Two Stages of Perception

Today I want to talk about something that began for me as a detour. Over the course of the summer, putting together the Thresholds: Limits of Perception exhibition with Ana Maria Torres, I read a series of interviews of Robert Irwin by Lawrence Weschler. In these interviews, explaining what he was trying to achieve in his work, Irwin described an idea, a dichotomy, that I found very intriguing. He was trying to explain something in esthetics, in art. My training is in science, not art, but there seemed to be a connection to threshold, which is the theme of the exhibition. So I spent the whole summer trying to figure out what he meant, or more precisely, trying to formulate a hypothesis about visual perception that would be consistent with the many examples that Irwin presents to explain his concept. After many months, I think I’ve succeeded, but I discover that the idea is not restricted to art, and indeed is a tentative description of two stages in visual processing.