work be to me. Could I continue to use it to help me sustain good mental health. Could I continue in another way. Maybe its time to start exploring other media?.

The Brain with David Eagleman. ‘What is Reality, Series 1 Episode 1’. (2016). Eden. 21st January.

How 3 lbs of jelly like material becomes us?? WHAT IS REALITY.

Everything around us in a illusion constructed in our head. The Brain takes in information and process it to become our reality. The Twist is the brain edits, it interprets the data. Perception has less to do with whats out there and more to do with whats happening inside our brain.

The brain sits in a sealed chamber in darkness in isolation. We have portals to the outside world to gather the info that activates the electro chemical sigmals that flow through the neurons in our head. The brain has to sit through the info to find patterns make patterns to present us with a reality.

Seeing is so much more than the information we get through our eyes. Brian May is a man who lost his sight at the age of three and a half. His site was restored through stem cell treatment 40 years later. Brain regained his sight but was overwhelmed. Signs on motorways appeared as if they were going to hit the car. His blond twins were indistinguishable. He didn’t have face recognition. He was a paralymic skier but his first sighted ski was a disaster. 10 years on he still needs his guide dog to get around. He can’t judge distance. See faces or read words on a page.

The brain needs so much more to construct reality. The brain has so many areas. Motion, edges, colours, faces somehow the brain weaves this together to produce what we recognise as an image.

Babies reach out to touch objects to make sense of what they are seeing. Cross referencing everything. What we touch affects what we see. Our senses depend on each other and we then get a sense of this moment. Timing complicates this. Our senses work at different speeds but it feels to us when we hear a gun shot at the start of the race immediately the atheletes start to move. Processing and cross referenceing takes tenths of a second difference so in fact there is a delay.

The visual processing area take up over a third of the brain. Every sense takes different amounts of time but our Brain hides all this to make it seem synchronised. The brain edits and presents us with a story. So in fact we live in the past. There is a half second between an event happening and our perception of that event.

Think of the brain as a city…. Where is the economics of the city? You ask…. It happens throughout. Some areas of brain city are more responsible for colour motion….. nothing operates in isolation…. It depends on interaction…. And out of this is your version of reality.

The raw materials are gathered by sensory preceptors which become electrical and chemical energy to be processed by the neurons in the brain.

Reality is the brains ultimate construction. When you take stimulation away… the brain continues to construct but reality just becomes strange.

No sound and light Robert Luke at Alcatraz. The dark hold. 29 straight days. How wold you act. Pitch black. Starved of input the brain constructs its own reality. Reported by other prisioner. Beyond dreaming. The brain starved of new input.

Looking deeper into the visual system… Data…Through the Thalmus to the visual cortex…. But theres six times the amount coming the other ways…. So seeing relies more on info inside our heads…. Remove the world and the show still goes on. Generate it’s own imagery

Moment to moment is what we experience isn’t out there….

The world is a beautiful rendered simulation….. the internal model…….. and it’s vital to our ability to function……

Instead of using new data to process reality…… it uses the internal model comparison at….. it makes assumptions about what has already has been seen…. A model already seen….. updating it ….correcting it…….

Sometimes we see this processing at work when we are presented with visual illusions….. the concave convex image of Einstein…..

Thanks to the internal model the world out the remains stable……. Data to the thalamus uploaded to the visual cortex…. But much more send back to the thalamus from the internal model….. the upload constantly updating the internal model and …… then presenting us with what we experience as reality.

The world remains stable even when I move……… a video camera moving in the same way will produce a nauseating jerky view…..

1960’s ….. Paul Jarvis Russian psychologist ….‘THE UNEXPECTED VISITOR’ a painting provided as the focus of an experiment to understand how people see. Putting on glasses that track participants eye movements. Particpants have a few seconds to gather information…..are asked to look at and work out what is happening in the painting…… Then specific questions …. Most of which are answered incorrectly …even though participants have had the time to gather the visual info… and model the reality of the painting…. Everyone thinks that the know what’s in the painting….. how many children … no paintings… wrong answer…

The experiment reveals that The internal model provides us with a rough sketch of what is happening …. To be able to answer the first question…. but as we are unable to answer subsequent questions , despite having seen the information in the painting…. We need more than just vision signals to be able to understsand what we see….. or just to see….

Just because you put your eyes on on object doen’t mean that you’ve seen it…

Colour doesn’t exist…. Electro magnective waves bounce off objects….at certain speed…..the visible spectrum of light…… a tiny fraction of the spectrums…. Electro magnetic waves aren’t picked up because our biology doesn’t allow us to experience it….

Each creature perceives what it has evolved to perceive…… and who knows if what one individual perceives is what others perceive…

Synaesthesthes prove this to the extreme….. Eagleman has studied over 6000 people….

All sensory info is made from same stuff………electro chemical signals…

Blurred borders of brain city districts…… Some people SEE MUSIC…. Proves that perception changes from person to person…. And changes over time……

TIME….. brains experience time……. Slowly or quickly…….. car crash….falling….. physics says that constant time……

Moments of Terror…. Falling for a Living…… JED…… hit a rock in a stunt….. 6 seconds elapsed…… but his perception it lasted so much more….

What was happening…….. why did JED think time was so slow…. A trick or reality…. It possible that the brain tells a unique different story…

Brain the ultimate storyteller……. It take time to

In a critical situation an area of the brain called the The amygdala kicks into gear….….. when in play ….. comandeers the resources of the brain and forces everything to attend to the current situation…. It makes the version of reality so much more vivid….. memories are laid down in a far more vivd way….. more information at your diposal to work out how to stay alive…. When replayed in the memory they appear to have taken more time….. a trick of the memory that wrote the reality of JEDs time…….

Brain plays a trick so that we think we’ve seen the reality…..

The reality that we experience takes extensive training so that we can interpret the world….. time to process means that we live in the past…. Reality is something that is created inside our head

The trickle of electro chemical stimulus is processed in diferrent ways….. Each brain carries its own unique model of what happens in the world around us….. So reality is whatever the brain says it is……