Reading Victor Scklovsky's Art of Technique about the 'algebrization' the over-automatization of perception, I think it is our legacy from the animals we have evolved. I saw a scene from National Geographic channel that a man disguised as a hippopotamus, with only the cover in the shape pf that animal over a cage, other animals like the elephant and the real hippos mistook it for real. Perception, Scklovsky argues, is reduced to seeing only the line and form and even that very soon fades from memory. This technique of perceiving becomes a habit and one sees things as symbols used in algebra. This technique is also responsible perhaps in the illusion that occurs when we sometimes mistake a rope for a snake.
It reminds me of how much J Krishnamurti talks about perception and how we tend to miss the point even as he goes on and on giving numerous examples of habitual reactions to challenges.
'The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects "unfamiliar," to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object: the object is not important...' Scklovsky continues:
'purpose is not to make us perceive meaning, but to create a special perception of the object - it creates a vision of the object instead of serving as a means for knowing it…
After we see an object several times, we begin to recognize it. The object is in front of us and we know about it, but we do not see it[4] -hence we cannot say anything, significant about it. Art removes objects from the automatism of perception in several ways.'
Here again I remember JK's insistence on the need to be free from the known.
