Entopic Phenomena and The Origins of Art

I begin my discussion of abstraction and mysticism at the beginning, with the first appearance of abstract forms. These appeared in cave paintings largely situated around Western Europe created during the upper Palaeolithic between 45,000 and 20,000 years ago. The period between the middle and upper Palaeolithic has been called The Transition, as humans relatively quickly developed distinctive cultures involving ritual and the creation of art. There are no concrete explanations as to the motivations and meanings of Palaeolithic art, however it is generally agreed amongst archaeologists that the evidence point to creation during altered states of consciousness. These states occur through various means, hallucinogenic drugs, sensory deprivation, mind control techniques such as repetitive sound or movement, through dreams, psychological and physical illnesses. These early artists may have ingested drugs or it could have been a sensory reaction to the darkness in the cave, either way the forms that they painted have since been found to be common to many altered states. In his book, The Mind in the Cave’, David Lewis Williams outlines three stages of visual hallucinations, which he applies to the production of cave painting;

‘ In the first and ‘lightest’ stage people may experience geometric percepts that include dots, grids, zig zags, nested coronary curves, and meandering lines. Because these percepts are ‘wired’ into the human nervous system, all people, no matter what their cultural background, have the potential to experience them.

The first stage may include forms which fall into the following categories, grid patterns; lattices, honeycombs, chessboards, and circular forms; cobwebs, tunnels and funnels. These patterns appear in vivid colours, expanding contracting and overlaying, often there is a bright light in the centre of the visual field. He identifies these forms as ‘entopic phenomena’ images produced both within the eye and in the visual cortex. These images are in the ‘minds eye’, seen with the eyes closed or open projected onto the surrounding space. The second stage is where the mind attempts to make sense of these images by fitting them into a familiar form (i.e. animals as appear in cave painting).

‘In alert problem solving consciousness, the brain receives a constant stream of sense impressions. A visual image reaching the brain is decoded (as, of course, are other sense impressions) by being matched against a store of experience. If a ‘fit’ can be affected, the image is ‘recognised’.

He goes on to describe the features of the third stage;

At this point many people experience a swirling vortex or rotating tunnel that seems to surround them and draw them into its depths. There is progressive exclusion of information from the outside: the subject is becoming more and more autistic. The sides of the vortex are marked by a lattice of squares like television screens. The images on the ‘screens’ are the first spontaneously produced iconic images: they eventually overlie the vortex as entopic phenomena give way to iconic hallucinations.’

ENTOPIC PHENOMENA

Lewis-Williams’ outline is based on the research of Heinrich Kluver, an experimental psychologist who helped shape the field of neuroscience with his work on the nature of visual perception in children. Looking at children with persistent visual imagery led him into extensive research into how such visual phenomena related to normal human perception. Kluver recognised that studying the effects that hallucinogenics have on the brain provides important tools for understanding visual abilities such as colour and space perception. His research into altered states led him to define a group of ‘Form Constants’ abstract shapes and patterns as described above which are common to many states (including migraine, temporal lobe epilepsy, drug induced hallucination, sensory deprivation and importantly synaesthesia ) Primarily Kluver observed the effects of the drug mescal, described at length in his book, Mescal and the Mechanisms of Hallucinations’ 1966 Kluver discusses the importance of this research and mescal as his choice for the observation;

“On account of its specific effects on the optical sensorium mescal is an excellent instrument of research for the psychologist. It is a very handy tool especially in the descriptive and genetic analysis of space and colour phenomena. Utilizing this drug we may study profitably the various aspects of normal and abnormal visual perception, simultaneous and successive contrast, different types of colour blindness, entopic phenomena, dreams, illusions, pseudo hallucinations, synaesthesia, the relation of the peripheral to the central areas in vision, the role of the visual elements in thinking and the psychogenesis of meaning.’

Kluvers identification of these abstract visual phenomena is now common language in the fields of neurology and under further classification, entopic phenomena are divided into two groups; ‘phosphenes’ which are visual phenomena produced by direct stimulation of the eye (i.e pressure on the eye lid) and therefore considered to be part of the workings of the eye, and ‘form constants’ induced by various sensory stimulation and considered to be produced within the visual cortex. Lewis Williams goes on to discuss the neurology of these phenomena;

It has been found that the patterns of connections between the retina and the striate cortex (known as V1) and of neuronal circuits within the striate cortex determined their geometric form. Simply put, there is a spatial relationship between the retina and the visual cortex: points that are close together on the retina lead to the firing of comparably placed neurons on the cortex. When this process is reversed, as following the ingestion of psychotropic substances, the pattern in the cortex is perceived as a visual percept. In other words, people in this condition are seeing the structure of their own brains.

Kluvers identification of form constants gives us a grounded psychological reading of the first abstract forms produced by man in cave painting and rock art, and lays out a universal experience of abstract form. His analysis of altered states also clearly defines the cross over between this universality and culturally derived imagery. These first stages visual experiences would develop (in the second and third stages) into forms recognisable to the subject, which Palaeolithic times would be iconic imagery such as bison and horses. Palaeolithic art can tell us a lot about the origins and early relationships between art and religion, but where in this do we find the bridge between abstract form and religious experience? Where does the meaning lie? Form constants are just one aspect of altered states, the other defining feature is the transcendental nature of the experience, which is where the bridge becomes apparent between abstraction and the ‘spiritual’. I will go on to discuss this in the next chapter.

The earliest known piece of ‘art’ was found at Blombos Cave in South Africa, dated at 77,000 years old; a small piece of ochre engraved with regular pattern of a lattice grid as seen in Kluvers Form Constants.
What happened to the human mind to cause this revolution is under much debate and potentially tells us much about the origins of art and religion. Stephen Mithin, in his book, “The Prehistory of the Mind’ proposes the ‘cathedral theory’ that until the point of transition the mind separated specialist areas of knowledge into different ‘chapels’ around a central nave of general intelligence. Linguistic social, natural history and technical intelligence existed separately from each other and the evolution of consciousness occurred as the walls between them eroded. This is an interesting theory in relation to cross modal transfer in synaesthesia, which leads me to speculate the possibility of an ongoing merging of brain functions as a feature of the evolution of consciousness?