There is interesting theory that where we find beauty is the outcome of some internal mathematics of perception. Our brain quickly and decisively computes (based on the precise relationships of proportionality of phi 1.618) how attractive something is. Human bodies and faces, buildings, art. All kinds of stuff.
I suppose the calculation reveals itself in pleasure or repulsion and there's a surprising degree of unanimity in our species as to what measures up.
Maybe the process is involved sometimes when I've been aware of calculations taking place accompanied with a vivid sense of place being invoked. It's like fragments are thrown up as the sums are being done. Long ago there was a vivid sense of the Pacific Ocean about one person I knew, and if I had a map I'd be able to place a pin fairly precisely, presumably again based on spatial relationships within the oceanography of that part of the planet. An identification of person/place/activity with the light, the temperature, the colours, the sense of 'diving in'. To something I imagined about them. It was real, for me, as vivid as taste.
Last week I was speaking to someone and their face was perceived only partially as eyes, mouth etc but more so as a specific standpoint, outside, very close to the edge of a dark woodland, peering in to the cool shade within. At that point it was hard to talk to them simply as an actual human being when simultaneously being so struck by a landscape being attributed to them. What do you say to a human/vivid location actualisation hybrid?
A few months ago I spoke for a moment to someone for just a few seconds, photographer EJ Major, and the experience of looking at her face was almost exhausting - it was like my low spec brain (I could have used a quad core processor just then) wasn't able to keep up with the deeply difficult sum it was expected to urgently resolve. There seemed to be some particularly difficult algebra thrown in making the job far harder than it should be. (I guess it would have been impolite to take out a tape measure to double check certain things so I just scanned as discretely and quickly as I could, trying to access as much information as fast as possible) feeling on the verge of calculation-overload and with the programme obviously unstable and probably close to crashing. There was a sense of looking at her face (kind of strange and kind of beautiful) with it also existing as a partially formed mental construct of un-nameable constellations of stars within an eons deep expanse of time, and this abstracted interpretation was spilling (like a monsoon over guttering) into the rational/conscious part of my mind.
I think the final number, if that constellation of stars thing could be given a number (a ratio actually), before madly double de-clutching and getting on with other things, after just those few seconds was approximately 12:904.335 but I ran out of time and that could be way out by a factor of a million, or a billion, if it was every fully computable at all.
Hey, now I'm off to shop for clothes with girl-faces on.
I suppose the calculation reveals itself in pleasure or repulsion and there's a surprising degree of unanimity in our species as to what measures up.
Maybe the process is involved sometimes when I've been aware of calculations taking place accompanied with a vivid sense of place being invoked. It's like fragments are thrown up as the sums are being done. Long ago there was a vivid sense of the Pacific Ocean about one person I knew, and if I had a map I'd be able to place a pin fairly precisely, presumably again based on spatial relationships within the oceanography of that part of the planet. An identification of person/place/activity with the light, the temperature, the colours, the sense of 'diving in'. To something I imagined about them. It was real, for me, as vivid as taste.
Last week I was speaking to someone and their face was perceived only partially as eyes, mouth etc but more so as a specific standpoint, outside, very close to the edge of a dark woodland, peering in to the cool shade within. At that point it was hard to talk to them simply as an actual human being when simultaneously being so struck by a landscape being attributed to them. What do you say to a human/vivid location actualisation hybrid?
A few months ago I spoke for a moment to someone for just a few seconds, photographer EJ Major, and the experience of looking at her face was almost exhausting - it was like my low spec brain (I could have used a quad core processor just then) wasn't able to keep up with the deeply difficult sum it was expected to urgently resolve. There seemed to be some particularly difficult algebra thrown in making the job far harder than it should be. (I guess it would have been impolite to take out a tape measure to double check certain things so I just scanned as discretely and quickly as I could, trying to access as much information as fast as possible) feeling on the verge of calculation-overload and with the programme obviously unstable and probably close to crashing. There was a sense of looking at her face (kind of strange and kind of beautiful) with it also existing as a partially formed mental construct of un-nameable constellations of stars within an eons deep expanse of time, and this abstracted interpretation was spilling (like a monsoon over guttering) into the rational/conscious part of my mind.
I think the final number, if that constellation of stars thing could be given a number (a ratio actually), before madly double de-clutching and getting on with other things, after just those few seconds was approximately 12:904.335 but I ran out of time and that could be way out by a factor of a million, or a billion, if it was every fully computable at all.
Hey, now I'm off to shop for clothes with girl-faces on.