Bill Harvey: Art for art’s sake

Vision sciences and the visual arts are more closely linked than many might think.

As optometrists and opticians, we tend to think of vision in terms of neural representation of focused images of different objects emitting light of a range of intensities (amplitudes) and hues (wavelengths). We forget the perceived image is largely created by the brain and is far more detailed and filled with meaning (both semantic and experiential) and way more representative than the aberrant and inverted light image projected onto the retina.

This perceptual process has allowed artists over the years, knowingly or unknowingly, to create visual art of interest. Even the most rudimentary of cave drawings are easily recognisable. Renaissance artists developed skills of perspective (monocular cues) to recreate three dimensional spaces on flat canvas.