Dr Issac Herskowitz Final Report
(1) Anthropercetion
In reference to the proposal
which I submitted entitled “Cultivating the ‘Faculties of Anthropomorphic Perception’ ”, which was
approved on October 25th 2007, I indicated that I was seeking to
prove that my method of perceiving alternate realities within any image that I
beheld was one that could be taught and therefore I would demonstrate that fact
by using a website. This website would serve to introduce viewer to a technique
of extreme scrutiny, which would reveal in scrutinized image, possibly unintended
yet recognizably plausible images. This perception could serve to enhance the
viewer’s imaginative faculties revealing to him inadvertent hidden possibilities
hitherto unseen by previous observers or even the creator of the subject image.
This didactic method
generated much enthusiasm in those who spent the time to peruse the website and
partake of this experiment by responding to the quizzes and essays built into
the website. The results of the tests and quizzes produced a certain degree of
success although not as much as the enthusiasm of participants reacting to
their perception. There were some responses that were extremely gratifying
since the experiment was based on experiences that everyone with a modicum of
imagination has encountered, but never actively pursued artistically. One of
the more inspiring responses was from someone (one of my former high school
teachers) who did not respond to the test and quizzes due to a busy schedule,
but enthusiastically expresses her personal delight in her perceptual
experiences because they invoked her own similar childhood experiences.
The experiment (project) was
tested with adults who, in most cases, could invoke their childhood reveries of
psychic journeys of their youth to pass the time during their moments of
juvenile solitude. These were people who could remember their days as poor
children creating mental devices to assuage the deficiencies of their material
penury. They were people who recognized the affinity of this technique to the Rorschach
test and that its similarity to the playful perceptive games that everyone
played when looking at the clouds or droplets of water on a table. It is
therefore designed to invoke in all participants something that is latent in
everyone and therefore generate interest and attention. Everyone who responded
to the experiment was familiar with this type of perception, but had seldom
pursued it beyond their puerile adventure. However, none had completely lost
these perceptive faculties and were quick to invoke those bygone days. Many,
however, acknowledged their ignorance at how far these experiences could go and
the eventual products that could materialize from such a perceptive experience.
I chose to employ a website
to construct this experiment because of the accessibility of the internet. A
website would make it accessible in the computer lab at any school, at home on
a PC, or on the move with a laptop at an airport or anywhere else with internet
connectivity. It is accessible even through a blackberry or cell phones with
internet access. A website can even be accessed through a PSP (Play Station
Portable), as my young nephew did. Hence, through the internet, accessibility
would be maximized making it available to the entire world and hopefully start
a trend in art appreciation. The final product images are paintings that I have
executed in the past and also some that I specifically produced for the
project. They are reinterpretations of famous old-master paintings which I have
reworked to create an alternate reality within the recognizable contours of the
source image (the old-master painting). This method, although it has been used
in the past, has not been extensively employed in art history and has not been
explored, in my opinion, to its fullest potential. Although one may dismiss it
as puerile games, it involves advance ocular science that has not been fully
explored even by scientists to determine the full extent of the ocular pleasure
that may be derived through this method of retinal reversal. So this technique
of perception has a scientific component for even the erudite scientists to
explore and investigate the phenomenon of such visual possibilities that can be
experienced by any sighted person with a modicum of imagination.
In designing the website, I
employed HTML language to create the pages. Included in this site is a
Power-Point presentation which serves to introduce the viewer to the final
results of this type of perception vis à
vis some of the most famous and familiar iconic images in Western art. The
technique revealed hitherto unseen hidden images, although probably unintended
by the original creators of these masterpieces. This Power point introduction
was to whet the appetite of the viewer and challenge him to learn to develop
his perceptive skills through careful scrutiny of images. This is further
reinforced by a parade of other famous images of Western Art juxtaposed for
comparison with my production of its final result image.
My major demonstration in
image scrutiny and discovery employed an array of minute details of Leonardo da
Vinci’s iconic Mona Lisa. Using a piece of software called Ulead 4, I dissected
the image of the Mona Lisa to illustrate what I could perceive within that
famous image. I was inspired to do this after having read what Leonardo da
Vinci had advised the artist to do to enhance his creative faculties. Having
been taught to perceive hidden imagery by Leonardo’s writing which stated that
“the artist can enhance his creative faculties by throwing a sponge full of
color at a wall and therein perceive whatever he wished to perceive.” An entire
page on the website was dedicated to the detailed scrutiny of the dissected
parts revealing unusual hidden images that Leonardo may have consciously or
unconsciously painted into his masterpiece. Most art experts may say that these
images that I discovered are accidents of chance, but my belief is that if he
suggested such a technique, then he might have practiced it.
By this time, after having
discovered all the possibly inadvertent hidden images within the contours of
the Mona Lisa, the viewer is challenged, as I was on reading Leonardo’s
suggestion, to tackle another famous image and is ready to test his enhanced
faculties of perception with an interactive game of association. To create this
interactive game, I employed an unusual use of Microsoft Word document,
creating a game of multiple choice images hidden in maps, asking the participant
to make the visual associations like the Rorschach test. The test taker would
then save his results and email them to me for evaluation, so that I could
ascertain whether he had acquired any of the visual skills meant to be
taught. There were also two other
exercises using Word document with an interactive purpose which required the
viewer to recognized the source image that inspired a given final product. That
task required a little internet research, facilitated by a bit of technical
assistance which I incorporated into the interactive Word document. I inserted
a hyperlink on the page leading to a research page with instructions included
to assist the viewer in finding the research page on a target website. This was
done to facilitate the search process, especially for the more challenged
technophobe. He was required to simply find, among several, the image that
presented the closest affinity to a given final product. He would then write a
brief paragraph explain his discovery of its title and author. Again, he would
save his response and then email it to me. The final exercise was a little more
challenging, wherein he would be given an iconic image of Western Art and asked
to find whatever hidden image existed or was perceivable in it. A successful
search would really prove that he had acquired the perceptive faculties that I
wished him to acquire.
This final test was
deliberately intended to test whether one could acquire those skills in so
short a time. Baring his success, the level of the viewer’s technical facility
would lead him to the result which I had surreptitiously concealed on the same
page. It was also meant to test the viewer’s computer skills. If he were
familiar with web surfing then his computer skills would lead him to the hidden
results that I had perceived and would save him the task of searching for the
hidden images.
To my absolute amazement, I
received results that revealed more than I had expected; even surpassing my own
perceptive faculties. It proved to me that the didactic capabilities of the
project had actually exceeded my expectation, even though with only a few
respondents. While feeling confident that I was the master of that type of
perception, I discovered that a few respondents were now revealing to me
imagery that I had not recognized in my own final result paintings. The final
test, which I was doubtful may ever be deciphered by any of the respondents,
was actually returned to me with more than I had initially seen. One respondent
used his computer skills to easily find the results that I had surreptitiously
hidden on the page. Another actually showed me imagery that I had not seen and
convinced me that it was there. But the most rewarding of the revelations was
the respondent who, looking at one of my own paintings, discovered a visual pun
that I had inadvertently painted in, fitting the theme of the painting
perfectly, but of which I was not aware nor intended. This revelation came to
me fourteen (14) years after that painting was actually executed.
Unfortunately, I had no
access to a class of high school students, who were part of my proposed target
audience, and so, I had to rely on acquaintances and their acquaintances to test the efficacy of my project. The
responses were not as numerous as I wanted, so the total success of the project
is somewhat compromised by the small sample of respondents. However, I feel
that this exercise is one that high school students would enjoy, since I had
tested a similar project at a staff development seminar last year, when I was
teaching and the teachers whom I was instructing were thrilled by the
experiment and asked me to share it with their students. Unfortunately, I never
had the chance, since I am temporarily out of the classroom as a teacher.
In conclusion, I was able to
incorporate much of the technology that I learned in the masters program at
Touro. Having developed a facility with software, I was able to master a piece
of software for the purpose of preparing the images for presentation on the
website. I employed a software package called Ulead 4 with which I was able to
stitch images together. This allowed me to juxtapose source images and their
final product for image comparison. With Ulead 4, I was also able to dissect
and magnify sections of each painting so that the viewer could perceive the
minutiae of each section and see what I was able to perceive and project from
my mind’s eye. The plethora of detailed images shows how the mind’s eye sees
hitherto unperceived imagery coming from the developed imagination. The same
piece of software allowed me to superimpose short captions that explain to the
viewer what he may see and facilitate his perceptive development. These
captions were used to give him incite into the way that the mind’s eye may
perceive hidden imagery and thereby develop the imagination. Ulead 4 also
permitted me to enhance and sharpen the colors of the images. I was able to use
one image, replicate it multiple times so that I could show various parts in
detail. I was then able to save each part with a slightly altered title to
differentiate the various parts. These images were then uploaded to one webpage
enable the viewer’s intense scrutiny. Through this medium, I was able to allow
the viewer to access the machination of my imagination so that he could adopt
that type of perceptive faculty that Leonardo’s suggestion had imparted to me. I
used Microsoft word to maximum use in producing my final report, cutting and
pasting, inserting hyperlinks that lead to the website, the Power-Point
presentation and a specific page that gives the reader direct access to the
experiment. Microsoft Excel came in handy to produce my Time Schedule, giving a
breakdown on how much time was actually required to complete the entire
project. I created this Microsoft Power-Point presentation to introduce the
visual possibilities that this experiment could accomplish and to whet the
appetite of the participant. It is my hope that this experiment will stimulate
a novel approach to art appreciation.