Perception and Learning to Perceive

To perceive and to consciously observe is one aspect of art, that is essential for a conscious and aware life. Seeing, proven by neuroscientists, affects special regions of the human brain and connects segments of our brain parts as soon as many events occur. But the individual extent of seeing determines how those connections develop: Only by creating a context between the perceptions, our brain forms durable connections. Nowadays, people see various personalities, knowledge, information, work and much more in a very short time, so perceiving becomes an element of quantity more than one of quality. The time for building connections gets shorter because we perceive more instead of first perceiving and then converting content. We see more but recognize less. While humanity strives for knowing and studying without any end point, the amount of how much one human brain actually knows deteriorates.

Art in a cultural context is an important instance of society to educate a conscious perception. When seeing art, it is not about watching, it is about

converting and observing. When we remain in front of an artwork (music, drawing, etc.) for a certain time, our brain automatically creates connections to what we already have in our memories and the object relates to familiar or personal events. Art critics like John Berger or Walter Benjamin acknowledged this important attribute of art and refer to it as “Memory working radially […, creating] enormous number of associations” (cf. J. Berger, “About Looking, 1989, p. 64) or as “Process of Associations” (cf. W. Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, p.48). Statistic observing becomes a dynamic perceiving when we are confronted with art (music/ drawings/ theatre/ …) in an appropriate surrounding.

Have the courage to make use of your own reason is what E. Kant said in times of the enlightenment in the 18st century. This motif is today as relevant as it was contemporarily. Considering, how comfortable and naïve society grows in an era of control-providing governments, we should start to implement an independent process of creative and especially independent thinking in education. Museums, theatres or operas can help to establish

a new acknowledgement more this way of perceiving. Taking a museum as an example and disregarding the quality of an artwork, the relevant factor is the quality of what happens in the observers’ brain. Several processes in the brain are initiated and those deductions lead to the creation of contexts and connections between neurons, called synapses. We are confronted with familiar or new perspectives and can discover how we perceive, what we notice and what we prioritize. This conscious and reflective behavior is then unconsciously transferred into practical use: We can use a reflective and aware attitude towards society, politics or individual objectives to remain independent and evolving as individual. Constructivism is a collective result we can achieve and thereby move towards and active, functioning society. When the slightest appearance of hate, racism and intolerance occurs, it becomes indispensable to educate people who are aware of both, individual and collective constructivism. It is necessary that an awareness for a meta perspective, including our fellows as much as our person, is present. A collective perception of the world can be achieved through the discovery of diversity, of cultural

pluralism and several perspectives on life. The stimulation of our perception can open doors to such a pluralism and ambiguity. When people leave the empiric level that often demands an absolute way of perception, they discover the ambiguous reality of societies’ and humans’ behavior. Our society grew to a rational thinking and acting collective. This becomes evident when considering ruling systems, governments, time tracking or economic structures. People tend to seek structure and neglect the emotional sphere that never is definite, that changes and is unique for every person. We lose the instinct for interhuman experiences. Observing art can help to train, first an individual and then a collective, to appreciate diversity and to take individual perspective as guideline, but never as absolute reality. Today, however, we face visual content in smaller sequences than before the digital revolution due to the globalized exchange of data and imagery. Never before was it as easy as today to create images, to share and to observe visuals. Despite the basic feature of art, to bring tolerance, this evolvement has not changed our society into and open-minded one and our demand for structure

and control is still worshipped as the most comfortable. That makes it important to support a conscious and non-overwhelming perception of visuals. The term “Art” and its’ definition will be analyzed in the next chapter, however, it is obvious that it makes a huge difference if we consume art in a museum or in a social media post. How much we recognize what we see differs within those experiences. When we see a displayed artwork, standing on its own, we are confronted and forced to look at and think about it. In contrast, we are aware of the possibility to oversee and skip content, we see online. We are not confronted with an artwork in a forced situation, we can easily escape. That is not the purpose of art, formerly meant to expand our ability to perceive and criticize.

Especially in the age of digitalization and automatization we need to leave the offered comfort and work towards an evolving state of mind. The gradual aspect of evolution was not comfort but the urge to innovate, change and to proceed. Digitalization might be the result of our urge to innovate but it needs to remain an element that we keep innovating. Instead of human evolution, humans develop technologies more

than themselves currently. We are participant of a system that works without our own individuum and our action. This works as long as we live in a stable democracy (e.g. some European countries or Canada or Australia). But as soon as the system is running out of democratic structures, society must relearn how to act and think with the use of ones’ own reason.

The necessity to support and demand the interest in arts and culture is important for both, governments and society. The deficit of critical and reflective thinking can be decreased through “Association sequences” (cf. W. Benjamin), training our observation and reflection. The interest in politics and public structures can then be increased. A democracy in which ideas and inspiration prospers and spreads makes each citizen accepting fellows while having a unique and independent mind.