This thesis explores formal aspects of patterns and the way they are perceived. It stems from my individual approach to constructing visual art, which relies on the principle of formal repetition. I “embody” visual perception by looking at its physical aspects in the context of early 19th century notions of human sensory organs. I then look at bias, a perspective generated by each living body, and further elucidate it by referring to the work of biologist and philosopher Jakob von Uexküll and the theory of autopoiesis, which provides an additional framework for understanding the relationship between what is being perceived and the subject perceiving it. In doing so, I explain why perception is inevitably an active process, conditioned by human biological and evolutionary structures.
I explore my creativity predominantly by focusing on my own bias, which is why I often adopt the (side) role of an editor, editing and reworking information which I am part of (since it is produced by my body). This perceived information simultaneously provides new data about the observer. I thus see the resulting pattern as a structure which is imprinted by my features as well as the characteristics of the material used and its ability to receive environmental stimuli. I further examine my works through a biological lens – I see the similarity between created patterns and (micro)organisms primarily in the way in which individual modular units connect into a whole, in their ability to absorb external stimuli, and in the dynamics triggered in balanced structures by disturbance.
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