The Apprehension of Perceptual Fractals

This article discusses the challenges, questions and opportunities perceptual fractals poses for the field of visual aesthetics. It is specifically aimed at the Psychology journal Art and Perception at the invitation of the editor Professor Johan Wagemans (Leuven, Netherlands). In brief, psychological studies of aesthetic response have tended to focus upon the data of bordered, two dimensional images (paintings, drawings, photographs, etc). In the case of The Fractal Clock, perception and aesthetic response (including visual response) was more complex, corporeal and spatially/temporally contingent. A borderland territory between visual aesthetics and environmental psychology emerges in relation to the work. This article approaches the navigation of this territory from the artist’s point of view.