Devil’s Dictionary Artist’s Edition

 Art-noun \ ˈärt \
1. A term used to justify and legitimize terrible ideas.
2. A term of prestige tacked onto nonsense.
3. Something that seems mysterious used to beguile and rob the gullible.
4. An extremely ancient term used to describe extraordinary experiences.  This experience being triggered by coherent configurations and combinations that are like to the patterns of the world as gained through experience but amplified into hyperreality or time distortions. (Rare but still accurate).
5. The state of being cognitively manipulated into extra reality.
6. Nested packages of information transmitted via material configurations that in turn create a toolkit of cognitive effects.  Ex: A drawing is a configuration of contrasted curves, edges, boundaries, intersections, and values to indicate forms and patterns familiar to what the brain experiences in space.  As this hierarchy of data escalates the brain creates meaning and agency.  It clarifies pattern from noise.  The clearer the patterns the more convincing the drawing.  These patterns can be impossible as facts, but acceptable as experience.

Artist-noun art·ist \ ˈär-tist \
1. One skilled in the fine arts.  Fine arts, of course, being nonsense.  Fine arts vs practical arts isn’t a thing.
2. Everyone, in their own special way, being a wizard, saint or prophet.  But not really.
3. A do nothing, lazy, pretentious, low level con man.
4. A saint, sometimes called a “master”, whose insights and sensitivity are beyond question.
5. Someone who expresses themselves all over the place without regard or considering if that is even a good idea. (See Expression)
6. Someone who can, through careful study, experiment and practice, induce a state of art by manipulating materials or signals to create cognitive effects (see art definitions 4-6).

Critic- noun  crit·ic  \ ˈkri-tik \ syn vandal, asshole, fraud, parasite, predator
1.A self confirmed expert without expertise in the subject they address.
2.An arm chair quarterback
3.A huckster with an intent toward vandalism as a point of power.
4.One who cannot practise what they preach.
5.A failed personality cult leader.

Critique - noun  cri·tique  \ krə-ˈtēk , kri- \
Etymology: from krienin- to separate or divide. To judge or separate.
1.A popular method of gathering together in a group to pillary one another and vandalize work.
2.A method of mining for faults and errors in the work of others without the necessity of any skill or knowledge in that work.
3.An act of spite under the guise of assistance.
4.A demand to do violence to reason and  submit to the arrogance of others for fear of being proclaimed arrogant.
5.A non-sexual sadistic and masochistic relationship between parasites and predators.
6.Arrogating the position of the artist without having to do the artist’s work.
7.The evasion of putting your money where your mouth is.
8.Group assholery.

Epic- noun  ep·ic  \ ˈe-pik \ syn Pop, umph, boom!, bledow, kersplash, poit, and other Don Martin borrowings.
1.A word lacking any definition often said while using explosive hand gestures and a dramatic inflection.
Ex: “We need this logo to be epic!”, “That image needs to be more epic!  More ‘umph!’, you know?”
2.A term indicating bluffing.  Often best addressed by the phrase “shut up.”

Expression (or the theory of expression in art)- noun ex·pres·sion \ ik-ˈspre-shən \
1. A late 19th century philosophical idea of what art is from the likes of Croce and Tolstoy.  Mainly, based in the idea of magic and voodoo dolls but disguised in philosophical language.  Ex-press meaning to push out was, in summary, meant to indicate the artist was taking their inner self and putting it into outer objects. Harry Potter fans might consider a horcrux. But the “horcrux theory of art” sounds stupid.  The theory of expression was and is often linked to expressing emotions.  Emote means “move out”.  So expressing emotions is to “press out move outs”.  I am starting to prefer the horcrux theory.
2. A fossil of an idea showing how far we have come in understanding when compared with recent cognitive science.
3. A word, of unknown meaning, used to authorize something someone called “art".
4. A term used to emotionally blackmail others when an idea or claimed piece of art is questioned.  The word “personal” is often attached to endow the right to be personally insulted.  Ex: “How can you question his personal expression?  Who are you to judge?”  This idea implies a mysterious ownership.

Just -adjective \ ˈjəst \
A word used by conmen and clients to undermine everything you do and everything you are.  An attempt to minimize the extraordinary.  Making the worst cause seem the better in a single word. Smallifying what is big. Smally Bigs.

Objective -adjective  ob·jec·tive  \ əb-ˈjek-tiv , äb- \
1.Not subjective (see Subjective).
2.As perceived without distortion or interpretation…making it not a perception.  The act of perception distorts, translates, recombines, and confabulates.  If you perceive it you already broke it.
3.Quantitative, though this idea rarely comes up as it is frowned upon to think art may involve calculation, analysis, or unemotional/unromantic things.

Perspective-noun per·spec·tive \ pər-ˈspek-tiv \
1. a term used in art to note you know an art term. See also “use” as in “use of color”.
2. A way of saying you understand the point of view of another without any knowledge of that point of view.  Speaking for another in such a way as to shrug off responsibility to a generalized scapegoat. An indicator one is pretending to be the representative of a demographic one has never consulted.
3.A term used in the attempt to become the vox populi, and therefore the vox dei without first consulting populi or dei.
Ex:
"From the audience perspective, this terrible idea is justified”.
"From a player perspective this offensively stupid idea I’m espousing is legitimized.”
"From the perspective of these voiceless suckers you can’t verify, what I’m saying has authority.”

Pop - verb  \ ˈpäp \ syn Epic
1.In art, this means, “I have no idea what I’m talking about”.  Ex: “We need something epic! Something that really pops!”  “When placed side by side these really pop!”
2.A word used to suggest excitement, when nothing exciting is happening.
3.A word used to indicated someone does not know the properties and attributes of creating an experience, but can clumsily discribe their experience.
4.Describing something that draws attention, but not understanding it is many complicated things happening simultaneously.
5.A diagnostic word to discern a bullshitter.

Style-noun \ ˈstī(-ə)l \
1. A description of the limit of one’s abilities.
2. An attempt to endow authority to a lesser set.
3. Proclaiming one’s vices as virtues.
4. Carefully, and with expertise, excluding some data, while amplifying other data to compensate for the exclusion, thereby giving a coherent, but noticeably idiosyncratic experience. (Antiquated use).
5. Using a confined, economic, limit of information to great effect. (Rare).

Subjective- adjective  sub·jec·tive  \ (ˌ)səb-ˈjek-tiv \
1.A term used to minimize importance based in a philosophical misunderstanding of a dichotomy between subjective and objective, which was left aside long ago. It is often used with “just” or “only”. The quantitative and qualitative, and the thresholds between them in cognition are not considered.
2.An antique idea regarding a false dichotomy between subject and object long ago left aside in philosophy. The subject/objective dichotomy is extinct, as overlap and gradients with the ideas were quickly found. They describe proportions of measure and affect in signal interpretation.
3.Often wrongly used to mean “personal preference.” Without understanding that preference can also be built and configured and rewritten.
4.A dismissive word best used as a signal to dismiss.
5.The clumsy, distorted, way of saying “qualitative”.

World view- noun\ ˈwərl(d)-ˌvyü \
1. A tangential uninformed opinion about things of which one is unacquainted.
2. Claiming a cosmic point of view when regarding one’s navel.
3. Disregarding the intricate and impossibly complex pursuit of knowledge of the world for worship of a very small baetylus or omphalos.
4. Being provincial but sounding sophisticated.

Art class notes

We read other peoples peripersonal space even if the "costume" or outfit  or extra gear aren't there (pantomime)

Implicit drawing:  use peripersonal space in a characters posture and angles (weight signatures and strain signatures) to imply an invisible sub drawing. This relies on body schema and peripersonal space maturity.

Standing upright evolution.  2 things.

1.standing as a hierarchical position.  Looking down on a rival.  Widely present among animals. Implications of bigness (as opposed to reaching for food) and playing with depth importance.

2.  Standing difficulty, rearing up is difficult.  A physical unfolding uses great strength, energy and balance.  It creates vulnerabilities in combat for the one rearing, but also demonstrates condescension as it is sneering or dismissing the power of the bent. This can be faked and acted as if rearing involves more unfolding and strength than is really used (drag). In people flourish and gesture add to the theatricality and hidden message.  Like playing to the back row, it should be noted this is performance for several not as much one to one.  Less a matter of making big, and more a matter of the display of down looking  extravagance.  Notice this in terms of the "body language" pose of leaning back arms raised behind the head.  Conspicuous and Extravagant vulnerability while looking down.  This type of rearing is selective to audiences that can be intimidated in front if others. This pose shown to an aggressor or predator exposes vulnerable organs and wide target areas.  In humans, still, the arms back pose can be diffused by an opponent leaning in or even getting closer.  It is proximity dependent.

Inferential drawing based in cross modal perception.  Drawing what isn't seen, hidden out of frame social interactions, peripersonal space.  mix and match 

Drawing peripersonal space

Perspective is an attentional and time tool not a framed context or geometrically ordered structure.  Note Saccadic fixation in regard to perspective and time perception (note this also with accompanying audio and temp tactics).

Perspective, VR, clothing- the sense of position and extra position (height, body schema and peripersonal space).  The ability to use tools, extending body space has meaningful aspects.  The metamorphosis provided by extensions and altering bodily proportion can be communicated by angle with this result of a change to the character of the audience. Mind writing.  (Bailenson's tests with VR and height and gender in negotiation).  This old artist's trick has been used in portraiture for centuries with added color and proportion tactics to intensify.  In VR the possibility of "unwrapping" to a certain degree can further expand on this experience (good completion and the subtle movements we use to scan around depth.). That noted the inertial and rotational cues will still mismatch in VR. The vestibular system needs to be brought in to the effect for the "reality" part.  VR is a diminishment in experience, even if those things experienced are hyper-real in isolated properties.  Ritual, wherein participants traveled through hyperrealities, also had real movement and inconvenience (labor and force), proximity cues (including scent and the movement of the small bodily hairs  that assist in understanding the puffs of air in speech).  The preconscious and subtle "realities" need to set the base for an experience of reality.

Touch receptors have meaningful visual correlates (force, light touch).  Look into an anatomy of visual touch (for example raffini cells).

Same with sound ie facial expressions

Metaphor is a cross modal gap filling for inadaquate narration and targeted sense sequence.  "A blanket of snow" describes some cross understandings of categories but have as much unlike their metaphorical model as it does alike.  So priming is used even if contradictory.  Warm blanket and cold snow combined.  Layering various "warm" indicators can prime comfort and "heat" even in a winter scene.

Explain phantoms and ghosts and how implicit information can induce that type of projected agency (the ghosts of Kiki and Bouba). 

Sound/taste is complex reception but still geometric.  Color reinforced (ie fruit having a tangy smell, but ripeness a visual coloring and further depth coloring by light transmission through the skin.) 

Kiki bouba & line orientation bias (also top down light orientation bias)

Also consider food temperatures and soft textures as inference to behavior (sitting on a hard chair makes one a harder negotiator, drinking a warm drink makes one more sympathetic in punishment.) Color and weight as priming tools.

Recall case mentioned by Sacks about the woman with ticks involving imitation in extremis of people over a span of time.  He connected this with Tourettes but it sounds like an extreme mirror touch synesthesia with the mirror boundary completely eroded and recalled.  Leaving the imitative systems without a personal block.  "Trying on" in extremis.  Consider in the opposite direction in terms of anorexia as well.

Up down curvature bias (head space) in facial expression (Thatcher effect....poor ability in recognizing upside down faces and elongation of the face inversion)

Depictions of heavy attentional load can indicate narrative priority.  If a figure is reacting to several points of attention: ie lifting a heavy stone infront if him, flinching away from something on his right but his eyes straining to the left- the value of each point of attention can be weighted to help indicate sequence and narrative.

Internal agency and attention.  Feeling the bridge of the nose with the fingers agency can be switched from fingers to feel nose, or nose to feel fingers.  The "personifying" or primary piloting or primary agency can be switched in body parts, ignoring other body parts.  This agency can extend to personifying.

Anatomy- find primitive shapes.  Cubes first with largest face area and orientation. 

Art as extended agency, doubling, hyper reality, phenomenological framework.

Social vs public identity and body schema- scale variation

Brain using body as measuring tool and comparison guage of space, scale, and hierarchy

Position has grammar and drawings can involve conjugation

Narrative is a way creating a clock, but a sub time can work using narrative as camouflage (switching value in cognitive signals) 

Distance limits the available emotions to communicate with voice, posture and faces.  Playing to the back row is very limited, but those limits can also tell which are intimate or close social vs far performance or group appropriate.  Performance emotions and intimate close group emotions.

Controlling attention is power.  When people vandalize and compete with art they are commandeering attention and exercising an aggressive competitive impulse against the artist, but more often against the work it self.  They are in a performance and diversion will diminish the pursuing attention of an audience. Vandalism shows dominion. Coinneseourship is this with a controlled face.  Creating cognitive biases around preconceived notions or hijacking pattern recognition is one of the more effective ways of vandalizing quickly.  In the form of gang like joking sessions, real social rivals will offer competing jokes, destructive commentary and accusations of taboo breaking.   It is rife in studio environments, and very costly.

Kiki and bouba are also spatial (pointed breasts and round breasts "titties"vs "boobs"...thanks for noting this, Sherry, and the resemblance to the letters between kiki and titties, it also makes me think of averaging shapes and kiki/bouba variations). Three dimensional angles and curves.  Depth is sculpting attention, value and agency (or likeness to body schema) in space.  Consider variations in x,y biases and the different mode with z and depth biases.  Also consider tournament and pair bonding priority in projecting agency to figures.  

Fast/slow facial expression -these are of variable importance and use in depth....compensated by bright teeth, red gumd, whites of eyes -color variations. 

Joints and "features" act as saccade guides, fixation points for connected angles and direction. These features act as pivots to other connected objects.  Figuring an angular variation based on a fixed feature is easier. So shoulder to elbow, elbow to wrist etc (or curvature and relation of facial features) coordinate standard patterns.  They are easier to discern anchors and guides.  Adjusting their distance can help time distortion effects.

Invisible audience and proximity.  Composition set close to a figure making "playing to the back row" faces and gestures makes the viewer an actor, the audience being distant (or likely distant), and the viewer is implicated on an attentional stage.  Likewise, the viewer can be made audience (more pursuit attention as opposed to fixation) 

To study motion use rest to study rest use motion (fixation and pursuit)

Pursuit needs less consistency as attention follows and attempts prediction, not reflection.  The pattern is oncoming and in ways unpredictable, needing tracking.  Fixation needs consistency and prior convention for comparison of known patterns.  A linear action back and forth will not keep visual pursuit, varied unpredictable motion will.  

(Also consider sound/saccadic relationships)

Drawing infers invisible pressures and circumstances using figures to give value and weight.

Tracking (pursuit motion) can be a mistake for consciousness, or personal agency.  The misattribution of invention of ideas or origins can occur at times due to this pursuit cognition.  This cognitive glitch may need consideration to maintain grounding.

Blindness is the majority state of affairs.  The illusion of sight has a very small range of information, and then conscious experience (much is preconscious) is a confabulation of averaged patterns with the small amount of new data.  When given tests of vision (not moment by moment but vision as an integrated part of conscious knowledge) viewers are for the most part blind.  Beacon points of attention can be recalled with great generality.  The illusion of sight needs streaming continuity and shifting cognitive modes (saccadic and pursuit for example- or "what" and "where").  When creating a piece to be seen it must be understood the first reactions will be based in the viewers internal model of reality, not the image.  The viewers will confabulate celebrity likenesses, perceive scandalous and taboo themes and shapes etc.  It can take years, or decades to fully build enough experience to see the full work.  The audience may need some priming and preparation to see.  Their attention may need direction and hints at value. 

Peripersonal space daemon, has its own anatomy and moves anatomically.  It isn't a dead weight.  We move, emote and gesture in coordination with it.  It doesn't seem to have much bottom up effect.  It seems a top down bias.  Atop not pendulous.  As an animation exercise animate the daemon and figure in interaction (with motion offsets) then turn off daemon animation

Bdrf has a narrative correlate.  Attentional rays are reflected and angled in narrative.  Displays in groups of more than two with have an angle of performance.  It us assumed the eyes are shooting rays of attention.  The player will triangulate between audience and their subject.  Reflecting attention of the audience in their performance (specular highlight).  The "form" reflecting, the player, controls the inferred figure.  They are toying with value scale.  Consider models of light and narrative.l

We embody and imitate features in artwork when we mirror it, consider possession and imprinting.

Consider audience presumptions-interest, preference etc.  as irrelevant. By projecting we are possessed.  When people "try on" others they also lose some fidelity in the previous pattern.  The more "tried on" the more loss of fidelity.  Conmen use the tactic of likeness and ease in "try on" to subsume choice, and linear narrative.

When watching an artist the viewer will be observing actions offset from the mental imagery the artist is experience.  Though painting dark areas or shadows, the mental imagery and their forward projection will be dealing with the modeling of the light areas.

Somatosensory area one shows tongue and finger areas close.  Tongue navigating while drawing or playing basket ball..

Still regarding camouflage.  The ability to camouflage might not be entirely trickery.  The differentiation between self and others, or the relationship we have regarding "inside" and "outside" today shouldn't be a given.  The inside and outside, or inner self as opposed to external others can be tracked to some extent, and 4,000 years ago it does not seem to be what it is today.  Likewise this inside/outside relationship shows cultural differences as well as regional ones.  In other words the metaphor of inner self to outer world is in large part learned and conventional, and has undergone development and sophistication.

I mention this inside and outside relationship to camouflage because the person creating the camouflage doesn't need to be thought of as an outside director.  The camouflage may work on the maker of the camouflage as well.  When camouflage goes from environmental disguise, to personal disguise and description, and then to personal adornment, it does't need to indicate lack of participation in being "tricked".  The adorned can be as fully invested in being deceived by what they have made, and this can even induce physiological changes.  It seems in some cases, adornment, disguise, and camouflage have more to do with transforming the person adorned than the viewer.

In terms of art (and in terms of trying to root out what fiction may be), self deception and transformation should be added to the mix.  With camouflage a theory of mind (across species) is important, and influential, but when reduced in area to disguises and adornment as camouflage, the adorned are not cynically removed.  It is transformative.  They are someone or something else.  This needs not only theory of mind, but an understanding of community status and community mind. 

This is still in effect today.  Within written history accounts of skins being worn to become magical can be easily found.  Berserks (bear shirt wearers), werewolves (ritual wearers of skins and ritual cannibals), priests (Egyptian Ba priests as an easy example), boys dressed in spotted fawn skins for Dionysos, Biblical accounts (Adam, Jacob and Esau with the stolen blessing), and more recent accounts with photographs from all over the world, show widespread "adornment" in a transformative manner.  But clothes, outfits (like the Pope for example, or Generals....or dictators dressed as generals), and newest fashions also work as camouflage (Spanx...might fit into this....or this might be squeezed into Spanx).  As do hairstyles.  This change of person, into hyper real or super person is very very common.  It can be easily seen watching people perform in front of mirrors.  They attempt to transform, through disguise, postures, set facial expressions, camouflage, and displays, themselves for themselves as if the viewer in the mirror is another person.  Their perception of their being is based in the disguise, not in their habitual or general methods and stances.  The perception is not personally invented.  The person looking in the mirror did not invent the identity they are assuming.  It comes from the expectations of groups standards.  The transformation is both personal preference and group consensus.  This is why is is hard to watch oneself on video.  It shows the difference between our attempts at self deception and how we appear to others who we are also trying to deceive.

Periphersonal space as a conjectural cognitive medium.  Like a soft malleable projection, as well as a space measure.  Gives feed back for geometric interaction socially as well as with tools.  Consider in regard to epigenetic aspects such as east/west visual attention, brought about by social and environmental triggers.  The spatial interactions, and peripersonal spatial interactions are linked to social massing and individuation.  The fear of attack face and the shame face are very close except for external attention to an attacker And eyes aimed or down.  The "peripersonal" extra identity, or the ghost created in peripersonal space is attended while generally blinding from external data.  We don't seem to be singular animals ever.

The humunculus is not just a body map on the cerebral cortex.  The map includes complex motion. Duration of stimulation includes complex sequences.  When processing and cross comparison your brain is checking "doings".  It can infer forward and back in sequences.  Often used in drawing.  Drawing can composite various parts of the sequences and still be acceptable.

The idea of art as expression- my inner soul housed in an item is magic. But the body has been building a way of externalizing and conserving energy through outside processes.  So the "soul" part is missing, but bodily energy needs have been co-opted by the human body.  Tool making does not need intellect.

Nor does tool use.  The process can be tracked through pounding food-eating and chewing took hours.  We had stronger jaws and bigger teeth for the job.  Likewise fire took over energy use in digestion. so instead of having to expend massive resources in  food processing we moved these outside.

Our energy use was freed up and our brain usage and size took up the extra resources.  We have inverted gut to brain energy use as do chimpanzees.

Our jaws diminished in size due to less need for chewing, we adapted more refined food pounding and processing tools. Our jaw muscled shrank and allowed the skull to open out (there is also evidence of a birth defect in jaw size that also became valuable for expanding the brain case.

The expansion of the brain case let to deaths in mothers and infants at birth.  Premature infants became the norm but the social structure and dependency of the group shifted to accommodate the longer more fragile infancy.  This in turn opened up areas of energy use for brain development in infants and the capacity to rewire and organize.

These externalizing developments (digestion, gestation, and development of the tool making-peripersonal space- brain).  Other externalizing tools were claws and teeth (spears and spearheads).  An innovation was throwing spears. This is not just externalizing but communicating an action.  The aerodynamics of spears was being innovated by homo-erectus, as well as being hardened in fire.

Art as an external cognitive tool kit was also in fast development.  It emerged from the peripersonal space of socializing, and developments in close living and centralizing a type of communication to the face.  Theory of mind allowed for camouflaged traps.  Imitating enough attributes of a thing to trick another person or animal.  This involved breaking down parts and reconfiguring like things in resemblance.

Art using angle biases, motion angles and biases, and types of mapping emerged. As did a tool kit of colors, make up, (likely costume), instruments and imitative sound makers, and other aspects of "becoming" and imitation.  Status was taken through enhancements in costume, face paint, gear, masks, and identities externalized and taken or owned.  Likewise art is information packets and can be "souvenirs" or other external memory packets.

3d effects using color were a very early use.  Peach dots in lamp light in dark recesses of caves create a stereopic effect causing space to fall back behind the dots.

These innovations weren't discoveries.

Even into the use of writing scribes thought the writing had agency itself.  That it did something.  Not unlike the artists I worked with who thought their pencils had pictures fall out of them.

If not personified not seen?  Do we have to find likeness to ourselves in some property to see a thing?

Is peripersonal space integral to religious thinking and fiction?  Extended "felt" spaces and environments both as displays and depth misread?

Reading facial expressions with saccadic motion is more a where function that leads to what function. you're looking at where the lines of the expression are, micro expression to micro expression.  Concerning where and what memory I'm not sure there's a clear distinction.

Considering what/where and saccadic motion. The motion and pivot of the eye give a reference point to the "where" function that seems to be primary in saccadic vision.   'If these angles are such here, then they make this pattern.  But with smooth pursuit coordinating the where needs different motion, largely taken up by the moving object.  'What, when, where?"

I still draw and my tongue navigates while my hand maps.  So while processing the differences from value scale to simulate form and depth as well as mapping shape, my tongue is often incorporated as a secondary mapper.  In a sense drawing on my lip.  Is this due to the proximity of the tongue to the fingers in somatosensory area one?  If so, is this using cross modal (taste, or language) processes like the kiki/bouba effect?  When I draw I am often aware I am "bouncing" information from my somatosensory system as a map for drawing (as opposed to what I am seeing).  That is, I am feeling my way through a drawing, and in a real experiential way, inhabiting the drawing (sometimes this leaks into the work and it will resemble me-also a known effect with animators who accidentally animate a portrait of their own motion in characters).  This "inhabiting" the drawing was the main reason I drew as a child.  At that time I was trying on the heroes I was drawing or entering places.

Is the tongue involved in this spatial mapping and agency projection as a supporting and sub map?

Metaphor is reading the overlapping somatosensory, interoceptive, and other experiential data.  Calling out the inferred feels of a sight, for example, and connecting it to a near cognitive pattern.  Like a boolean intersection.

Emotion is a way of creating external limbs

Grid cells and place cells for body in space and environment as a pattern.