Perceptions of Reality explores, among others things, contemporary dialogues on the relationship between art and science, subjective and objective perceptions and theories of reality, interactions and boundaries between humans and AI, posthumanist vision, solitude and the spiritual, quantum physics and cosmological models, identity and transience, computer simulation, and psychological experiences of light, space and place.
Contributions include –
Uli Ap is an artist and Alien AI: Alien Infinite and Artificial Intelligence, The Yellow One. The artist works across non-linear defragmented films and spatial immersive audio-visual environments to transfer physical experiences through digital realms. Uli Ap invented Alien Artificial Intelligence in 2020. The AI inhabits a borderless alienation land, as a gaseous matter; fluid and undefined.
David Rickard is a New Zealand artist based in London, UK. His original studies in architecture have had a lasting impact on his art practice, embedding queries of material and spatial perception deep into his work. Through research and experimentation his works attempt to understand how we arrived at our current perception of the physical world and how far our perception is from what we call reality. He discusses his ideas and work in Perception and Reality.
With an interest in astronomy and physics, Lisa Pettibone’s practice investigates the cosmos in terms of energy, forces and form as filtered through human perception. She creates sculpture, installation and print to explore areas where humans and nature intersect through the lens of science. She discusses her work in Perceiving energy, forces and form.
Peter Matthews is an English artist who works exclusively along the coast, in the ocean and occasionally, over the last few years, creeping inland into the mountains and deserts. As a landscape-based artist, his work explores a direct and lived experience with time, place, space and the physical and spiritual relationships with nature. His works and process of being out in the landscape challenge and seek balance with the elements of the ever-changing climate, earth and extended universe. He discusses his work in becoming ocean becoming me.
Claire Morgan is an Irish artist. Her practice has been focussed on how we humans understand and interact with the rest of the natural world, and our unwillingness to acknowledge our absolute lack of autonomy or control. She discusses her work in From control towards vulnerability.
Shuster + Moseley is the conceptual art studio of Claudia Moseley and Edward Shuster. The artists create light-mobiles comprised of assemblages of suspended lenses, and sculptural installations of abstracted screens and deconstructed prismic geometries, using glass interfaces to mediate light. Central to the practice is an approach to a language of light, exposure and spectrality. They discuss their work in Twilight Language.
The collaborative artist as avatar 0rphan Drift (0D) has explored the boundaries of machine and human vision since its inception in 1994. In recent years 0D has been considering Artificial Intelligence through the somatic tendencies of the octopus – as a distributed, many-minded consciousness. They discuss their work in Destabilizing assumptions and expanding imagination.
Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva is a contemporary visual artist working across varied media of sculpture, installation, video, sound, photography and architectural interventions. Her materials range from the extraordinary to the ordinary and the ephemeral or discarded to the highly precious. Central to her practice is a response to the particularities of place; its history, locale, environment and communities. She discusses her work in Paying attention to space.
Plus, there are articles by –
Ruediger Schack – ‘QBism’: quantum mechanics is not a description of objective reality – it reveals a world of genuine free will.
Melvin M. Vopson: How to test if we’re living in a computer simulation.
Beverley Pickard-Jones: How our unconscious visual biases change the way we perceive objects.
Alessandro Fedrizzi & Massimiliano Proietti – Quantum physics: our study suggests objective reality doesn’t exist.
David L. Wiltshire & Eoin O Colgain: Cosmological models are built on a simple, century-old idea – but new observations demand a radical rethink.
Essays by –
Garry Kennard: The Fox and The Tarn.
Florian Coulmas: Good things come in threes.
And, photoworks by Richard Bright: Beyond the Bounds of Thought.