Perceptible Consciousness

Perceptible Consciousness draws on the cloud as a form made entirely through transition. It gathers and disperses, becoming visible without acquiring a fixed boundary. The work approaches consciousness in the same way: not as a substance that can be placed before us, but as an activity inferred through patterns, relations, and change. From the principal viewpoint, marks distributed across transparent planes cohere into a suspended cloud. Move aside and its apparent unity separates into layers and intervals.

The viewer becomes aware of a parallel between seeing and thinking. Both assemble provisional wholes from incomplete information. The title therefore holds a productive contradiction. Consciousness cannot be observed as an external object, yet it becomes perceptible through its effects. The cloud’s opacity is essential. Even inside a transparent case, its dense centre resists complete access, suggesting that visibility does not exhaust what can be known. Created in 2001, the work is an early milestone in Spriggs’ development of spatial images across transparent planes and is held in the collection of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.

Cloud, information, and mind

The work holds chaos and order in suspension. From its principal viewpoint, scattered elements gather into a coherent presence. From the side, the image returns to separate layers and intervals. Consciousness is approached not as a thing that can be isolated, but as a relation between signals, memory, and perception.

The transparent case gives the cloud the status of an observable specimen while exposing the impossibility of containing it completely. Form and space, motion and stillness, visibility and thought remain interdependent.