Putting it all together

Girl with Pearl Earring by-passes our ‘virtual machine’


Reading and listening to stories is a serial experience, whereas looking at certain paintings is a parallel one. Vermeer was capable of putting all the facets of his daughter in one single image. When an artist does this it is known as ‘simultaneous vision’ or ‘ambiguity’. When we look at the painting all these messages are received simultaneously by the brain and stored.

Our response is emotional. When asked to express what the painting communicates to us requires the transformation of this data into a serial form of language. What we consider ambiguous art, it appears to be a form of communication that appeals directly to the parallel processor nature of our brain. That is it transcends the virtual machine and goes straight to our CPU. When this occurs we receive aesthetic pleasure. We could say that it has the same affect as Nature has on the brain; it overwhelms us with information and signals.