Lecture | Visual Perception

Join us for our online Summer Lecture Series; Artists, curators and writers look in-depth at ideas and approaches to art and the creative endeavour through talks and conversations. Curated by Dr Claudia Tobin, lectures are held Wednesday evenings live on Zoom. 

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‘Ouchi Illusion’ Simon Bill, 2017, oil on linen, 45 x 45cm 
©  Simon Bill / Courtesy of the artist

'Visual Perception' is a significant, and growing, field within neuroscience, and for many years it also figured strongly within the theory portion of an education in Fine Art. It has disappeared from art schools, largely because of the current orthodoxy of Critical Theory, with its emphasis on art considered as a socio/political phenomenon. This talk seeks to reintroduce 'Visual Perception' to the discourses of contemporary art, with a survey of the subject as it now stands. 'Visual Perception' is an unusual academic subject in that it features in both main branches of academia – with the Sciences in Neuropsychology, and with the Humanities as a subject in Philosophy. We will look at some examples of images and ideas that have entered the wider culture, such as viral memes like ‘The dress’ and the 90s ‘Magic Eye’ craze. Then we will discuss the subject in Science (cognitive neuropsychology) and Philosophy (Maurice Merleau-Ponty). The last part of the talk will look at a number of examples of optical illusions generated by vision research, and what they tell us about seeing.   

‘Neon Spreading’ Simon Bill, 2014, mural (exterior paint on hoarding),
7 units @ 4 x 5m ©  Simon Bill / Courtesy of the artist

Simon Bill is an artist and writer. He was educated at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art. He has been represented by Cabinet Gallery (London), Stuart Shave/Modern Art (London), Crown Gallery (Brussels), Bloom Gallery (Amsterdam) and Patrick Painter (Los Angeles) with solo shows at all these galleries and others. In 2014 his first museum show, titled Lucky Jim, was at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. In 2016 his novel Artist in Residence was published by Sort of Books. As a result of this he was appointed Artist-in-Residence at the Gulbenkian Science Institute, Lisbon in 2017-18. He is currently engaged in creating a series of Op Art murals for the seafront at Great Yarmouth, and writing a book of essays about Dover (where he is currently based), with the working title Lonely Dover.