CNP - An outsider's perspective

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CNP - An outsider's perspective

Postby Ganesh H Shankar » Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:23 pm

Friends,

Nirlep forwarded his brother's thoughts on CNP as a regular guest visitor of CNP !! I enjoyed reading this. Hope you all will too !!

Thank you Dr Harpreet !

- Regards,
Ganesh.

Creative Nature Photography - An outsider’s perspective
By Dr. Harpreet Singh Rai

A conscious act of creation involves experiencing something with heightened awareness, and crystallizing the experience into a form that tends to stimulate a similarly intense experience. To that effect both the creator and the act of creation are transitory in nature. They get created afresh with every new act of creation. It is this disconnect with the previous acts of creation that allows the creator to re-experience his own acts as an outsider.

Once manifested, an art form lends itself to the observer both as an experience as a well a perception. While experience is what pulls the consciousness to the moment and merges the observer and observed, perception is what gets bounced off the phenomenon to the observer. Strength of an art form normally hinges on the proportion of experience and perception that it inspires in the observer. With its content skewed towards the former, an art form is more likely to have a more lasting and stronger impact on the observer. The visual arts inherently suffer from a bias towards perception. Abstraction in visual arts is primarily inspired by an effort to compensate this bias. This perceptional bias is not by design but by virtue of the fact that of all our senses, the sight potentially forms the strongest element of our perception and therefore the most overused and desensitized. It is what gives shape to the “mundane reality”. Every other sense is more abstract than sight and hence more prone to stimulating experience than perception. It is not a coincidence that music has been the most enduring, widely understood and spiritual art form through the eons. Free of context, it transcends cultural barriers and flows through the ages.

Having said that, photography is a unique art that while being rich in experience also turns its inherent perceptional bias to suit its own purpose. It is probably the only art form that works equally well in both modes .i.e. of experience and perception. Operating in the “experience mode”, it captures and brings out the intensity of the visual experiences through images that pierce the blunted visual sensibility and re-create the raw experience in its pristine, pre-perception brilliance. On the creator’s part, this requires both a throbbing visual sensibility and the craft to translate the experience into the image.

The other, equally interesting and creative mode of operation can be likened to visually enhanced poetry. In this mode, an image slowly works up a perception-storm in the observer, gradually possesses the observer’s mind and finally sends it into a “koan-ish” tizzy. The image is tantalizingly close to the observer’s grasp and yet never quite there. This is what keeps the image alive and imbues it with permanence as an art form.

As an outsider, I think CNP consciously or unconsciously embraces and nurtures both these precepts. The quality of commentaries on the images that manifest these precepts is a testimony to that. As for the text accompanying some of the images, it is best used only as a subtle and unobtrusive trigger to initiate the experience and/or perception. Anything that rids the image of its subtlety not only undermines the essence of photography as an art but also reveals the poverty of experience or perception in the creation. To that effect, depth of experience and perception are indispensable for creating an artful image. As long as photography originates out of a keen sense of presence and vibrant “seeing”, it can be an uplifting and inspiring experience. Standing on the fringes and watching this happen on the CNP, I can vouch for that!
Ganesh H. Shankar
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Re: CNP - An outsider's perspective

Postby Vijay Mohan Raj » Mon Feb 27, 2012 11:18 am

I really liked reading this, I really need to go through it over and over again and get to the essence of it. Ganesh I think we should move it to the articles section.
A creative mind is a restless soul...
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Re: CNP - An outsider's perspective

Postby Ganesh H Shankar » Mon Feb 27, 2012 11:54 am

VMR,

Done.
Ganesh H. Shankar
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Re: CNP - An outsider's perspective

Postby Sriharsha Ganjam » Mon Feb 27, 2012 1:39 pm

WOW what a read this is. The process of writing such insights is in itself a great gift and it doesn't come easy. Thanks for sharing this Ganesh and of course thanks to Dr Harpreet as well for this gem.
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Re: CNP - An outsider's perspective

Postby Nilanjan Das » Tue Feb 28, 2012 2:07 pm

I have read this a few times, it would be great to know if these are established general views or your personal views which have evolved from your experience seeing the images here in CNP as well as in other forums ? I think your article would be very interesting and self explanatory if you had actually shared the links of the images from CNP which helped to establish the flow of thoughts.
However, am trying to pitch in a few thoughts of mine related to Visual art, experience, perception and obviously the most important but missed out part in the text, " expression of emotion " and " Imagination " in relation to creative nature photography.
I would have two boxes here, one for Visual art in Nature and one for Creative nature photography.
I personally like to think Visual Art as images which are limited to visual elements. They may not allow the mind or imagination to wander too much, for example I might say consider an image with rim light….. It is definitely a product of experience and perception. Further expansion of ideas too on these kind of images will only lead to a few more perspectives but I personally feel that the image will still be restricted within visual elements. This does not mean, creating visual art images limited to visual elements are any less important. The only possibility is that one might soon get bored of it, those who are new and seeing it fresh might get excited but for those who are exposed to such visuals for the last 4-5 years will wish to probe beyond limitations of visual elements. Hence I would like to modify your statement a little bit,

" Strength of art normally hinges on the proportion of experience and perception" to Strength of VISUAL ART normally hinges on the proportion……."

The way I see perception……. Perception is the carrier which travels between visual elements and thoughts in the mind in the form of Imagination. Perception probably helps to change the state of the matter. Though perception itself stays within the limits of visual elements but still can carry the image to the door steps of a thoughtful interpretation of an emotional expression which may or may not be abstraction. I am sure that most will agree that Imagination and abstraction are like two step sisters who might or might not be in love with each other :-).
Imagination is the world of absolute freedom which still has some relation to experience and perception. One can say the world of Imagination will grow as experience and perception grows and matures. What am trying to say here is an increase in experience will surely help perceptions to cater to a wide gamut of Imagination. Not denying at all.

This makes Imagination really very interesting with two visible possibilities…. One to express emotions with images skewed more towards reality, the other to try and express emotions with the help of images which move further away from reality ( abstraction ). How do we balance between reality and abstraction is a different matter and am not getting into that in response to this article. Even an abstract image with practically no hints of reality too will have matters of experience and perception related to it.


"The visual arts inherently suffer from a bias towards perception. Abstraction in visual arts is primarily inspired by an effort to compensate this bias"

Can you please elaborate on this, this statement as presented to me looks like both true and false :-). It would be good if you can site an example, probably will help if you can also share a link of an image which stands in support of your thoughts.

I think the deeper world of creativity begins once we can help the perception to travel from experience to the world of imagination with the intent of expression. In my opinion, CNP is slowly moving towards that, we certainly have a few thinkers who have been able to travel beyond the depths of experience and perception and relate their images to life and express emotions successfully, may be not often these images have great visual elements in support, but the attempts surely have been unique. I think photography as an art form will evolve more and more as it travels from the world of faithful representation of vibrant seeing to the world of expressing emotions which will lead to understanding of life as nature presented and not how humans modified them.

Overall a good and interesting discussion……
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Re: CNP - An outsider's perspective

Postby Ganesh H Shankar » Tue Feb 28, 2012 7:02 pm

Thanks for your thoughts Nilanjan ! I agree with you driving home the view point with a few images
will be very interesting. Let me add some more to the already complex thread with lots of word smithing :)

Personally I believe any attempt at characterizing a work of art or the process of "seeing" a work of art will be an over simplification and will be in-complete.
If we can do that then we are not talking about art. That said, my interpretation of Dr Harpreet's thoughts on experience and perception being
while for the former we are part of the image and in latter we stay outside the image (probably Dr Harpreet can clarify) which I felt an interesting observation.
However, I think nature of creation and consumption does not restrict itself only to these two dimensions.

For me the work of art is very simple to feel, it effortlessly enters deep into our hearts, very simple to agree upon *but* impossible to express in words. I doubt if we can we can bring in
any formalism here about its creation or about its consumption.

An interesting thread...Discussions of this nature will subtly influence our art of seeing and making images.

Would love see more views and further discussions..
Ganesh H. Shankar
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