Re: VMs: Pleiades Occultation Further Date Refinement

[Pamela Richards <spirlhelix@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Dennis

I had a look at the "migraine art", too.  This is a
genre developed at the request of medical
professionals who asked migrainuers to share their
impressions of the experience using the media of their
choice.

In fact, I hope we can make a distinction here:  one
cannot judge whether or not an artist is a migraineur
by looking at their work, overall.  The artist may or
may not choose to depict the effects of a migraine as
a subject of their work.

So even after viewing the artwork you described, I
still feel it is safe to say that we cannot know
whether the VMs artist, or any artist, is a migraineur
unless we have access to a record of his subjective
experiences--such as is used by a physician to make a
diagnosis of migraine.

And I'm afraid we are still far from this point with
our VMs author/illustrator (actually, we do not even
know whether the author is the illustrator, or not). 

Most of the resources I find refer to phosphenes as
"flashes" or "sparks".  These terms do nothing to
enhance the impression that phosphenes are experienced
as long-lasting impressions of light relegated to one
precise area of the visual field.
In fact, if I encountered anything like that, I would
be suspicious about such visual disturbances and check
with an opthamologist to make sure there is not a
problem with the retina.

I have been diagnosed with classical migraines, also
known as visual migraines, or migraine explosions. 
Send your snail mail address if you would like a
statement from my doctor.  Smile.  My own experience
with phosphenes is that they are shimmering, which by
definition means that they do not occupy a certain
"location" in the visual field for any length of time
greater than a fraction of a second.  Although they
cluster in a certain region, this cluster continually
moves through the visual field.  These phosphenes do
not leave me with an impression of a certain point of
light in a specific area of my visual field; in fact,
to the contrary, by the time they fade, there is
nothing but a blind spot left where the shimmering
lights of the phosphenes used to be.

You have your subjective experience, and I have mine. 
If we were to compare your artwork depicting your
experience and mine, we would still need a record of
our subjective experience to demonstrate that we were
expressing our experience of our respective phosphenes
and not something else.  And even then, some people
would not be convinced without a doctor's statment.

Warmly,

Pam
--- Dennis <tsalagi@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> jan wrote:
> > 
> > "The term 'art' is here employed in its most
> inclusive sense with no implication of aesthetic 
> > evaluation. It is not intended to imply by the
> concept of Migraine Art that there is an art of 
> > migraineurs which is characterized by a unique
> nature of artistic creation determined by the 
> > causative effects of the migraine condition,
> because it is assumed that, in this sense, an art of
> 
> > migraineurs does not exist, confirming a
> conclusion of the painter Jean Dubuffet who stated, 
> > for different clinical fields, that "there is no
> art of the insane any more than the art of the 
> > dyspeptics or an art of people with knee
> complaints".
> 
> 	I had already concluded the same thing when
> thinking about 
> "outsider art" by schizophrenics.  What they see and
> 
> experience is raw material for the creative process,
> but the 
> creative process for schizophrenics is no different
> than for 
> anyone else.  It's just that they have experience
> that no 
> one else has.  The same goes for migraineurs.
> 
> > So the term "migraine art" was more or less
> invented  "to illustrate the pain, the visual 
> > disturbances and the effect migraine had on their
> lives." This is of course different story - 
> > apparently we do  not get here  the true 
> "migraine visions", but artistic rendering. 
> 
> 	Yes.
> 
> > However, if you look at that picture, you see
> mostly stars as round circles, and if you would 
> > not see them on the sky, you could probably never
> guess those are stars :-). 
> 
> 	My own experience of phosphenes has been to see
> bright, 
> distinct points of light, without any haloes.   It
> isn't 
> clear to me whether Pamela described phosphenes. 
> Too,  not 
> all migraineurs see phosphenes ('stars').   I am not
> a real 
> migraineur, either.  :-)
> 
> 	I hadn't heard that van Gogh might have been a
> migraineur. 
>   It sounds like there have been different diagnoses
> for 
> him.  I had heard lead poisoning, from his paint.
> 
> 	The stars are just one thing, and by themselves
> they 
> certainly aren't enough.  We will have to consider
> many 
> different images in the VMs to decide whether the
> VMs author 
> was a migraineur.  If (s)he was a migraineur, I'm
> not sure 
> what it would tell us, but we are so lacking in
> facts that 
> anything at all definite is welcome!
> 
> Dennis
>
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=====
"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing, than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."


		
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