Chapter Three: Abstract and Imaginary Sensory Information

"Learning is experience. Everything else is just information."
– Albert Einstein


"Cement!"

"Hmmm?" Einstein said turning in his chair, his glasses mounting the lower half of his nose.

"Cement!"

He took off his glasses and looked at me puzzlingly.

"I . .. uh . . umm . . well." I didn't want to tell him that I had done the best I could in repeating 'I intend to find my hands in my dreams' for two days and when the third day approached I couldn't stand it any longer and happenstancely, found a handprint in sidewalk and chucked the whole assignment.

"Come, come. Sit, sit."

He urged me to sit on the floor in a corner of his lab and then sat down on my left.

He nodded his head towards the window.

"It kills us so softly."

I looked at him puzzled.

"Look! Look at the light!"

Light streamed in through the window. A slow wind bustled a tree and created a very fluid like shadow that gave the light a kind of life. Dust floated all about and glistened endowing the room with a sense of eternity.

"The universe is so gentle with us. It kills us . . . so softly. " His hand motioned through thin air as if delicately caressing the light. “It takes what 80 - 90 years of looking at light to wear away the ability to see. And what? 60-70 years of hearing to make the ears ineffective. Certainly there are similar limits to touch, taste and smell."

We sat in silence for more than a few moments. I became uncomfortable and increasingly agitated. I began to wonder about what to say, why to say it and whether or not it was my own thoughts or the thoughts my father.

"Shhhh . . . Listen to your senses."

I heard cars driving by, a dull murmur of people talking on the street, birds chirping. I also felt the cold university tile floor and I ran my fingers along the wood grain of a cupboard.

"Your imagination is much more timid than I thought it was."

I was offended. His statement was preposterous and I wanted to tell him so. But somehow I quelled the desire and saw that my entire feelings of offense were stemmed from my father's insistence that I know arguments about knowledge back for forth. If I was truthfull with myself I had to admit that I didn't really know anything about the imagination.

"How did your attempt to find your hands in your dreams go?"

"I . . . uh. . ."

"You found cement."

I again wanted to reiterate my previously felt feelings on how great it was that I found a hand print in cement and how I wanted to tell him that this counted as evidence and that I would rather it not be treated this way. That I had a right to speak up for whatever purpose my imagination had and if taht was finding cement then so it shall be. But I was so flustered and unable to speak that I just sat there.

His took his mouth and did something very strange with it and it made me think that what I had just said was unblievable. I began again to speak aloud and I reiterated that imprinted cement could certainly be found by a future race of beings the very evidence we have of that exists in dinosaour footprints.

He took my mood for granted and talked to it.

"Oh, how interesting, but your mistaken. Perhaps concrete wouldn't exist in their time because the theory of concept compression-over-time says that when things get lost in time they don't appear to their finders as what they originally were. The context is gone. All we have is an artifact. For instance, the Greek Parthenon exists to us as the Greek Parthenon. But for them it whatever it was because there is no way for us to conceive of the entirety of the times they lived in. Concept degradation over time produces the oddest arrangement of artifacts and concepts that can only offer a literal interpretation. Historians can only report things. Archeaologists could only find things that already exist. Spermatologists could only exist as sperm whales.


I looked at him kinda curiosly but peeked like I didn't want him to continue his conjecture.

literally - 'This was literally found right next to the Parthenon. This was found in the Parthenon. The books of the time say this man was the leader of this time. This book says the Parthenon was built by so and so.'



"Now, to evolve this same problem into our present time I could ask permission of your mind to question, 'What if 20th century artifacts were all that were discovered by these future inconceivable peoples. What kind of paintings would they find? Pick three."

"Mark Rothko's 'Untitled, 1958'. Julian Schnabel's, 'Eight Hundred Blows'. And . . uh. . . . some unknown painter."

"Now, lets say that they never find a representation of what they consider art. Art in their times is whatever kind of B.S. art it is they have to deal with. Lets say they find something entirely different."

"Like what?"

"Like random collections of abstract sensory information"

"What is abstract sensory information?"

"It is sensory information that cannot be conceptualized."

"What?"

"Look."






"And Look at this one."






"You see, this Jackson Pollock, offers a sensory conviction to the viewer's senses without delivering a context, nor a means of interpretation, and certainly the painting gives no reference to the external world. On the other hand, Merit Oppenheim's 'Object' delivers a context, offers a very striking interpretation and references near infinite worlds! One is composed entirely of abstract sensory information, which is resistant to conceptualization, and the other offers definite concepts. Watch again."




"You are perceiving without conceptualizing! Your cognitive processes are halted just enough to allow your eyes to see without turning what you see into concepts. This is a highly unique situation! Look around you! Is there anything in this room that you perceive without conceptualizing?" I looked around the room and back again at the painting. He pointed to my feet - "Sneakers, shoelaces, eyelets and um . . . hmmm . . . Well!. What do you call this?" He grabbed the end of my shoelace pointing to its encased plastic tip. Somebody somewhere knows the name for this!" We both busted up laughing.

"You see to conceptualize abstract art work into the overgeneralization 'Art' is a huge downfall and misses the whole point of abstraction in art. What we have in abstract art is of very profound cognitive importance. Abstract art renders one's conceptualizing faculties unable to conceptualize because abstract art conveys sensory conviction without delivering 'understanding.' But we are dummies we don't know what that waht you are getting is the purest substance of abstraction. We are used to conceptualizing sensory information and then turning it into language and therefore were are able to ignore most if not all of the sensory information coming into our bodies by holding time with conceptual stillness a feat not achieved by to many cept humans onthis planet.. A simple glance at an object and we know what it is. The rest of the sensory details of the object are useless to us. We don't 'understand' Pollock's 'Blue Poles' because it is quite simply - abstract sensory information. And abstract sensory information allows one to perceive without 'knowing' what is they are perceiving. The only other time this occurred in our lives is when we were infants.

"Art scholars today and perhaps even some artists have a habit of making a willful linguistic interpretation of abstract art and miss its cognitive importance. Instead of conducting a cognitive examination of art scholars deliver prose like this.” He stood and began to orate - perfectly mimicking an old English accent and conveying a definitive authoritative scholarly tone - "By means of his interlaced trickles and spatters, Pollock created an oscillation between an emphatic surface - further specified by highlights of aluminum paint - and an illusion of indeterminate but somehow definitely shallow depth that reminds me of what Picasso and Braque arrived at thirty-odd years before . . . "

"Mr. Clement Greenberg is certainly responding to the abstract sensory information in a cognitive manner but he fails to realize the overall cognitive impact of abstract art is to render the conceptualizing faculties of mind a moment of pause. The Pollacks painting delivers sensory information in bulk form. He paused in silence for dramatic effect.

"Hence, little bits of abstract sensory information could be found at random by this future civilization and conceptualized and contextualized differently by them to accord to the consensus of the found artifacts. Let's say they find the Greek Parthenon, the Ancient wall of China, and a couple of airplanes and trains. All as intact as could be. But along with it they find random collections abstract sensory information, which is conceptualized by them as a common artifact tying all three places together. But this artifact never existed in our age and time! The abstract sensory information is conceptualized by their minds to accord to their means and methods of investigation. There is no telling what this artifact is from our perspective because the abstract sensory information is conceptualized by their minds! And yet they would prize this artifact as the most definitive representation of our time!" He laughed aloud. Can you imagine what it would be?

He peeked my curiosity and I stood at the edge of my seat.

"But I thought you said that abstract sensory information cannot be conceptualized."

"Yes and no. Abstract sensory information yields to any willful examination. Thus, under art historical scholarship or criticism abstract art yields to description and the powers of language. Any willful examination of abstract sensory information transforms a cognitive examination into imaginary sensory information. Abstract sensory data and imaginary sensory data are the exact same thing and yet the differences between the two are as wide as the Atlantic. The two are as different as night and day. It is only a willful interpretation that separates the two.

He paused for a moment searching my face for clues to rescue me from my confusion.

“You see abstract sensory information overpowers our ability to conceptualize because it delivers sensory information 'en masse' - in large quantities - rendering our ability to understand to a standstill forcing us, by default , to conclude the abstract art is meaningless elitist bullshit - of which it is- if all you understand is simple prosaic descriptions and high auction prices. Thus, it is vital to understand that abstract sensory information imposed upon with one's will transforms it into imaginary sensory information."

"Okay, think I get that. It reminds me of something I wrote down just recently." I dug through my backpack and took out my notebook. "Uh . . . here it is. Sally Everett, an associate professor of art at Metropolitan State College said that, "Art is incomprehensible until understood and understanding occurs as ordinary people fit art into meaningful personal contexts. Without context art is insignificant information" (Everett, 275).

"Aha! Fantastic!” Einstein announced intoning a french accent. “Now please tell me how in the world of all worlds can sensory information be insignificant? In evolutionary terms how can a creature simply designate incoming sensory information as insignificant? Any kind of creature that wants to survive, thrive and live to see another day does so by using all the sensory information presented to its senses. Otherwise its chances of survival are diminished considerably.

"In the 18th century Immanuel Kant said something along these lines - 'Since imagination is the forerunner of reason it contextualizes and conceptualizes or 'synthesizes' abstract sensory information in accord of our ability to reason.' Assuming that these future peoples cognitive processes are similar to ours I can assert that the artifact they find outweighs the importance of any possible existence of a concrete imprinted hand mark for even if they did find the hand mark they have not conceptualized hands. The very idea of hands is as foreign to them as they are to us. The artifact of hand imprint on wet cement would be unable presents itself to them as we see it. Therefore, the very existence of the imprinted hand is side-shuttled for more interesting artifacts that accord to their basic search premises, which according to them is that we are an intelligent species capable of producing technological machinery with our tentacles and under no circumstance do they actually recognize intelligence in anything that looks like an animal paw print!"

My sudden change of expression lit Einstein into fits and rolls of laughter. His eyes sparkled and he grasped his sides in exasperation. I couldn't help but to join him.

After a good fit of laughter I felt the weight of embarrassment lift and I found myself fearlessly expressing some of the ideas I had examined with my imagination.

"Earth and the Sunshine Kids!"

He looked at me quizzically.

I explained that I conceived that the future beings that had no idea what we looked like had evolved to become aware of themselves as planets. Thus, in some far off inconceivable future was a sexless teenager named Earth who was oblivious to our arrangement of a sun centered solar system. And yet, a sun or something similar still existed in the Earth's world and the orbiting planets of our solar system were still there but were conceived of and experienced by the Earth as neighbors, friends, schoolteachers and so on. Mars was the bully at school who picked on Earth. Venus was a warm bodied utterly friendly girl that had all the guys chased after. Jupiter perhaps was a teacher the Earth trusted and consulted in times of need or just out of curiosity and the desire to learn something. The Earth's parents, however, were from some far off solar system. The Earth's mother was a world made entirely of water. And Earth's father was made almost entirely of dirt but had underwater springs that would sometimes break the surface creating momentary oceans or fits of tearful emotion. All of these future beings existed on something they had yet to conceptualize or discover as a planet or whatnot. Maybe they knew they were in a land or perhaps they lived on some huge plain of ground wherein the horizon existed as something akin to the horizon of a black hole.

"What do their bodies look like?"

I admitted that I had a hard time conceiving or imagining a different kind of body for them. I told Einstein that I continued to experiment with the idea in spite of my inability to imagine what they looked like. I admitted that I couldn't conceive of them as having human like bodies but at the same time I couldn't imagine anything else.

"Very interesting. Fanciful and yet wrapped with a touch of sobriety and simplicity. I am dying to ask you what do you think these people believed about our senses?"

"What do you mean?"

"Telling from the objects of our world and how they operate they would conclude that we perceived the world in strict terms of sequence. Perhaps if they were to find a human body and our anthropological means of categorization the would call us Sequentia homosapien!"

"I am not following you."

"According to their view, which is flattered with their assumptions, the settlements they found don't shed any evidence as to what we look like. But they have tons of indirect evidence about how we perceived our world. The question is - What would they conclude about our senses?"

I was baffled that he was going that deep. I didn't make any sense to me.

"Without the evidence of a human body they would picture us with six to seven eyes or 50 ears; beings capable of devouring sequence! If you study the objects of our world and how our objects operate from cars, to VCRs to buses - all of it can be seen to operate by following a strict sequence of events."

"But if they've got a VCR then they have could find out what we looked like just by watching a tape!"

"Whose to say that they could even detect the same visual spectrum that we see? You're talking about living beings with the mass of planets! The evolution of a planet into a living thing fully aware of itself complete with a corresponding life sustaining perceptual environment is phenomenal! A race of such creatures, perhaps, would have synthesized time and space with ultra-slow moving x-rays or gamma rays; not in accordance with the visible spectrum."

"But if they couldn't see our visual spectrum then how did they find the remains of our civilization?"

"Ahah! Yes of course! Who knows?" He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Great question because it show you are headed in the direction of the inconceivable. I think such a question pushes the very limits of the imagination into the unimaginable. And to conceive of the unimaginable takes guts. By exercising the imagination with these thought experiments we are searching for a sense of awe as well as the feeling or the knowing or perhaps even the mood that allows us to acquiese to the idea that it is possible to achieve the impossible."

He looked at me specifically and squinted his eyes as if here were getting ready to tell me a secret. "And further, when things happen in a sequence there are only so many probable versions of events that can occur within a sequence. The plethora of sheer sequence that exists in our times would force them to conclude we were locked in our rationality and thus, artificially intelligent."

"Imagine that," he said and turned to his desk sharpening a pencil.

"But I mean eventually they WOULD find a skeleton of us or a picture or something."

"But what if they didn't? What if this project is shared only among a few high-minded professors who have only recently discovered these curious remnants? And they have only begun to discuss what to do with this discovery."

"Well then what about circumstantial evidence? Doorknobs, handles forks and knives could tell them we had hands."

"That's bullcrap!" He said pounding his desk and standing up. "Tentacles do the same job! Grasping and turning are not new evolutionary inventions! Why I believe that it was 2.3 billion years ago that the first jellyfish roamed the vast and ancient undersea world that the world was at the time.

"Erase sequence from your future Earth's world and what do you have?"I sat there in full concentration attempting to concieve of a conceptual arrangement that was impossible to concieve. "Now your turning to face the silence that comes with facing and pondering the inconceivable!”

"You see the task you've been assigned is more than a bit out of your reach. It will take more than your best to accomplish finding your hands in your dreams. Since you are dumb and your imagination rusty I had to be very patient with you and non-demanding even though you love the challange of meeting demands. Think and ponder of the light, sound, taste, touch and smell and tell me not that as a crow flies that light is your constant reminder!" Einstein announced. "And since you smoke cigarettes and drink beer and have the occasional coffee - taste, touch, smell and sound are also your constant reminders! Every single change in anyone of the five senses shall serve as a constant reminder for you to look at your hands. It is all too often that we ignore the world around us and operate on habit. The objects of the world rule our minds and force us to correspond with reality in artificially intelligent manner. Sounds are always interpreted as cars, buses trucks, trains or whatever may be. Light always lends the conviction of trains, planes or automobiles. Touch is always a desk, a toothbrush, or a carrot. Your task is to be alert to every single change in your perceptual environment and to be keen enough to use those changes to remind you that -this is a dream! And to look at your hands!

He paused for a moment allowing me to gather my things and he added, "You see, to be an imagination engineer, you have to be an inventor. You have to be able to improvise on a moments notice and use everything at your disposal. You have to be willing to entertain ideas beyond your wildest fantasies and then you have to have the audacity to attain those impossibilities. Make the decision to do this. Put your mind to it and you'll achieve something astounding."