Mathematics, Perception, and Artistic Expression
An early exploration
A developing interest, not a research project: whether the mathematics used to describe perception has anything to say about the choices made in art, and where the analogy stops being useful.
This page is a place to work, not a finding. Everything here is provisional.
Perception is comparative before it is anything else: we notice that one thing differs from another, and only later ask by how much. That is already close to the language of mathematics — difference, distance, invariance — and the closeness is what interests me.
What I am less sure of is the second half. An artist choosing a colour or an interval is not measuring a distance; they are committing to one possibility and giving up the others. Whether those two things — comparison and commitment — belong in the same description, or only sound as though they do, is the question I keep returning to.
Where it stands
Reading and notes. Nothing here is settled enough to state precisely, which is why it sits under projects rather than research.