The Liminal

There are two main paths of exploration that we can follow. Science and Philosophy. Sensory observation and Thought. Body and Mind. It should be apparent to anyone that neither can really exist isolated from the other.

Aristotle is thought to have believed that things could be worked out purely by thinking; there was no need to actually test anything. Obviously we can dispel this. Much of what he knew came from the input from his senses, as is the case with all of us. Unless everything we experience is some kind of hallucination (which is not implausible), we have to accept that there is some kind of outside world influencing our sensors. This information in turn necessarily informs our deductive prowess.

Scientists like Richard Dawkins hate the idea of anything existing without your perceiving it, from external stimulus through the senses; everything we know, including abstract things like how much your dog loves you, comes from external evidence. This, as Science would say, implies that a universe exists already, and we are just a part of it. Just like religions think some kind of god exists, Dawkinsian scientists have faith in some external objective reality, when of course they have no evidence for it since by definition we can't step outside our own perception.

I like the idea of there being some liminal zone. Somewhere in between the two poles. Where the boundaries between what you feel and what you think come blurred and uncertain. Somewhere where things exist, but are partway between actual and conceptual (or 'real' and 'sensual' in Graham Harman's terms). This is the zone of the super-natural – there, but not quite there; real but not quite measurable; certainly thinkable but not quite tangible.

This is where Art can flourish, and hopefully bridge the chasm. That's the zone where the sound phantoms in the portfolio exist. Like the wraith at the edge of your vision, you know it's there but you cannot look at it directly without it disappearing.

Comments