Was it a holo-deck or a holo-sphere? (Letters 6.2)

As I agree with @ty-ty that this conversation is getting too technical and, ence, both diverging and less interesting, I think it's time to open the can of worms. The larger issue at play here, I think is one that needs to be dealt with in the most openminded fashion: what does the space-time continuum mean in relation to conscience, is all conscience inter-related, and what is the true purpose to our existence as conscious beings? Or, what are we here for and how does that relate to the multiverse? Or yet still, is consensual reality the real reality?

Is it true that‚ there is a subjacent story to interpret‘? I think of portraits, I think of landscapes, I think of still lives. And I cannot imagine any stories lying or laid down within such paintings. Let me not be misunderstood – I do not deny that the artist may have had a story in mind while painting, but such story is not ‚subjacent‘. Secondo me: I think of paintings as invitations to look and look deeper, not of requests to reconstruct nor to interpret something.

I would beg to differ and to say that it depends, taking as an example the painting by Giorgione, the Tempest. Although you may make what you want of it, it was built as a riddle, as most paintings that were hung in Venice's walls in those days. To guess what the author meant with the painting was, once, a fad. Those that were rich enough to pay for the said paintings amused themselves and their company by trying to guess at the true meaning of the painting. And the Tempest is one of the most accomplished examples of a difficult puzzle, (You can know more about this particular painting, for instance, by watching Waldemar Januszczak's The many perplexing interpretations of the Tempest).

( Image: The tempest, by Giorgione )

The following piece of art was also produced with a specific intention and interpretation in mind. That of reminding the friars of the importance of keeping their silence. I guess you can compare it to an early renaissance no smoking wall sign.

( Image: Late 16th Century azulejo panel in the Franciscan Convent of Madre Deus da Verderena, in my home town, Barreiro)

I personally like to measure therefore the quality of a painting in its ability to make my own perspective recognisable to myself. If I can see the world around me with new eyes caused by a painting – this impact I regard to be the painting's highest value and the artist’s topmost intention (which needs no further interpretation).

On one side, it is undeniable that in all forms of human creation there is an underlying intention, if not an explicit or, perhaps, hidden meaning. And lots of those works contain hidden symbolisms that can be interpreted by whoever owns the correct decoding formula, or the same code.

Having said this, I believe that there is a different way to look at and explore a piece of art and that is through intuition of feeling. What does that work feel like to you? In that case it is up to you to ignore what the author tried to convey either through particular or universally understood signs, and enter the interpretation as an empty vessel ready to receive the feeling it transmits to you and to interpret it as a total projection of your mind. Does it imply communication with the author, or is it just you, generating that intuition inside your mind/soul/prana, (take your pick)? Is the feeling you generate self contained or does it feed back to the author through the space time continuum through some mechanism we can intuit to relate to reality by consesus? Can we even be sure that the work today is the same as it was yesterday, and it hasn't changed in everybody's mind since we last interacted with it? Is there a nexus between observation and feedback to the artist? Does our intense concentration on something produce change in it? If it did, being retroactive, would we be aware of it?

I'm sorry for so many questions and no answers, but I think that the way to go here is, maybe, pose the questions first. What does a retroactive or loop interaction between the observer or multiple observers and the art, or artist produce in terms of change? We can assert that the change is peculiar to the individual doing the experience, but we can also presume that if such a change occurs, we cannot possibly be aware of it. And, that, to me, is the challenge your idea creates. I'm not opposed to the idea per se, but I find it generates many interesting questions that need answering. Also, the further away we move from symbolic interpretation, the more these questions become important.

Having made these steps it seems close at hand to me to think and to speak of a relationship and even an interaction between artist and recipient: both try to go side by side discovering and revealing the human condition. So, when I go into this process and I try to describe what happens in my mind, then I have to use metaphors and images to get a lever for words, and in this way I want ro return to my phrase that "picture walking" is something like perpetual change between psychography and following ideas. It is – I’d like to accomplish – something like a mixture of hermeneutics and fantasy.

Correct me if I'm wrong, so I can think about this: In this idea, you separate yourself into an intuitive part that interacts and experiences the work (and I do not care to distinguish if it's picture walking by pure imagination or an induced allucination, as they result in the same), and a rational part that is limited by code and reference system to express your experience to others in all it's dimensions. Is that it?

Apart from this, I believe I can understand where you are getting at, but still, what I see is, at some point in this chain, a mechanism of some kind appears that limits the possibility of fully understanding or fully translating or fully communicating the intuitive feeling you have while interacting with the work. Can you contradict the existence of this conflict?

@hesfestus 07.03.25