28 Critical Reflections: random 22 to 28
So, anyway, the people. Their clothes were shiny too, but lots of different colours. Skin-tight. They wore helmets with stubby aerials, and goggles. But the goggles had lines of information flickering across them.[2]
The gallery is a lovely bright space, all white-painted wood and high ceilings, with a few stunning pieces, but the garden's the real show-stopper here. It's quite small, but full of amazing and very varied sculptures, placed far enough apart that you can enjoy each one individually, but close enough together that you can get really interesting perspectives of three or four at once.[8]
The singularity of specular reflections is demanded by the fact that if one tries to apply to them the schema of communicational process many puzzling questions arise: source and addressee coincide (at least in cases where a human looks at him or herself in the mirror); receiver and transmitter coincide; expression and content coincide since the content of the reflected image is just the image of a body, not the body itself; as a matter of fact the referent of a mirror image is pure visual matter.[3]
The term specular means that light is perfectly reflected in a mirror-like way from the light source to the viewer. Specular reflection is visible only where the surface normal is oriented precisely halfway between the direction of incoming light and the direction of the viewer; this is called the half-angle direction because it bisects (divides into halves) the angle between the incoming light and the viewer. Thus, a specularly reflecting surface would show a specular highlight as the perfectly sharp reflected image of a light source. However, many shiny objects show blurred specular highlights.[6]
'Abstract' is a word which is now most frequently used to express only the type of the outer form of a work of art; this makes it difficult to use it in relation to the spiritual vitality or inner life which is the real sculpture. Abstract sculptural qualities are found in good sculpture of all time, but it is significant that contemporary sculpture and painting have become abstract in thought and concept. As the sculptural idea is in itself unfettered and unlimited and can choose its own forms, the vital concept selects the form and substance of its expression quite unconsciously.[7]
Even admitting that what happens in a camera obscura is something 'similar' to the phenomenon of the specular reflection (which is not questionable), what changes is the fact that an image remains traced somewhere, and any successive discussion about its iconic properties deals with the imprinted image and not with the process itself.[3]
So, anyway, the people. Their clothes were shiny too, but lots of different colours. Skin-tight. They wore helmets with stubby aerials, and goggles. But the goggles had lines of information flickering across them.[2]
28 Critical Reflections: random 1 to 7
Back to Clive's home page
Sources
[1] http://www.neworleanspast.com/art/id62.html
[2] Ken MacLeod, Reflective Surfaces, New Scientist, 2009.
[3] Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, Indiana University Press, 1979.
[4] Clive Fencott, Reflections on seeing River Form in Barbra Hepworth's garden in St.
[5] http://www.flickr.com/photos/nigelhomer/316548379/
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specular_highlight