Last Snapshots from Our Trip
In the previous post, I explored how a painted form can be recognizable and remain open to another reading. “IS and NOT-IS” is my shorthand for that tension. Zen and Daoist ideas have helped me think about it; quantum mechanics offers other questions, but it does not prove the meaning of these paintings.
I originally wanted to go much further into the different forms this ambiguity can take. For the close of this small metaverse series, I would rather show three more views and let the differences become visible.
Light Version
A simple picture. What first looks like the skeleton of a dried leaf may begin to resemble a bird’s wing. A nearby form suggests distance; a distant one seems to come closer. Recognition is present, but it does not settle into a single object.
Medium Version
At first glance, this could be a scene in water. Some areas look almost tangible. Elsewhere, broad strokes refuse to describe a particular thing. Together, those passages suggest a scene and begin to question it.
The idea of relationship matters deeply to me. Buddhist and Daoist thinking has encouraged me to look beyond isolated objects and attend to what happens between them. In painting, I can work with that directly: every line and dot changes how the neighbouring marks are read.
Look at the connections across the image. The forms seem to communicate, as things in nature can seem to communicate when we give them sustained attention.
An almost imaginary diagonal reaches from the middle left towards the upper centre. Very little of it is actually painted. Yet the surrounding marks give it a presence comparable to a drawn line. What is left out can be as active as what is there.
Strong Version
Here the image approaches the appearance of a photograph. Some passages seem enlarged, as if viewed through a magnifying glass. The surface offers convincing detail, but what does that detail describe?
Look for at least ten seconds, then turn away and try to describe what you saw. Perhaps it will be easy to recall textures and shapes, and harder to name an object. That uncertainty is what interests me.
A Joke for the Day
During the metaverse excitement of 2022, I imagined this conversation with an avatar designer:
“Your avatar is ready, sir, designed according to your wishes. Enjoy!”
“Oh no! When I said a hybrid of Richard Burton and Elvis Presley, I meant the womanizer and the rock ’n’ roll—not the last phase of their lives.”
Further Reading and Viewing
These references approach the subject from different directions. They are invitations to further thought, rather than evidence that Zen, Daoism and quantum physics are interchangeable.
For the background to my own painting, see Asian Art Theories, including my essays on the essence of Chinese painting.
The Dalai Lama’s The Universe in a Single Atom (2005) offers a dialogue between Buddhist thought and science. Buddha Weekly’s discussion of the observer presents another Buddhist perspective.
On a different plane, Simon Bromley’s “The Space of Flows and Timeless Time” discusses Manuel Castells and the information age. It concerns social and technological forms of space and time, rather than the physics of these pictures.
The video below is Graham Priest’s Buddhism & Science: Quantum Mechanics and Entanglement, published by Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. I leave it as one further route into the discussion.
Related articles
Metaverse (IV): Day, Night and Schrödinger’s Cat · Metaverse (III): The Beginning and the End · The Meaning of a Dot in Chinese Painting
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