Visualising Phosphenes

Phosphene studies

From fos +‎ phene; from Ancient Greek φῶς (phôs, “light”) + φαίνω (phaínō, “to appear, shine”)

Further developed from my ‘Psychic Cartography’ drawing project, ‘Visualising Phosphenes’ has been a process of bringing light to the Entoptic Visions I’ve had since a child.

As long as I can remember I’ve had this intimate relationship with the phenomena of Phosphenes and as a young child I would gently massage my eyes through my eyelids to marvel at the display of shifting form and colour.

The word phosphene comes from the Greek words phōs (light) and phainein (to show). From a contemporary western cartesian perspective, Phospenes are best describes as a:

“subjective images experienced in the absence of external visual stimuli and having their origin within the eye and brain; their patterns seem to be "intimately related to the geometry of the eye, the visual pathway and the visual cortex"

Beyond this biological Eurocentric definition, in many indigenous wisdom traditions it is believed that phosphenes have a much greater biopsychosocial-spiritual significance.

From the position of art history, it has been suggested that many non-figurative art forms, starting with the pictographs and petroglyphs of the first people, feature depictions of the neurological form constants consistent with the shapes and forms of phosphenes. Whether experienced through altered states of consciousness induced by entheogens, meditation, dance, trance, hyperventilation, sensory deprivation, hypnagogia or other means, it seems likely that our oldest recorded evidence of this universal visual phenomena was first produced for magico-religious purposes and recorded as an expression of these internal states and shamanistic experiences.