the periphery of interest

Contrary to the center of interest is the periphery of interest.

I was reading a list of forms of cognitive bias and ANCHORING caught my attention. I found it defined as “the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered.” It hinders decision making — and hence invention — by getting a person stuck at square one.

In art, it’s certainly true, that the artist who is too focused on the “center of interest” (or as I like to call it the “nexus of focal attention” or the “convergence of visual acuity” or the “intersection of visual collision” or sometimes as simply “the point of no return”) —  as I was saying: such an artist might fail to see the forest because of the humongous big tree blocking his view when his whole face is covered with its leaves.

I realize I’m babbling — maybe ranting — but I did say that I was turning my blog into a sort of diary.  And in a “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want to” sort of way, I permit myself an occasional rant from time to time.

I don’t like the concept of “a center of interest.”  Does it show? I file it under cognitive bias. I’m glad to see it has a name, anchoring.

The cure is to get the attention moving around again. I like natural attention, myself, that’s my personal preference. Letting your mind move around, willy nilly, as its wont. But if one’s brain has gotten sucked into the vortex, whether that vortex is at the center or somewhere else in the picture, the cure for the bias is to fasten the attention somewhere else. You’ve got to move it around — diffuse it somewhat,  forcibly, if need be.

In my notes, I envisioned a grid — a desperate grid for the really hard cases — and inside each square of the grid you examine that portion of the picture to see what beauties it holds. And no I don’t stop there.

Then you shift the grid a little and you have new passages, and you gaze into those also. And thus the whole image is like a matrix with many doors. Such a picture (obviously this represents an ideal) is like a shimmering tapestry of decisions and observations.

In ordinary time, the simple habit of following your thoughts in the order in which they occur is good enough at last — as a remedy against art books that posit all kinds of rules, the most insidious of which is the center of interest.

I give it other names to diminish its charm. If we call the nexus of focal obsession by its other names — such as, the vortex of visual obsequiousness, then we avoid its becoming stronger by means of the “availability cascade,” the tendency of oft-repeated messages to be accepted as true simply because they are oft repeated.

So, pst!   Ipsnay the enter-cay of interest-yay.

 

 

 

Chaos Theory

A complex still life is like Nature.  When you go out into the world, into the fields, the forest, the meadow, you find a gazillion things scattered willy-nilly according to a prodigal and crazy logic devised by Nature our Mother.  She’s a harried housewife, Nature, and drops one thing here while on her way to get that, and can’t remember where she left that tree or raccoon, that froggie on the lily pad … those birds sitting in the oak … where’d they get to?  Never can find her keys, Mother Nature.  But what difference does it make when luxury and profusion are the trades you ply?

A lot of artists arrange a well-organized still life for contemplation, one that’s sure to have a center of interest. Others of us, affected by a visual ADHD, crave clutter.  For me I find rationality inside the clutter.  Gravity still rules.  Things aren’t flying off the table, exiting the solar system.  Physics still has it all under control.  But patterns and colors abound and edges bump into other edges.

To have a fine mess to get into, an artist can approach still life as though it were en plein air.  Notice the abundance of shapes, colors, the confusion of proportion as you try to get your “ducks in a row.”  That’s how I roll.  I pick something and draw and the devil take the edges. My pencil as my machete, I hack my way through the jungle of lines, shapes, colors, forms and plant my flag at the end of my travails.

I rule!

And Nature indulgent Mother glances wryly at me, her hyper-active child. Minute in the cosmos.