The Cheshire Cat Smile on Schodinger’s Cat – The Work of William Seeto
“Well, I've often seen a cat without a grin, thought Alice, but a grin without a cat? It's the most curious thing I've seen in all my life!” Alice in Wonderland, speaking about the Cheshire Cat.
According to Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice, this remark is in fact a pique by Lewis Carroll at mathematics, for having detached itself completely from the natural world. Had Carroll lived to witness the developments in quantum theory over the past century, Carroll may have spoken too quickly and too harshly of theorizing for surely the grin without a cat is no less curious than the fate of its cousin place in a box by Schrodinger1.
The advent of quantum physics has made the materialist philosophy to which science was welded to until early early 20th century and which made it inherently antagonistic to all forms of spiritual insight, has ceased to be sustainable. It had also built some bridges between science, philosophy and art and perhaps for the first time since the Stone Age to magic! Conversely scientific developments have also given artists new tools to interrogate the nature of their work and their relationship with their audiences.
“If one wants to give an accurate description of the elementary particle… the only thing which can be written down as description is a probability function. But then one sees that not even the quality of being… belongs to what is described.” (Werner Heisenberg) 2
“All things -- from Brahma the creator down to a single blade of grass – are… simply appearances and not real.” (Shankara)3
As a consequence, for the first time in history, science, art and philosophy can converse on the subject of immateriality, which have previously been relegated to purely spiritual, religious or imaginary and relate to each other on the subject of perceptions in a way that has not been possible since the Stone Age when art still belonged in the realm of magic together with all learning as practiced by shamans and witchdoctors. The paths split by civilizational developments can now be re-united split in the road can now be reunited.
This unified conversation has been particularly fruitful in the sphere of perception and our understanding the reality of experiencing the apparently material world. Art has always been about understanding the spiritual and conveying the immaterial through the material and seeing beyond the physical nature of the object world. Science too is now operating in the domain of “magic” – for as Niels Bohr once said, “Niels Bohr once said that, “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.”
In this context the research and installation works over the past two decades of William Seeto, an Australian artist, have created some potent paradigms. His ongoing artistic investigations and research have been catalysed and enabled by his interest in the Ganzfeld effect, which is a phenomenon of visual perception where the brain produces apparent blindness and altered states when we are staring at an undifferentiated field of colour4. Oscillate between the normative and the positive aspects of the art experience his practice addresses intimately and intrinsically the fluidity of perception that becomes art and the scientific phenomena that enable it. For over two decades Seeto has of installation work based on the investigation of space and perception.
Seeto’s path describes a trajectory on a quest for self-awareness and the perpetual concern of where consciousness and perception reside, with rigorous normative parametres. The touchstones of his work are ultimate symptoms of humanity. The question “where does art happen?” is a cogent as the question “who are we? And “what is the nature of the world we perceive and appear to inhabit?”
In Seeto’s major works such as "Error of Closure - Part 2", at Artspace Visual Arts Centre, in Sydney in 2007, we are presented with a constructed darkly monochrome architectural space in which aspects of Ganzfeld are utilized to enable the viewer to focus back on their own sensibilities, drawing their attention to the sensory processes of acquiring and interpreting information on a visceral, as well as intellectual level. Engaging with the work, one is thrust almost spontaneously into a symphonic emotional turbulence, which is shockingly at odds with the sensory void of the work itself – the effect is indelible and unforgettable -- magic!...Read on at:http://art-science.univ-paris1.fr/document.php?id=420
According to Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice, this remark is in fact a pique by Lewis Carroll at mathematics, for having detached itself completely from the natural world. Had Carroll lived to witness the developments in quantum theory over the past century, Carroll may have spoken too quickly and too harshly of theorizing for surely the grin without a cat is no less curious than the fate of its cousin place in a box by Schrodinger1.
The advent of quantum physics has made the materialist philosophy to which science was welded to until early early 20th century and which made it inherently antagonistic to all forms of spiritual insight, has ceased to be sustainable. It had also built some bridges between science, philosophy and art and perhaps for the first time since the Stone Age to magic! Conversely scientific developments have also given artists new tools to interrogate the nature of their work and their relationship with their audiences.
“If one wants to give an accurate description of the elementary particle… the only thing which can be written down as description is a probability function. But then one sees that not even the quality of being… belongs to what is described.” (Werner Heisenberg) 2
“All things -- from Brahma the creator down to a single blade of grass – are… simply appearances and not real.” (Shankara)3
As a consequence, for the first time in history, science, art and philosophy can converse on the subject of immateriality, which have previously been relegated to purely spiritual, religious or imaginary and relate to each other on the subject of perceptions in a way that has not been possible since the Stone Age when art still belonged in the realm of magic together with all learning as practiced by shamans and witchdoctors. The paths split by civilizational developments can now be re-united split in the road can now be reunited.
This unified conversation has been particularly fruitful in the sphere of perception and our understanding the reality of experiencing the apparently material world. Art has always been about understanding the spiritual and conveying the immaterial through the material and seeing beyond the physical nature of the object world. Science too is now operating in the domain of “magic” – for as Niels Bohr once said, “Niels Bohr once said that, “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.”
In this context the research and installation works over the past two decades of William Seeto, an Australian artist, have created some potent paradigms. His ongoing artistic investigations and research have been catalysed and enabled by his interest in the Ganzfeld effect, which is a phenomenon of visual perception where the brain produces apparent blindness and altered states when we are staring at an undifferentiated field of colour4. Oscillate between the normative and the positive aspects of the art experience his practice addresses intimately and intrinsically the fluidity of perception that becomes art and the scientific phenomena that enable it. For over two decades Seeto has of installation work based on the investigation of space and perception.
Seeto’s path describes a trajectory on a quest for self-awareness and the perpetual concern of where consciousness and perception reside, with rigorous normative parametres. The touchstones of his work are ultimate symptoms of humanity. The question “where does art happen?” is a cogent as the question “who are we? And “what is the nature of the world we perceive and appear to inhabit?”
In Seeto’s major works such as "Error of Closure - Part 2", at Artspace Visual Arts Centre, in Sydney in 2007, we are presented with a constructed darkly monochrome architectural space in which aspects of Ganzfeld are utilized to enable the viewer to focus back on their own sensibilities, drawing their attention to the sensory processes of acquiring and interpreting information on a visceral, as well as intellectual level. Engaging with the work, one is thrust almost spontaneously into a symphonic emotional turbulence, which is shockingly at odds with the sensory void of the work itself – the effect is indelible and unforgettable -- magic!...Read on at:http://art-science.univ-paris1.fr/document.php?id=420