mar 10
A wider view: sciurus carolinensis, a really fat one. The vignetting is because I shot this with my elph and had to use the flash.
-
Search
Pages
-
Categories
- Animals (32)
- Arts (3)
- Birds (51)
- California (15)
- Central Park (18)
- Drawings (79)
- Drinking (3)
- Earthquakes (1)
- Failures (3)
- Herps (5)
- Idiocy (5)
- Insects (2)
- Landscape (41)
- Lists (33)
- Los Angeles (1)
- Music (7)
- NYC (28)
- Phobias (1)
- Photos (3)
- Primates (15)
- Rants (1)
- Readings (3)
- Residency (32)
- Revenge (2)
- Texas (9)
- Video (10)
-
Archive
Art
Birds
Conservation
Friends
Interesting
Me
Radio
Reading
-
Meta
March 10th, 2008 18:06
From a photography point of view, I think the vignetting works beautifully! I esp. love it translated into a drawing. And all in all this is genius!
March 10th, 2008 18:28
The vignetting isn’t in this drawing, just the photo of it… but it’s funny, cause I have drawn in vignetting in the landscape drawing I am working on. Maybe I should crop the squirrel down and draw the vignette edges in, make it more like an old daguerreotype portrait… I’ll post a photo of the entire drawing tomorrow - let me know what you think!
March 10th, 2008 20:40
They carry a pox that are now wiping out native squirrels in Britain, where apparently (somehow) Gray Squirrels got “introduced”. It’s actually getting critical. Are there melanistic squirrels in Central Park? They look positively demonic.
March 10th, 2008 20:52
Um I think I must be daft cuz’ I thought the vignetting was there! Silly me. Oh that does sound amazing!
March 10th, 2008 20:56
Oh wait! I get it! You photographed your drawing which in turn came out with the vignetting! Ah ah!
March 10th, 2008 20:58
A drawing version of a squirrel daguerreotype is the best idea ever and only you can pull that off!
March 10th, 2008 23:16
We have both melanistic and albino squirrels here… I photographed an albino in prospect Park in Brooklyn, and there are a group of melastics near the feeders in the Evodia Fields area of the park.
March 11th, 2008 14:59
I Just finished a fairly insane book by Dutch psychologist Cretien van Campen on SYNESTHESIA. Among the odd ideas floated by Cretien, is that we can all LEARN to be synesthesiac (hey, he did!) . It got me to thinking: if some people see numbers as colors; or hear letters as music or dates as spatial blobs, could there be zoological taxonomic synesthesiates? They would see a species and “hear music”; families of species would be similar types of musics. If this was possible, what would the music of squirrels be? Not a theme song, mind you, but a synesthesiac association? And if that was a squirrel, what about a chipmunk? A Barbirusa?
March 11th, 2008 16:49
The idea of species synesthesia is fantastic!!!
On a side note, when I used to paint, each color on my palette had a noise and a personality associated with it. I tried to explain this while teaching color once at RISD and my students looked at me like I was from Mars…
March 11th, 2008 20:15
Catherine:
ALL KIDDING ASIDE: that is exactly how a synesthete describes their experience. Each one is unique, but just the way you describe it fits in with all the interviews Cretien did. You ARE synesthetic. Like many, you didn’t know it. You should read this book. It it he describes a number of artists (musical, visual, writing) who never knew they were synesthetic and told friends, colleagues, students about some experience and got the puzzled stares. .Are you kidding me? If not…
Well, it figgures. YOU HAVE GOT TO READ THE BOOK. I interview Cretien via Netherlands Friday.
Gotta go listen to some ice cream and then color myself to a sweet and sour sleep.
March 12th, 2008 12:33
You’re right, I need to read that book. I have suspected I might be synethestic.
I have also wondered if it can be learned - for instance: pattern recognition while birding. I will never forget the first time I saw a Cape May Warbler - it was a female, in a spruce in Maine, and all I saw was a flash of its pale neck. And in my head: not “hmmm, I wonder what that warbler is” but an instantaneous “CAPE MAY CAPE MAY CAPE MAY!” with a complete mental picture of a Cape May Warbler flashing at the same time. So does image/verbal association fall under the definition of synesthesia?
March 12th, 2008 12:36
Where are the neuroscientists? Any experience with synesthesia?
Cause, you know, I KNOW YOU THINK ABOUT THESE THINGS. And I know that you are also birders…
March 12th, 2008 14:43
Funny you should mention “learned synesthesia”. It ends up being the whole point of his rather odd book. After some really serious discussion about whether synesthesia is a breakdown in perception (one of the current theories is that perceptual information is “leaking” into places where it should not be) Suddenly Cretien reveals “that he liked the idea so much, he BOUGHT THE COMPANY!”. Yes, he worked hard, and MADE himself synesthetic. At that point, he starts to sound like an X-Men wanna be. “We are the mutant future!”or some such thing.
It is interesting because, also in the book, there is a lengthy review of the literature in which some (a number actually) perception researchers have said there are clearly not just 5 senses, but as many as 12, and I am NOT talking ESP here.
AS AN ARTIST, it’s genuinely interesting to start thinking how differently you perceive the world. Of course, one of the points of the book is that you were BORN perceiving the world differently (and that would explain your birding experiences, and your truly warped sense of humor), and that it was just “natural” that one of the few fields where you would feel comfortable would be in visual arts.
There’s a LOT of new neuroscience recently done about synesthesia quoted in the book. One of the most important things is that it is NOT just an affect. In other words, people are NOT just “being weird”, they are truly perceiving the world in that manner, and do so CONSISTENTLY (ie: the number three for one person is always YELLOW). The problem is that the set of synesthetic perceptions is completely different for each synesthete, but is is completely consistent within that person and can be traced on MRIs etc.
One of Cretien’s other concepts is that as children, we likely all perceive the world synesthetically, but are diligently trained to narrow our interpretations of our perceptual intake. There is some proof for this.
Your Cape May experience may be getting at what I suggested before: a zoological synesthetic experience based on your already synesthetic perceptual abilities.
Just remember: use it for the good of humankind, and don’t go all ‘I shall destroy all civilized planets” (SEE FLETCHER HANKS) with it. Cuz that would be a real bummer. Well, somewhat.
March 12th, 2008 19:57
This is from one of those neuroscientists who is also a birder…. more like a birder who used to be a neuroscientist.
Although I knew about synesthesia, having some myself, I usually thought is was one of those “pop psychology” constructs, until, prompted by this thread, read up on it.
For those interested, try
Catherine, your CM Warbler experience was most likely an example of the stimulus triggering a total and complete recall of well-studied information. I’ve seen you do it several times, and was amazed. But, you have a phenomenal memory!
I would like to hear more about the personalities and noises of colors, however; that is absolutely fascinating! It IS true synesthesia. And what happened to the noises and personalities when you mixed the colors?
IMHO, true synesthesia is something a person is born with. It can’t be learned, but paired associations can.
Mark, Catherine has always perceived the world differently! (And I’ve known her since she was five…) But in a quite refreshing way, and, since she’s artistic, left-handed (I could go on), quite different from the scientist-academic-types I usually associate with.
March 12th, 2008 21:01
Betty:
All I can tell you is that Cretien van Campen differs with you on a lot of points and his “just published” book is the summation of his years of study. He FIRMLY believes it can be learned, and claims to have taught himself (BTW: he’s a “social scientist” (?) at the Social and Cultural Planning Office of the Netherlands (sounds a little Orwellian), so who knows?) Some of the examples of case studies in his book are amazing (nice color plates), and he is VERY critical of the narrow definitions of synesthesia in most older literature. He also discusses at end the relationship, and if there is one, between artists imaginative use of various metaphors and synesthesia.
But I will know a lot more after FRIDAY when I interview him. Betty, if you send me your e-mail address, I will let you know when the show will air (which won’t be for several months now: I have a huge back log). I had to send him questions in advance of the interview, something I typically do not do, which means his English is likely a little off. But it will be a sight better than my Dutch, which I actually tried to learn once when I went there to bird. It always sounded as if I was about to hock something up out of the deepest recesses of my lungs. But the bird names were cool.
March 13th, 2008 08:48
It makes sense to me that the Cape May experience sounds more like rapid visual recall. I really want to read that book.
When I mixed the colors on the palette, there were some that were dominant types and some that were more passive, which loosely correlated with their tinting strength but was a little different. So there were times during mixing where I felt that things were harmonious with the mixed colors and other times when they conflicted with each other. This had little to do with how the mixes looked, or whether the painting was progressing smoothly or not. Some colors are bullies and are aggressive, which I feel acutely…
March 13th, 2008 09:46
Cretien has some wild accounts from synesthetes who see colors with numbers and what happens when they add numbers or create a string of them, as in a date. For some synesthetes, they have actually learned to use color as a mathematical aid. Still, my favorite was the synesthete who represented days of the week and months, years and decades with color and spatially. BTW: it’s REALLY difficult to match a synesthete’s colors. It’s not just that :”9″ is any yellow (like Process Yellow), it’s a REALLY specific unique yellow. And a different hue, tone and color for every synesthete.