oil wax acrylic on wooden panel
18 cm x 18 cm
In the Davidson Hypothesis, art does not unfold through time — it exists in space. Cause and effect are real, but they are local, relational interactions, not stages on a clock. Every mark, gesture, and pigment strike is a collision producing residue. The canvas is not a record of moments passed; it is a field of interactions.
At the heart of this process is Δs, the “Scintillation of Delay.” Δs is the charged interval between perception and action — a structural space where energy gathers before becoming form. The Scintillation — the slight tremor or vitality of the line — is the trace of this crossing, the material fingerprint of perception converting into mark.
Inside Δs lies Optical Jelly, the dense, reactive medium of sensation, memory, and expectation. It stores uncertainty as potential energy. When saturation is reached, the mark emerges as a fossilized residue of perception, not a depiction of the external world. Art is the crystallization of interaction, not the shadow of reality.
Even decay — pigment fading, paint cracking, canvas stretching — is a spatial event, not a temporal one. Residue persists because collisions have occurred. Each observer reconstructs influence differently, activating the work’s structure anew. Art survives in structure and interaction, not in the passage of years.
For the artist, intensity replaces duration. Saturation replaces labor. The studio becomes a laboratory of collision and conversion — a space where perception, material, and gesture meet to leave lasting residue. Each mark is a trace of potential released, a crystallization of energy, and a testament to what happens when the organism, material, and space collide.
Time is not a force. Only interaction and residue are real.
