ak corbin/Chap. Five/Tracks of My Fears/ copyright 209
Tracks of My Fears
A curious thing happened several years ago during a rather dull banquet. I struck up
a conversation with a retired physics profesor who confesed that his great love was
throwing pots and that he didn't care if they never saw the light of day. I understood how
he felt having long plied the art profesion though being reluctant about displaying my
work and often discarding it. Contrary to popular belief, creating imagery is not predicated
upon viewer-ship. As reported to Robert A. Rundstrom in 1989 by an old Inuk Eskimo
regarding the maps he had drawn from memory,
?...he smiled and said that long ago he had thrown them away. It was the act
of making them that was important, the recapitulation of environmental features,
not the material objects themselves.?
1

Thus the driving force begins with an impulse for imaging and this is the subject at hand.
We wondered through the evening about what triggers the human impulse for
image making bearing in mind that it has no choke hold on representation nor on one
medium over others. In fact, it may have nothing at al to do with media but rather only
mind. Consider that a dancer carves a design out of the air with his arms and leaves a trace
of that form in our short term memory. An artist crafts an image to anticipate a universal
recollection by selecting salient asociations. A musician captures our atention with hints
of iminent notes such that we invent the next one just slightly before hearing it and then
retrace the line by hiting mental 'replay'.
Unfortunately though, these emanations of 'creativity' have been hampered by
Western scholars whose awestruck exegesis has somehow removed them from the gamut
of more humdrum human functions and set them high on a pedestal of enlightened
inspiration. Given the 'Age of the Brain' in which we find ourselves, perhaps it is time to

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set this impulse firmly within the context of advantageous cognitive function. In other
words, it is time to atribute the imaging impulse to the biology of our particular species
and one driven by survival imperatives at that.
In each of the above mentioned creative eforts, we are led like Hansel and Gretel
with mere suggestions as to the intended route. Figuring our way 'out' literaly secretes our
cognitive juices, and we do the very same thing when conceiving or reading a piece of art.
Clearly we don't know where the whole dance is leading nor the melody nor can we for
that mater perceive the entire wal of grafiti beyond the initial second before we
automaticaly lock into a visual track to read the clues point to point (fig.1).
In fact, al iconography sems always to have careened towards complexity asking
us to stop short and follow the undulating line. A random sampling yields: Maori canoe
carvings (fig. 2), Celtic Knots, statuary folds, Belgian Lace, Mudejar plaster work, Aztec
serpent carving, Labyrinths, apartment buildings, textiles, novels and murder mysteries.
You get the picture.
Why do we do this, and how does the artist know we shal succumb to the
enticement? Because al these emanations depend on the wilingnes of the viewer to sek
and follow a manipulated course in order to instinctively collect these highly selected
crumbs of perceptions like a line through the forest.
But they are al nothing more than maps especialy when you understand that
mapping is first about salient and fixed asociations (fig. 4). From these one can plug in
variable points of view so that only secondly is mapping about direction. Al animals map

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their relative location by fixing coordinates. Recent studies of the limbic system and
hippocampus for rodents have isolated certain areas and neurons specificaly designated
for plotting coordinates. They tend to make their way around their environment by distal
plotting along the outer edge of their cage so it is asumed we are no diferent, a fact wel
established through the life story of Henry Gustav Molaison, now deceased, whose largely
excised hippocampus stil had enough tisue and the right kind to incise fresh floor plans in
his memory.
Our own antediluvian instinct to set down routes amidst pervasive ambiguity and
chaos is a driving biological habit formed by milions of evolutionary years in which our
ancestors perfected erect bi-pedalism. We take it for granted but our heritage is rooted in
route forging that is calibrated by the silent metronome of body functions like heart beats
and breathing alongside the louder rhythms of stride, arm swing and even grunts as we site
about thirty fet ahead on average to plot our own imediate path. This sems to be our
natural distal swet spot for foot navigation. It is therefore not surprising that our eyesight
was standardized at around 20/20 fet. This can be tested anecdotaly by anyone. Walk
head on to an approaching pedestrian and note at what distance they swerve to avoid you.
Inevitably they try to hold course but angrily move off at approximately 25 to 30 fet.
There is a great deal of information contained in this behavior which informs much
of our art thinking and application. For one thing, al visualization in this walking mode
establishes an emphatic point of view. One's body; arms, hands, fet, nose, even torso
always frames out the periphery of our vision such that we never lose sight of ourselves.

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Therefore, we navigate with a clear though subliminal perspective of egocentricsm. And
never except for momentary stasis such as siting or standing stil from a high vantage
point, does our vision ever free itself from the peripheral context of our physicality.
Rory Stewart in his book, 'The Places in Between', justified his trek through
Afghanistan as follows:

?There was a magic in leaving a line of footprints stretching behind me across
Asia...I watched the pebbles flashing past beneath me and felt that with each strike
of each heel step I was marking Afghanistan.?
2

The milion of years needed to evolve a truly erect bi-pedal creature did more than advance
gross motor physiology, it helped organize the cognitive grid of our brains and the way we
receive and dispense data. For one's body literaly drafts the connections betwen the
coordinates namely each step you take as your mind calibrates al the various ways images
get strung along in this highly structured and personal narrative.
In efect, the data coalesces around a natural grid created by the body's inborn
measuring of pace. More than you think you know floods each step and fils out a given
packet of data bracketed by your stride, meted by vital signs and sensorimotor procesing.
It's a reliable and orderly way of laying down information in tiny minute narratives. What
brings them forward as esential recollections and ultimately maps belongs to the way we
triage caution.
What's diferent about the beginnings of 'art' as cautionary devices that map
warnings is that for the first time we could move forward and back in time to predict
outcomes at the same time as reminding us of momentous stories. We resurrect them or

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aspects of them as paradigms for our advantageous use in the future. At some point
Stewart's heel broke the ambient patern of snow in conjunction to a gunshot. That fear
elicited a search for environmental disruptions that would serve as clues to protect him in
the future. He noticed 'diference' as against 'samenes' for navigational markers in his
narrative of fear and escape which finaly reached critical mas. These then coalesced as a
fixed set of asociations he could employ against the unknown. That irregular gash in the
snow he just pased could become his ?search alarm? for the Taliban.
Thus disruption of paterns (figures 6,7,8) became the primary indicator of change,
the key emblem of significant stories which to this day helps explain why we instinctively
scan repeats for the break in the patern and why JM Chernoff wisely wrote that there is
power in rhythmic conflict precisely because, ??people are afected and moved.?
3
Or
why Ernst Gombrich said, ?...(it) contributed to an impresion of rapid movement because
we speed up scanning in an efort to grasp the visual array (fig. 5) .?
4

The 'art' impulse devolves from this forward and back referencing wherein Hansel
and Gretel decide to leave the crumbs as a memento of their escape so that sinewy path
becomes both the memory of danger as wel as salvation. The story validates the path as a
'search alarm' to be employed either as a memory but more usefully as an image should
they set foot in the forest again. In this way we al enshrine salient asociations in order to
manage our environment.
But scientists are hard presed to acount for the 'imaging' latency and paltry record
of our forbears. Why did the Cro-Magnons wait over 100,000 years after our appearance in

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Africa to produce imagery? Could this cognitive function have erupted in full bloom as
many believe by the societal changes implicit in colonization?
The plastic stability of objects when viewed through the smal end of a telescope is
misleading, the context for lives entirely lost and the natural dependence on the
environment silent. It is important to remember that 'imaging' need never have been
suitably stable to function as art. Posterity has litle to do with motive in this early
impulsive stage, nor does identity and signing one's piece. As the art critic Sidney Tilim
often warned us at Bennington, ?Don't be so precious about your work.? Eficacy trumped
durability.
In fact, until recently mapping for the Aivilik Inuits was about 'eye memory' first
and only eventualy and perhaps reluctantly about transferring this paradigm of
asociations onto a plastic substance, the first one being the snow itself. Acording to
Claudio Aporta breaking a land trail,
?...presupposes a deep knowledge of the terrain topography. They must know what
certain landmarks look like when approached from a particular direction...know the
wind directions....they must read the snowdrifts correctly.?
5

Friedrich Ratzel was among the first to use this term about the natural geographers in
Australia whose arid lands and mercurial aquifers forced them to engage in extra thinking
about markers. For others like the Marshal Islanders whose survival depends on reading
the nuance of their land, they configured a three dimensional system of salient clues or
markers that acording to H. de Hutorowicz in ?Maps of Primitive Peoples? remain
undecipherable (fig. 3):

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?They consist of wooden sticks fastened together at various angles with shels and
smal stones...The position of the sticks give a variety of information, much of
which is stil obscure, but it is known that they indicate places where the combers
fal most violently upon the shores.?
6

There is simply no other way to explain these maps as anything but sculpture which begs
the obvious question that al art is in fact map making: Formulating the esential
relationships of salience such that it has steadfast readability among people sharing beliefs.
These beliefs are the same as cognition, where the vagaries of circumstance cannot disrupt
how we perceive diference.
For example, we have always needed to identify friends from foes in al light,
twilight being the most problematic given the shift to rim lighting and partial contours. We
needed to know that spots on a leopard at dawn were the same at noon. We needed to
compensate for what Edwin Land described as retinex theory wherein the mercurial
perception of color in a changing context was cognitively discounted and color constancy
intelectualy maintained. We needed to know that for venomous snakes, ?Red next to
black venom lacks but red next to yelow kils a felow,? even if the intense red looks grey
in the red shift of evening. At some deep cognitive level we needed to construct a reliable
code to safeguard us in al light. How did we relate this wisdom?
To be perfectly frank, there is nothing at al diferent were I to draw the profile of a
given face by plotting the distance betwen such markers as the nostril and the upper lip, or
charting the inlet where the ear mets the jaw. I am drawing a 'search alarm', a system of
atributes that wil alert you to their identity. An 'alarm', however is merely a warning to be

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constructively used and does not come in tranches of bad or good. My husband carries
fixed asociations for my face that spike his synapses in astronomical numbers such that
asking him to describe it with the limitations of stringing one word after another is a mere
specter of what he knows since he can find me in a crowd.
So walking, the gross motor form of delineation, sets up narrative thinking by
anchoring this form of cognition to one's personal point of view. This is key in our imaging
behavior because it triggers a unique dialogue of 'self' versus the environment that is
conceived as 'other'. This contrasts markedly with perception when we sit or stand with
chin lifted forward and up. It is the only time we lose our body in our visual periphery.
Stasis has much to do with extreme distal viewing and the orphaning of our point of view.
Looking up and out alows for panoramic surveying in which we lose our grounding of
personal perspective and are flooded with the fear and awe of a larger but unknown
perspective in which we participate. Again, we are so used to this dichotomy of
perspectives that we are litle aware of the stealth efect it has on perception.
It is doubtful that other animals are so buffeted by this point of view dilema.
Perhaps a reason is that we balance our head atop a spine without the weight of our jaws or
brows pulling our glance downward, never freeing us of our own presence. The orifice
through which it pases caled the Foranem Magnum is positioned among apes in the rear
requiring strong nape or nucal muscles to hoist the chin up as wel as it can.
Our species and only one other extinct relative sports such a central location for
this connection which, acording to Richard Leakey, may have had more to do with the

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shrinking of formerly masive brows and jaws as new cortical mater mased above the
eyes. The upshot is that our neck muscles needed les power alowing us to raise our chin
and eyes. We now could look largely forward, outward and even upwards. Yet with this
came a rude awakening. We finaly had the choice to lose our body framed perspective and
to float free and semingly unatached into the strange domain we inhabited.
In his book Thespis on the origins of theatre, Theodore Gaster referred to this
generalized natural stage upon which we perform the 'Topocosm': ?The entire complex of
any given locality conceived as a living organism.?
7
Thus we get the anthropomorphizing
of cities and towns as 'he' or 'she', a behavior aptly described by John MacDonald in ?The
Arctic Sky: Inuit Astronomy, Star Lore and Legend? wherein the Inuits of Igloolik
determine their enormously vital navigation routes across the ice as,
?...the very arteries and nodes, the topographical anatomy, through which (they)
comprehend the totality of their land and aces its life giving resources.?
8

Therefore, our perception of the environment is framed out by our individual physical
body and personal relativity against an encompasing and projected point of view for this
other being, the topocosm.
Anthropologists cal this a con-substantial relationship which is a very nice term
but does not adequately addres the awe and angst of this ever frustrating love afair. Enter
Augustine of Hippo later beatified as Saint Augustine but very much a man of the flesh
and fully engaged in this batle of self versus the 'living entity' and to such an extent that it
is to him we must atribute the word ?Soliloquy?. This is the specific dialogue amongst

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these various points of view locked so deeply into our cognitive priming that some might
even cal it the source of our consciousnes. But it is upon this rich conflict that al imaging
impulses and 'art' derive. For those urgently required 'search alarms' were a personalized
means for projecting the behavior of the topocosm.
On a very conscious level the environment is a respected adversary. This has a lot
to bring to our endurance behavior. For instance, we mimic animals we intend to kil in
order to infiltrate their system which directly increases our respect. Why wouldn't we do
the same for the physical land we inhabit particularly if we consider it as both adversarial
and esential? How could we not extol the deer and dog paths we follow or the teltale
lines of soft ice cracking? How could we not apply the paterns of interlocking vines and
foliage for our weaving and knotting and building or resurrect in our fashion the trees we
climb let alone al the beats, decibels and movement that define this strange but al
encompasing organism?
And when we atempt to conscript these motifs for our beneficial use we do it
across cognitive platforms like playing three dimensional checkers. We convert sound for
image, touch for form, movement for patern. Bruce Chatwin left Sotheby's UK to
research this 'thinking' among the Warlpiri Aborigines. For them 'Yiri' or songlines best
explains their mnemonic device for translating the topocosm into human terms. This is not
about musical notes writ large but about sound as movement on a grand scale conceived as
footprint paths throughout their sacred lands. These are their explanations for their
particular beliefs about consubstantiality also known as 'Dreamtime' myths:

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?They believe that their land came into being as each ancestor scatered a trail of
words and musical notes along the line of his or her footprints. This labyrinth of
invisible pathways which meanders al over Australia is known as songlines...?
9

Art is as biological an imperative of our survival as is walking, procreation and
foraging because it has always been a cognitive thought test about triaging escape and
succes procedures against natural threats and for natural delights. It is a mental proces
first which is then translated by the inherent clumsines of one's limbs, of material and
tools and time. This includes intentionaly dragging your toe in the sand or finger through
ashes; things we certainly did for thousands of years before tackling stable media.
Given al these limitations we must leave far more on the cognitive plate than we
can possibly hope to relate thus forcing us to dril down hard on a concept to fashion the
most efective map: I notice every bump along your chin but I can't draw two lines at once,
nor speak two words, nor look at two diferent points on your face. I live and create in
analog and linear mode and this requires me to prioritize.
Contrary to Michael Polanyi's oft quoted phrase, ?We know more than we can say?
suggesting data works as silent or tacit clues towards conscious goals, imaging or 'saying'
it is truly the culprit here. Siphoning the 10
17-20
spikes or synaptic potentials in .5
miliseconds
10
of the human brain in a point to point configuring from which any cognitive
transposition originates makes us momentarily more rather than les aware of those 'silent
clues' simply because we can't use them al. Atending means rationing in order to throttle
down ambiguity. The good part is that we know it and adapt acordingly.

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Recollection is an instantaneous proces in this transfer. Because I shift my vision
away from subject to drawing or from mind's eye to medium, I am in efect remembering
and smudging al those minute connections. I am therefore, deeply tracking certain
asociations to the exclusion of others.
But not al imaging morphs into art. Nor are al 'alarms' worth remembering. We
need to know about the cortical inroads carved by varying degrees of shock and salience.
In other words, we need to know about the emotional impact of perception and why some
stories, let's say about escape, are made to be remembered and others are merely place
holders for ambient recollections, in the event of say, ever pasing Red Rooster Restaurant
again for jumbo fries.
There is no answer and never wil be a single explanation for why it is we do this
or even how because we are an integrated network of so many moving parts just as we are
the catchal of milions of years of primate evolution; a semingly random but
indefatigable experiment in adaptability. But the most teling evidence is that we
responded diferently to the environment because we were able to. We were endowed with
the equipment that other species perhaps carried but we used best. Erwin Schr?dinger
elegantly restates the 'use it or lose it' mantra when he explained in his esay on 'Mind and
Matter': ?Selection would be powerles in producing a new organ if selection were not
aided al along by the organism's making appropriate use of it.?
11

We cringed and craved the unknown. Eskimos say, ?Glorious it is when wandering
time is come.? In 1853, the French poet Theophile Gautier expreses the same thing in

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?Wanderings in Spain? that the misfortune of modern life is the ?..want of surprise and the
absence of al adventure.?
12

If our lives are primed by constant stimuli as are al creatures, we triage the
cost/benefit of our responses in order to streamline the work of the day and the expenditure
of energy. We come to recognize that some 'shocks' are recurrent and non threatening
stimuli to be safely ignored. They are neutral. We cal this habituation and Eric Kandel has
pointed out that the synaptic permutations either erode or feather out marginaly. He cals
this homosynaptic depresion, ?...because the synaptic response was decreased and
homosynaptic because (it) occurred in the same neural pathway.?
13

The take away is the characterization of the alarm or stimulus. ?Search alarms?
were those categorizations of shock stimuli that had survival imperatives most likely on a
daily basis. They required unbridgeable asociations to predict outcomes. In our
peregrinations across threatening terrain, in our foraging and our escape from predators
and in our delight with safety, succor and succes, we triaged stimuli. Kandel cals this
heterosynaptic sensitization: ?It teaches the animal to atend and respond more vigorously
to almost any stimulus after having been subjected to a threatening stimulus.? In this case
the neuron sprouts more connections in order to remember. Clasical conditioning is a
more electric form of the same where in the coupled stimuli becomes the shock itself. The
imaging impulse derives, I believe, from the sensitization category.
Finaly, we come to the art itself, the fixing of asociations to be read across time
and people. My only caveat is that our imaging impulse merely begins with search alarms.

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It is not the whole story. But to tel that story, to transpose the choices, to literaly get the
idea out of the brain and physicaly configure the map of these stimuli, we needed
something that most scholars consider to be the esential characteristic of speech.
Syntax is not the exclusive handmaiden of language. Nor is art the handmaiden of
speech leching off its structure and translating imagery into symbols as many including
Oliver Sacks, Steven Pinker and Richard Leakey contend. Representation is transposing a
premise by means of virtualy simultaneous asociating. It is a restrictive driling down of
point to point selecting that must start and stop somewhere. Choices about importance and
order, what comes first on down to last is the means by which we 'convince' you of our
map specificaly because we can't do two things at once. So we enhance this necesary
order with parenthetical rephrasings caled recursion. There is simply no other way in our
finite world and it is in no way diferent than what Frank DeKova in the role of Chief Wild
Eagle told ?F Troop?:
?Go back same trail you came. Make right turn at big rock look like bear and
left turn at bear look like rock.?
14

This is about fixed relationships with the added informational layer of personal
relativity such that one ?knows about? salient markers in terms of oneself as the rogue
coordinate. This is why terrain devoid of bold natural markers nudges pasive ?seing? to
active 'looking' and then contextual ?seking?. R.C. Gagne explained this for the Eskimo
language in 'Spatial Concepts in the Eskimo Language' with the three word sentence,
?ililavruk manna ilunga.? Translated it becomes, ?Please put this slender thing over there

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crosswise on that end of that slender thing to which I am pointing.?
15
Everything is
relative. My Danbury Road is your Brewster Road.
Art is dependent on impactful sequencing - syntax. And walking our way out of
threatening terrain is our most basic and integrated act of syntax. In this same way, story
teling reveals itself as a progres set up by the thing we do most and beter than other
creatures. We walk in lines alternating one foot after the other to get us from here to there
even as our thoughts dart around. But they too are sequenced just as our cognition is
orchestrated by this sloth like metronome. The memories we keep are insidiously keyed to
it because we receive sensory inputs and configure thoughts that are laid down by means of
the concatenation of our steps. Just because we take this for granted does not mean it is not
there. It is part of our biology, part of the way we input and arrange data in order to
survive. Who hasn?t said about forgeting something, ?Try and track it back.?
Some would say we are the supremely conscious creature. I'd say we are the
supremely 'narrative' one. What maters to us and how we survive is hinged to the tracks
we have laid down over thousands if not milions of years, our ancestors pasing along the
same metered walking that carved out unique pathways and habits in our brains.
We think and execute based upon tracking that unfolds over time and
incrementaly. 'Search alarms' are dependent on this same syntax, asociations that take
precedence over others such that if they were re-arranged the mesage could not be
transferred and understood. I could not have drawn your nose above your eyes if I wanted

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you found. Our very first search alarms required gravitas but that did not exclude irony and
even whimsy as efective means to demonstrate useful diferences.
These inventions of ours were urgently felt and frustrating to execute as any artist
can tel you. Even today, they aid us in remembering remarkable stories by becoming place
holders for them before eventualy signifying them. Ultimately, when the urgency of the
story recedes the images become penumbral, mere shadows of their former function. As
such 'art' evolves into the more commonly ascribed signage, metaphor, mementos and
icons. But it begins here, impulsively, desperately, joyously, seking a path through the
confounding mystery of the unknown.
Alexandra Corbin 2009
1. Rundstrom, Robert A. 1990 A Cultural Interpretation of Inuit Man Acuracy,
American Geographical Review, 80, 2:155-168
2. Stewart, Rory, 2006, The Places in Between , Harcourt
3. Chernoff, JM, 1979, African Rhythm and African Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social
Action in African Musical Idioms, Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Pres, p.160
4. Adams, Monni, 1989, Beyond Symmetry in Middle African Design, African
Arts,UCLA, 23,1:37
5. Aporta, Claudio, Routes, Trails and Tracks:Trail Breaking among the Inuit of
Igllolik, Centre Interuniversitaire d'Etudes et de Recherches Autochtones, Quebec
6. Hutorowicz, H. De, 1911, Maps of Primitive Peoples, Bulletin of the American
Geographical Society 43:669-79
7. Gaster, Theodore H. 1961, Thespis, Garden City, Anchor Pres
8. MacDonald, John, 2000, The Arctic Sky:Inuit Astronomy, Star Lore and Legend,
The Roay Ontario Museum
9. Krause, Kerri Le, O'Brien, Dan, 2001, Adolescent Second Language Writers in
China, Research on Sociocultural Influences on Motivation and Learning ed. by
McInerney & Van Eten:Chapter 12
10. any difer on this. It is also often quoted that we posses over 50 diferent types
of neurons and perform over 20 milion operations per second.
11. Schrodinger, Erwin, 1992 ?Mind and Matter? Cambridge Pres, p. 113
12. Gautier, Theophile, 1853 Wanderings in Spain,

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13. Kandel, Eric, 2006 In Search of Memory, New York, WW Norton
14. 'F-Troop' 1966, episode 19 directed by Gene Reynolds, Frank De Kova as Chief
Wild Eagle
15. Gagne, R.C. 1968, Spatial Concepts in the Eskimo Language, Valentine and Vale
editors, Eskimo of the Canadian Arctic, Toronto, pp 30-38 Quoted by Judith
Kleinfeld , 1971, in her study Visual Memory in Eskimo Children,, Canadian
journal of Native Education, 11,3:134

Figures:

1. Grafiti by New York 79
2. Carved wooden stern of 19
th
century Maori war canoe
3. ?Rebbelib? ? Marshal Islands Stick Chart or map
4. Da Vinci?s Vitruvian Man or The Canon of Proportions
5. Kuba Cloth, South Eastern Congo
6. Thar Desert ( Great Indian Desert)
7. Tracks in the snow
8. Tundra Snow formations and paterns