5—

"Untutored" vision can be thought of then as "an alternative to ordinary perception," as an ability to notice deviations from visual norms, many of which have in fact been studied by perceptual psychologists. Various studies have shown that color, size, and other visual qualities are perceived differently according to different moods, expectations, and physical conditions: food looks better to someone who is hungry; desired objects may look larger to someone who lacks them. Objects of great interest cause the pupils to dilate; repugnant sights constrict them. The size of the pupil influences focusing and the perception of brightness and color saturation. The "untutored eye" may notice these changes, just as it may notice when a sudden surge of anger from deep within the brain's subcortical regions topples the carefully balanced chemistry of the cells in the visual cortex and makes us "see red." We blink more often when we are under stress, and the "untutored eye" might see the frequency with which our eyelids plunge our vision in and out of darkness.

Darkness itself can be a rich realm of vision for the "untutored eye." It reveals ephemeral shapes and patterns of light seen when the eyes are closed. Known as phosphenes, these "wispy clouds and moving specks of light," as Gerald Oster describes them, may arise spontaneously, not only when the eyes are closed but whenever "the viewer is subjected to prolonged visual deprivation," as when he or she looks for hours at a blank screen.^[48] Phosphenes are also produced by physical pressure on the eyes—from the light touch of a fingertip on the eyelid, to the violent jolt produced by a fall or a blow to the head (when we "see stars"). They can result from sudden movements of the eyes after long periods in darkness, and they can be stimulated by chemical agents (from alcohol to hallucinogenic drugs), electrical shocks, migraine headaches, and various forms of damage to the eyes or other parts of the brain's visual system.

Under one condition or another, phosphenes are visible to virtually everyone, and although individuals vary in their sensitivity to them, Oster has shown that it is possible to chart and classify certain general patterns of phosphenes according to the type of stimulus producing them. For example, gentle pressure on the eyelids produces "disks or concentric circles or arcs" at one edge of the dark visual field; hard pressure on both eyelids produces "a checkerboard or a field of light in

motion"; sudden eye movements upon waking produce "a fan-shaped burst of yellow arcs."^[49]

Oster finds these and other characteristic phosphene patterns in "prehistoric cave drawings and in folk art and more sophisticated works from many cultures and periods." He also finds, "Children between the ages of two and four, capable of manipulating a pencil but not of making naturalistic pictures, draw figures that have a distinct phosphene character." That these "scribblings" represent phosphenes seems all the more likely since, as Oster notes, "Children have an ability, which diminishes with adolescence, to evoke phosphenes quite easily. Phosphenes may indeed be an important part of the child's real environment, since he may not readily distinguish this internal phenomenon from those of the external world."^[50] The merging of "internal" and "external" worlds may continue to be visible to the "untutored eye."

In addition to phosphenes, the visual system produces a persistent low level of grainy light often referred to as visual "noise." R. L. Gregory explains, "There is always some residual neural activity reaching the brain, even when there is no stimulation of the eye by light," and this "background activity" presents the brain with the problem of distinguishing between inner and outer sources of visual information. In Gregory's words, "The brain's problem is to 'decide' whether neural activity is representing outside events, or whether it is mere 'noise' which should be ignored."^[51] Though ignored by the "tutored" eye, this "residual neural activity" can be another rich source of seeing for the "untutored eye," precisely because it comes from within the visual system and can help to make that inner world visible.

In fact, visual "noise" may be directly responsive to emotions. This possibility is raised by Albert Rose in Vision: Human and Electronic. Rose found that a sudden, unexpected noise or "a tense or apprehensive emotional state" can produce a noticeable increase in the visibility of visual "noise."^[52] Although such responses within the visual system are easier to see in dim light or with the eyes closed, presumably visual "noise" is always present and potentially visible to the "untutored eye," which may see the whole texture of vision change with changing emotional states.

Certainly it is possible to argue that phosphenes and various kinds of visual "noise" are not only verifiably present but produce some of the subtlest patterns in our fabric of vision. If these patterns are reproduced in children's drawings and in folk art, they may also be a source for the highly sophisticated geometry of mandalas. Lenny Lipton has proposed,

"In Tibetan mandala art, we have some of the best examples of the appreciation of the grainy perception of the eye-brain." This notion will be pursued further in chapter 6; here the point to be stressed is that visual "noise" has a close correspondence to the graininess of the projected film image. As Lipton notes, "The background [visual] noise of motion picture systems is very much like that of the eye-brain."^[53]

Brakhage, too, has proposed an equivalence between the graininess of film emulsion and the "grainy field" of vision itself, but his own observations have revealed patterns of "grains" and "dots" that are subtler and more complex than those in the random dance of emulsion grains projected on the movie screen. "At first," Brakhage wrote in a letter to the Canadian filmmaker Sam Perry, "I thought that the individual grains [in vision's "grainy field"] were fairly fixed, and of a like nature, and moved only slowly, in a 'crawling' fashion. . . ." These, he suggested, are approximated "most exactly in film by the use of 'grainy' film, by emulsion grain." With longer and closer observation, he became "aware of several differing flicker dots," and of "differing SHAPES of these differently MOVING dots or grains." He even found that one variety appeared to be magnified when he held a glass before his closed eyes. He labeled these "Reich's grains," because they seemed to accord with Wilhelm Reich's descriptions of the patterns of movement of "Orgone" energy. "I find these moving shapes," Brakhage added, "coming into my closed eye vision in blue, gold, and even red, and very occasionally green, rather than only in the 'blue' Reich designated to them." Then, alluding to Perry's references to a "dot plane" in vision, Brakhage concludes:

My continued study of the WHOLE field inclines me to believe that there are NO exactly round grains thereIN it, that we tend to call "round" that which has not been seen inTO distinctly enough, that, thus "The Dot Plane" is ONLY an introductory term, so to speak, and COULD thus constitute a verbal (to the expense of the visual) hang-up if hung onto.^[54]

Brakhage's aesthetic development of "The Dot Plane" will be one of the matters discussed in the next chapter.

His letter to Perry illustrates Brakhage's characteristic effort to discover everything he can about every aspect of seeing and then describe his discoveries in precise and evocative language—only to conclude by emphasizing the inadequacy of any verbal description of visual phenomena. As an advocate for the "untutored eye," Brakhage finds himself forced into using labels and concepts that as an artist of the "untutored eye," he does everything he can to avoid, or at best transform, through metaphor. Yet, rhetori-

cal differences aside, Brakhage's descriptions of various visual phenomena often accord quite closely with those of others—scientists as well as artists—who are engaged in exploring and explaining the less familiar and often overlooked aspects of visual perception.

For example, both Brakhage and Jim Jackson have written about what Jackson calls "light saturation." The effect can be produced, Jackson explains, by sitting in a brightly lighted room, focusing on a point directly ahead, and trying not to blink, even after the eyes "begin to sting." Jackson's description continues:

After a minute or two, your retina will begin to become saturated with light. The effect is similar to that of the afterimage, but on a larger scale. More of the retina is involved. Light areas may become mysteriously brighter, change color, spill over into dark areas, or pulsate. Objects may appear to have halos around them.^[55]

This can be compared to Brakhage's account of concentrating on his wife's features as she sat before him, reading aloud. With his "eyes being freed and abstractly receiving the reader . . . all sight without thought," as he writes in Metaphors on Vision , he began to see "what had been backlighting" take the form of a "halo" behind her head:

And the ring of it eventually spread to contour what had been the outline of her hair, then suffused the natural brownish color until white, her facial changes keeping pace with this aging process until every shadowed area had cracked across her features into wavering wrinkles eventually isolating the paler manifestations to the impermanent shape of a skull. Fear constricted me to glances then, and each sharpening of vision forced the imagery back to what I'd recognize as "normal."

But curiosity, Brakhage says, prompted him to continue the experiment, to stop "short of normalcy, with my wife's still white hair now streaming down beyond any brown length of it, pooling at her feet, and enclosing what was once her form entirely." Then,

As features became unbelievably aged, they constricted into a more believable infant aspect, hair aura suffusing throughout the room. My mental insistence on the drama gave me the sense that dead and unborn relatives were presenting themselves thru the living organism, my wife suddenly a spaceless entity containing a timeless evolution. This thought, a devastating limitation upon happenstance, constricted all reception and stopped the process dead.^[56]

Although Brakhage finds metaphorical significance in phenomena that Jackson is content to describe in purely visual terms, his account matches Jackson's in its principal visual details: the halo effect, the color changes,

the positive-negative reversal of afterimages, the pulsating and spilling over of light into areas of darkness.

Although sights such as these may occur spontaneously to anyone and, like phosphenes, be familiar to all young children, they seem totally foreign to normal or "tutored" vision. When Gombrich declares the "innocent eye" to be a "myth," he is in effect speaking for that part of the mind that refuses to accept all the evidence of the eyes; which treats visual "noise" and phosphenes as "problems" and interruptions of "correct" seeing; which ignores the impact of emotions on vision; which will not risk venturing from the safe, known "visual world" into the less familiar "visual field." Is there any way, then, to break down the "tutored" eye's resistance to "untutored" vision and open it to a broader and richer terrain of visual perception?