Our visual response is such that it is capable of accepting illusion, but more interestingly that we can all accept the same illusion and agree that it is believable. That a statue is ‘truth’ that a TV image is ‘truth’ that a moving image is ‘truth’, a painting is ‘truth’ – maybe I should say acceptable as truth. This is such a ridiculous idea, but seems so crucial to our evolution. It aught to be the opposite & that we should see through camouflage of predatory life (thinking Tigers here) its so interesting that evolutionary benefits often seem to be a side effect of some defence/attack/environmental strategy for survival.

The cooperative behaviour of those animals who group together to detect attackers is amazing in that the entire group has to accept the sound of a responsible individual, and this extends across species [ref: any David Attenborough Film] concurrent evolution?

We humans seem to have taken this idea of recognition to such a level that we can use the environment (clay, metal,electronics, paint) to create things that mean something entirely different, a mobile phone is not just an oblong thing – or even just a means of speaking to someone thousands of miles away – the imagination of a few has superficially  trivial but fundamentally beneficial effects for the entire species – What is interesting now is how our ability to imagine – to use our minds – can think us out of the problems that we face as a species. Its a dance.

By a nice non-coincidence Dr Wendy Hall talks about the ecology of the cooperative existence between machine and people [Radio 4 ‘A life Scientific’].