Perception
In his Ph.D. study that resulted in the book Gestalt from Goethe to Gibson (1994), van Campen linked history of art to history of science. He showed that the apparent rise of Gestalt psychology in perception research in the 1910s had its roots in late 19th century art history in Germany. The study was done in the context of the interdisciplinary Working Group Iconic Processes, including art historians, psychologists, physicists and anthropologists from several Dutch universities. For a wider audience he wrote the book Pictorial Illusions (1994), exploring the links between artistic and scientific experiments with visual perception since the Renaissance. The book received attention from national television and art and science festivals. After finishing his thesis, his interests moved to the perception of music. Soon after, he found the intriguing phenomenon of synesthesia on the crossroads of music and visual art. With artist and color expert Clara Froger, he started a series of experiments of synesthesia, combining scientific and artistic methods of investigation. The results were published nationally and internationally. The experiments became popular and got attention from hundreds of synesthetes in the Netherlands, mediated by articles and items in the Dutch media, which resulted in the Netherlands Web Community of Synesthesia and a number of workshops and conferences on synesthesia in art and science. The demand for information on synesthesia resulted in the book Tussen zinnen. The new perspective on synesthesia, developed in this book in collaboration with synesthetes, artists and scientists in the Netherlands, led to the publication of The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science by the MIT Press. Since then, van Campen has been consulted on synesthesia and the senses in a number of national and international projects, among them Art Education Belgium (RASA), Unilever UK and Rabobank Netherlands. His research into synesthesia has taken the direction of autobiographical memory. In his latest Dutch book Gekleurd verleden (The Colored Past), he explores tales and studies on sense memories (e.g. the Madeleine story by Marcel Proust).
Read more about this topic: Cretien Van Campen, Fields of Interest
Famous quotes containing the word perception:
“The most evident difference between man and animals is this: the beast, in as much as it is largely motivated by the senses and with little perception of the past or future, lives only for the present. But man, because he is endowed with reason by which he is able to perceive relationships, sees the causes of things, understands the reciprocal nature of cause and effect, makes analogies, easily surveys the whole course of his life, and makes the necessary preparations for its conduct.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it.”
—H.G. (Herbert George)
“In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin. The ultimate delights of a true marriage are one with this.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)