Pencil coloured pencil texta and whiteout on paper
18 cm h x 12 cm w
Hypothesis: Jelly Ontology: Spatial Non-Coincidence and the Evolutionary Resolution of Artistic Creation
This work does not offer a scientific account of vision, physics, or cognition. It advances a hypothesis drawn from practice: that seeing involves energy, and drawing is the point at which that energy is compelled into material form.
The language of physics—its equations, its treatment of delay, displacement, and resistance—is used here as metaphor rather than measurement. These structures provide a way to articulate what drawing repeatedly reveals: a persistent gap between optical perception and the spatial mark. This gap is not experienced as time passing but as resistance. It is a productive non-coincidence that shapes how form evolves on the surface.
The Temporal Illusion
Within the traditional humanist model of artistic creation, the process unfolds as a linear sequence: the artist sees, the mind interprets, the hand responds. Any deviation between motif and mark is framed as latency—a problem of speed, hesitation, or timing.
Sustained studio practice at the Akashi Research Centre suggests a different structure. The mark never coincides with what is seen, not because the artist is too slow, but because the two never occupy the same spatial condition. What is typically called “time” appears instead as a structural non-coincidence between perception and inscription.
This irreducible gap—the field of influence between optics and the surface—is defined here as Jelly.
Note on Derivation
This essay proceeds from a working hypothesis formed through drawing itself. It does not claim to describe optics or matter scientifically. Instead, it uses Einstein’s idea of mass–energy equivalence as a conceptual scaffold: if light can be treated as energy, and pigment as mass, then the so-called “delay” in drawing can be understood as the point where perceptual energy struggles to become material.
The Material–Energetic Grounding (Hypothesis)
To move beyond the idea of delay as time, this work suspends the separation between perception and matter.
Einstein’s formulation is used here only as a structural guide:
Within this hypothesis, light entering the eye is treated as Optical Intensity (I_optical), or energy (E). Pigment deposited on the surface is treated as Material Inscription (M_mark), or mass (m). The claim is not that physics explains drawing, but that this equivalence offers a useful way of describing what happens in practice.
From this perspective, the difficulty of drawing is not a failure of coordination. It is the resistance encountered as perceptual energy is negotiated into material form. The artist experiences this as tension rather than time.
Jelly Ontology and the Sovereign Zone
Once time is no longer required as an explanatory device, drawing takes place within what I call the Sovereign Zone (D). This is not a pause or a moment, but a thickness of the present in which influences coexist.
Within this zone, Jelly operates as a continuous field of sensorial influence. It does not flow or transmit information. It presses, bends, and resists across space. The eye, body, and surface are present at once, but never coincident.
Creation is therefore re-described through Spatial Non-Coincidence (Delta_s) rather than temporal delay:
These are not stages. They exist simultaneously.
Jelly Influence
The Jelly Influence is the irreducible gap between what is seen and what can be marked:
Delta_s_J = I_optical minus M_mark
This gap cannot be trained away. It is not solved by intention or accuracy. It is a spatial condition encountered every time a mark is made.
Its visible evidence is Scintillation—the flicker, instability, or fragmentation in the drawing. This is not a stylistic choice or a failure of technique. It is the record of energy meeting resistance as it collapses into material form.
The Evolutionary Resolution
The conceptual clarity of the Jelly Ontology resonates with the posthuman framework articulated by Robert Pepperell. His account rejects the notion of a bounded subject acting upon an external world, instead describing perception and action as emerging from an extended field of relations.
This alignment clarifies that Jelly is not a private sensation but a shared spatial condition. The “offset realities” observed in the yard at Akashi—between eye, ground, hand, dogs, and canopy—are not perceptual errors. They are the visible traces of an organism negotiating a spatial constant rather than a human clock.
Conclusion
The artwork is not a record of time passing. It is a spatial map of negotiated influence. Drawing does not capture a moment; it resolves a tension. By bringing together a practice-based hypothesis, the Jelly Ontology, and posthuman thinking, this work shifts art away from representation and toward manifestation.
The surface does not store time. It stores distance made visible.
Glossary of Terms
Acknowledgements
This inquiry was sharpened through engagement with Robert Pepperell’s The Posthuman Condition, whose early arguments provided the conceptual resonance needed to understand these studio observations as part of a shared spatial reality.
