efragments

by Will Hughes

Cave art

Man has daubed since the earliest times. All over the world there are examples of early art. From Australia to California, from France to South Africa, there are paintings recording the earliest traces of civilisation. The aboriginal art of Australia was thought to be about 40,000 years old until new dating techniques seemed to push this back to 60,000 years. Much of the cave art around the world is up to 40,000 years old and frequently consists of animals, weapons, human figures and so forth. Given that they were daubing on walls, it is not so surprising that humans in various parts of the world at that time chose to portray the important things in their lives in various types of figurative art. What is much more surprising, and constant, is the incidence of abstract shapes and patterns, particularly when the shapes and patterns share common features across the wide variety of locations and, presumably, cultures.

The similarities in the abstract images are accounted for by a phenomenon known as entoptic images, meaning images made in the eye, rather than in the usual form of perception which involves some kind of interpretation by the brain. The incidence of entoptic imagery is often associated with trance-like states, either drug-induced, or from sleep deprivation or ritualistic dancing. Shamanistic rituals may have involved the development of the state of mind required for conjuring up such images, or in some cases the recording of these images was a social affair.

There is some thought that these images are widespread because they form basic elements of perception, a hard-wired visual language. This seems plausible, particularly as the development of various simple entoptic-like images often involves simple symmetry, and there are such symmetries in faces and mouths. The receptivity of human vision to such symmetries would make sense in terms of split-second reaction times when under attack by wild animals and the like.

In reading about these phenomena, I have been surprised by how many writers and researchers choose to focus on the figurative art, and what this tells us about the culture of those who lived tens of thousands of years ago. It seems to me to be far more impressive that paleolithic cultures were universally interested in abstract art and, therefore, involved in a much more sophisticated culture than the merely figurative art would imply.

The images on E-fragments are based on simple patterns, with varying degrees of symmetry. I first got interested in this kind of art through my friend and colleague, Ranko Bon, who paints this kind of thing with acrylic paint on blocks of wood 30 cm by 20 cm by 1 cm, one image on each side. Over the years he has produced approximately 300 of these paintings and had them on permanent display in his apartment, mounted on racks on the walls, so that they could be rearranged as the mood took him.

After some years of looking at these and discussing them with him, I thought that I would attempt a pastiche using the computer on my desk, imagining this to be a simple enough thing to produce, given the simple symmetry and regular shapes. However, I was immediately struck by how difficult it was to produce anything that approximated to the kinds of image that Ranko had been working with all those years. I soon found that the basic patterns had to fit in with various rules about the relationships between black, white and red and about the regularity of the underlying matrix. By the time I had produced passable impressions of some of Ranko’s paintings, I had developed my own technique and struck out in my own directions with this strange art form.

I have produced quite a number of these images myself and following the establishment of my web site for getting them in front of more people, I also started to investigate how they might be made more tangible. I have printed these images in various formats, but my preferred format is on stiff card, about the size of a business card, available in sets of 32 cards. These can be shuffled and browsed and fixed to a wall with adhesive. People can decide for themselves how to arrange them and explore the intriguing attraction of these simple shapes.

Further reading

Web resources