Metaperception in Visual Art

Metaperception in Visual Art

*I present this as a working document.  Constructive input is welcome.*

I recently came across the term metaperception as it was applied to visual art, but found the definition to be unsatisfactory from an educational standpoint.  The purpose of this post is to attempt to arrive at a working educational definition that may help art teachers, such as myself, implement this line of thinking in their lesson planning and student interaction.

The term metacognition isn't new to education.  In fact, the term is used extensively.  It is often described as "thinking about thinking".  When a student really takes a moment to get to know their own thinking patterns and builds an understanding of how they learn, the learning process can be tailored to their strengths.  The end result is effective, differentiated learning.

Let's break down the word metaperception.  Meta is from the Greek, and its meaning is "beyond".  Perception is how we use our senses to gather information.  To define it literally would be to say, "Beyond what our senses gather".  However, in education and building upon the term metacognition, I propose the following definition:

Metaperception: Actively evaluating how you, as an artist, affect change in your creations due to bias, personal history, and cultural experiences.

It is at this point where one must consider a multitude of variables.  At the heart of the matter is how we internalize that which we perceive, how we process the information, and subsequently remove noise or add experience in our quest to create art.  Immediate influences must be considered.  Music playing in the background, distractions recently drawn into our short term memories, and any other environmental variable, should be considered as possible perceptive influences.  Less immediate influences, pre-existing schema locked in our long-term memories, will also play a significant role in affecting our perception of raw data.  Metaperception should involve actively cataloguing these biases.  Cultural beliefs, emotional well-being, and interaction with our physical world are all distinctively different factors that may influence perception.  Metaperception relies on our awareness of these variables.

Perhaps artists manipulate their own perception, either consciously or subconsciously.  Artists tend to approach qualitative information differently than others.  The artist evaluates colours and textures, and takes mental images of subjects and their relation to the space around them.  It is this perceptive acuity that allows artists to create as they do, replicating what they perceive with precision.  By seeking beauty, or the correlative visual components of despair in the world surrounding, the artist is manipulating their own perception compared to the perceptions of those around them.

There exists a willingness on the part of many artists to intentionally affect change.  This is the realm of the expressionist.  This artist intentionally reorganizes sensory data and presents it in a manner that evokes emotion.  The expressionist must consider at what stage of their metaperception these reorganizations occur.  Does the expressionist view their subject with disdain and paint accordingly?  Perhaps the message is infused at a later stage, more deliberately.  In either case, their is inherent value in better understanding how and when the artist affects this change.

I believe metaperception in visual art is something worth understanding.  For the same reason that understanding how we think will make us better learners, understanding how we affect change will make us more introspective artists.  Feel free to comment on this post and get the conversation started!