LITERAL AND PHENOMENAL

Rowe and Slutsky point out in their essay on transparency, Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal, there are two types of transparency, Literal and Phenomenal.

Literal is what they call a material condition. Think typical glass in your windows, for example. Or think of window insect screens. The transparency is literal. The transparency is a physical property.  It is transparent because of the material.   That seems clear, pardon the pun.

Then they use the term Phenomenal to describe a transparency which is distinct from Literal / Physical transparency. This is what they call an organizational transparency, an intellectual transparency if you will. They use the example of overlapping planes. To understand two transparent overlapping planes, there is something beyond physicality involved. They posit that there must be an intellectual understanding as well. These superimpositions of form are beyond our typical space and time understanding. These superimpositions, they write, can reveal previously unseen structural qualities.

It is indeed this organizational transparency which applies to our efforts at Transparent Drawing.  To comprehend the whole form or enclosure, there is an intellectual component.  The transparency of our forms are not simply physical.  The simultaneity of our Phenomenal transparency requires a volumetric understanding.  It requires a more or less simultaneous perception.  It requires an engagement of the mind.

This Literal and Metaphysical fundamental understanding of transparency is fun to think about. Although I am not one to find much use for definitions, it is interesting to contemplate the mental overlapping that occurs when a phenomenal / metaphysical transparency is understood.