The article we read for this week really got me thinking more about the ideas brought up in the Solso and Livingstone chapters we read last week. Specifically, I'd like to expand on what I posted in my comment on Ernest's post. There, I focused mainly on the idea of parallel processing and its relationship to the ways we respond to art. I quoted Solso, who said "people react to visual stimuli (and other stimuli as well) with innumerable implicit associates, which attests to the richness of experience as well as the depth of cognition we all enjoy" (121). This attests to the multifacted nature of the emotional and intellectual responses people have to art. Not only to artists create work that has a variety of intended meanings, but the observer also provides further associations and interpretations, leading to the fulfilling experience of viewing a work.

The Mamassian article took this idea to another level for me. One of the most interesting points in the article, a questions I had not thought to raise before, was: why do we respond to an artwork with such emotional and intellectual interpretations, while we view the everyday objects around us with such relative apathy? Mamassian's point that "One important difference between the perception of visual arts and what could be called "everyday perception" is the task of the observer" (2143), reveals to me the importance of the observer. While it could be argued that an artwork is still meaningful even if it is not observed (because of the artist's process and impetus for creating the work), Mamassian's point, to me, is reminiscent of Solso's thoughts on light: as the eye and brain's interpretive functions give life to light, they also do so for an artwork. The task of the observer is to make sense of the artwork, and in doing so, to imbibe it with meaning, to give it life. We do this for art because of the power of parallel processing.

Of course, the artist also has a task: to create a work in which it is possible to find a deeper meaning. As Mamassian points out, the "rules" for artists have changed drastically with each passing generation. Each set of rules and formulas for creating great artwork we formulated by social conditions. Society's tastes and desires inform the parameters within the artist performs his task; and in turn, the results of that task inform the collective observer's understanding. As I ponder this notion, I am reminded of an Art History class I took during my semester abroad in Sweden. In that class, we studied the art and architecture of Sweden. One of the main points we focused on at the beginning of the course was portraiture done in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. During that time, there were no professional art schools in Sweden, and therefore no Swedish artists existed who could produce paintings on par with those being made in countries such as Italy and France, where art was a much more studied and practiced discipline. So, the Swedish monarchy imported artists from those countries, who could paint portraits in the accepted style of the time. These portraits were extremely formulaic, each detail meant to convey a specific idea. The posture of the subject told the observer the subject's status. An open crown meant the King had been alive at the time the portrait was completed. If his pale, white hands were in view, that told the observer that he was privileged and had not spent time working the fields. The Swedes imported artists who understood these rules, in order to appear on par politically with the rest of Europe. Thus, the artist completed his task of portraying the subject according to the social rules and expectations, and in turn the population completed their task by interpreting the paintings in the correct fashion.

Seeing As A Creative Act

Since the semester began, I’ve been milling over this quote from Arnheim’s introduction to Art and Visual Perception:

“Far from being a mechanical recording of sensory elements, vision proved to be a truly creative apprehension of reality – imaginative, inventive, shrewd, and beautiful.” (p. 5)

The existential implications of this sentiment are huge. Seeing is a creative act – we are creatively rendering our own version of reality based on sight. Oliver Sacks’ case studies make this point painfully clear. In both chapters, the subjects’ perception of seeing changed drastically and their sense of reality was significantly altered to devastating effect.

And what are the factors that cause us to paint and organize the world the way we do? Our cultural background plays a large role – societies teach their own how and what to pay attention to. But fascinatingly (and obviously) the neurological makeup of our eye figures largely as well.

In this week’s readings, I was inspired by conversations of how the eye organizes to create this reality. Livingstone’s fifth chapter, Acuity and Spatial Resolution: Central and Peripheral Vision was of particular interest. As a student of theatre and dance, my toolkit touches on emotion and motion so I’ll highlight those elements of Livingstone’s discussion.

Humans don’t have much resolution outside of our foveal gaze. And yet, peripheral vision is just as important. Livingstone points out that, although we think we are intimately familiar with a work as famous as the Mona Lisa, using our peripheral gaze may unlatch new meanings within the picture. Ms. Lisa, it seems, is smiling when we use our peripheral vision and simply content or possibly mysterious when using foveal vision to view look at her mouth. Livingstone follows:

“Facial expression may be more apparent in the coarse image components than in the finer ones even in real life, because they depend on deep facial muscles, and changes in the underlying muscle activity can be effectively blurred by subcutaneous fat. Therefore it may be that our ability to correctly interpret facial expressions in general is better in our peripheral vision than in the center of gaze. To extend this idea, I suggest that the image components used in identifying individual faces may be different from the image components used to identify emotional states. Images or moves of people that mimic the blurring effect of peripheral vision might aid in judging their true emotional state or their skill portraying emotional states.” (Livingstone 73)

I’m reminded of the Jean Epstein’s famous expressionist film adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher. Here’s a link to the famous funeral sequence on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS_UxOo5tek

Aided by superimosition of images, the blurry periphal focus of this sequence (and in fact, the rest of the film) tackles the melancholic qualities of Poe’s writing better than any image could in foveal vision.

Livingstone also touches on principles of viewing motion that I found particularly interesting. She uses Monet’s Rue Montorgueil in Paris, Festival of June 30 1878 and Poussin’s The Rape of the Sabine Women to highlight her points. The eye is drawn to the Monet painting, because it’s what we might view – a fleeting moment in time. This gives the painting a transient quality. When looking at the Poussin, there are so many details in the painting that it acquires a static quality. “By the time you moved your eyes from one act of savagery to another, the scene should have changed,” she points out. The Poussin painting looks almost like a tableau vivant.

I’m interested in the idea that the Monet painting may mirror one’s memory of the event – it’s crude fleeting glance qualities may reflect our imagination. The painters of the Expressionist movement ask us to engage with their non-naturalistic visions of reality. But when probing into our brains, might this be a reality we experience on a second to second basis, simply transposed onto a canvas?

Parallel processing

I was particularly interested in the concept of parallel processing as discussed by Solso. Obviously the brain carries out simultaneous functions on a constant basis since it must first maintain vital functions before it adds on any action it might devote itself to. I was fascinated by the way in which seemingly singular brain activities are subdivided into many distinct processes that come together in a flash to form a unified thought. Much in the way that breathing and walking are separate activities but work in conjunction with each other to create movement, seeing the color red creates two different reactions (one caused by the emotional associations and one caused by evolutionary training) to create one opinion of the experience. These of course are just examples of the various activities going on in the brain during such an observation. By evolutionary reaction I mean both the way in which the brain receives the color and the instinct that accompanies it. This reaction is present in nearly all animals and can therefore in terms of neurological evolution can be seen as being “first.” The higher processing of a visual experience come “second.” Since the first process is present in brains that have not yet evolved to the point of parallel processing it could be argued that the additional processes were created by and in fact are higher brain activity. However, higher brain activity cannot exist without parallel processing,(Solso writes, “The subtle meaning of everyday events—the hunt, the cooking, the gathering of berries—was understood with greater complexity,” [Pg. 115]) therefore it can also be argued that these additional processes allowed higher brain activity to be born. Unsurprisingly, evolution has left us with another “chicken and egg” situation.
I believe parallel processing plays a large role in the development of our sense of selves. Before parallel processing we were beings with singular brain functions. We were conceptually and biologically able only to engage in one activity at a time. This ability was devoted to survival. With the addition of multiple simultaneous thought processes we not only had the ability to consider what we were doing, but could hardly avoid doing so. It is parallel processing that is responsible for us being able to lift our heads up from our task and look around look around in wonder.
It is because of Parallel processing that it is so hard to find a moment's rest from one's own thoughts. Clearing the mind of all thought can be incredibly complicated and difficult. The brain constantly produces blankets of thoughts from every instance of experience. The effort of suppressing thought causes reaction over the matter and more cognitive activity As soon as one thought is eradicated two spring up in its place.
Of course, it is this constant hum of thoughts that allow us to glean a high degree of information from the world around us. Art's foundation rests on parallel processing. Every artistic idea must be multifaceted in its meaning in order to be successful. It is the combination of thoughts that allow us to create higher, more revelatory truths and creates the sense of miraculousness that art gives us.

Art & Evolution Create Motion

In this week’s readings, Livingstone (2002) quotes Henri Matisse: “Movement thus understood corresponds to nothing in nature: when we capture it by surprise in a snapshot, the resulting image reminds us of nothing that we have seen. Movement seized while it is going on is meaningful to us only if we do not isolate the present sensation from that which precedes it or that which follows it” (77). I think Matisse highlights the Gestalt theory of unity and balance, in addition to the visual system’s achievement of unity and balance. Movement can be taken as a pattern. Taking one moment out of a larger action is similar to listening to one tone of a twelve-tone melody (the example used by Arnheim (1974)). Motion and music are both greater than the sum of their parts. Taking the flipbook example, isolated, each picture looks static, but sequenced together the images become a stream of motion. Arnheim writes that if twelve people were to listen to the twelve-tones of a piece of music separately, their combined experiences would not be equal to listening to the piece in its entirety. Similarly, if each page of a flipbook were independently examined by a single viewer, their examinations would not total a “motion picture.”

Additionally, if you were asked to look at each flipbook image separately, most likely you would not know at what point in the sequence it was from (unless there was some outstanding detail that hinted at it cognitively). This is similar to what was talked about in class last week—it is very difficult to recognize different shades of one color when not comparing them side-by-side. If one creates temporal or physical space between the two color samples it would be very hard to distinguish the two. The cones in the retina distinguish color based on relative stimulation of the three different types of cones. Movement is another form of contrast.

Continuing with her explanation of the uses of peripheral vision, Livingstone (2002) surmises that the interpretation of emotions may rely more heavily on our peripheral vision than in our center of gaze. Livingstone (2002) explains that emotional expressions are induced by deep facial muscle activity that can be obscured by subcutaneous fat. Thus, emotional expressions are comprised of courser information that goes undetected by our foveal vision. Micro-muscle movements are not detectable to the untrained eye. Ekman, a researcher at the forefront of the study of emotional expression and lie detection, has compiled a library of all of the possible emotional expressions that are created by different patters of facial muscle contractions. Interestingly, Livingstone (2002) suggests that lie detection might be assisted if the faces are blurred to mirror our peripheral vision acuity. I am not sure I agree with this. Ekman is able to detect “pure” emotion or lying by recognizing the face’s microexpressions. In other words he can detect the contraction of muscles that the layman cannot. This would require the high acuity of our center of gaze. That being said, I wonder if (and now I am contradicting myself) if Ekman is able to detect micro-expressions not by the addition of singular details, but because he recognizes a more subtle change in the overall facial expression?

It is interesting to explain our visual system in light of evolution and then apply its abilities and idiosyncrasies to the creation and observing of art. I am trying to reconcile the fact that the visual system is not “intended” for the production and interpretation of art, yet we humans use it to do just that. I was reminded of something the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said, “For good Darwinian reasons, evolution gave us a brain whose size increased to the point where it became capable of understanding its own provenance, of deploring the moral implications and of fighting against them.” Of course Richard Dawkins was not talking about art but rather something much different “Social Darwinism,” (and from Solso (2003) we know that increased brain size in conjunction with a growth in neural connections is responsible for the brain’s complex functioning), but what I found relevant is the concept that because of the evolution of the brain, humans are able to consciously employ and challenge its inner-workings to produce art. Monet’s “Rue Montorgueil in Paris, Festival of June 30, 1878” is a perfect example of this phenomenon. How does an artist create movement on a static canvas? Monet is manipulating the visual system so that the viewer “feels” the movement. Livingstone (2002) explains that low spatial precision enhances a sense of vitality in the painting because with each glance we see something different. In addition, it is analogous to a single glance of a visual scene; one that is always incomplete because we only see clearly what the center of gaze happens to focus on. The rest of the scene is left to the peripheral vision and completed by “illusory conjunctions.”

I thought this week’s chapters did a good job of explaining the physiological processes of light and visual perception with an understanding of how this relates to higher-order processing and comprehension of what we are actually seeing. This differentiation is somewhat represented in the Where system and the What system, which respectively account for some of the more basic aspects of perception and more detailed complex aspects. The Where system, which is biologically older and present in other mammals, is responsible for the perception of motion, space, position, depth, three-dimensionality, figure/ground segregation, and overall organization. It is colorblind, as color is not necessary to make these distinctions. The What system is a biologically newer system, which is present in primates. It allows us the ability to recognize objects, including faces, in color and complex detail. It is “color-selective,” Livingstone’s term, meaning that color differences are coded by the two subsystems in the What system (the Form system and the Color system). These color differences are used to detect borders, while the colors themselves are not important.

The differentiation between strictly physiology and processing of these stimulations also allowed for Solso to comment on an interesting mini-discussion about how individuals see the world. On the one hand, he says, “Each of us ‘sees’ the world in profoundly different ways because of the vast diversity in the way we humans develop individual mental structures of the world, which are expressed in our conscious AWAREness” (p. 77). (I wasn’t sure exactly what Solso was referring to when he talked about AWAREness, maybe we could comment on that in class). While this is true, that our individual interpretation of stimuli is impacted by personal, familial, or cultural models that shape a particular reaction or interpretation, this is only one half of the picture. Barring physical deficits in visual perception, the process of “seeing” is almost identical from person to person, it is the attachments that we give to our sights that makes a good deal of difference. Because higher-order processing applies what we know to the sensory information, this process can significantly alter the interpretive meaning assigned to a given stimulus. This is obvious when a group of people all walk away from the same piece of art with different reactions.

On that note, the way in which the visual system echos and/or can be applied to the perception of various forms of art was a topic that came up in both readings but was treated very differently. I would have loved the two authors together in the room to discuss the relationship between the visual system and viewing art. Livingstone discusses this topic in the context of central and peripheral vision; she presents at great length the example of how the Mona Lisa appears to smile when viewed from peripheral vision. Additionally, she talks about how Impressionist paintings perhaps relate to the blurry peripheral vision, as opposed to the clear acuity of central vision in the retina. The example of Monet’s Rue Montorgueil in Paris, Festival of June 30, 1878 shows clearly (no pun intended) that the blurred details is effective when seen through a peripheral as opposed to the central line of sight. We complete the flags mentally so that they appear to have the red, white, and blue stripes of the French flag, but when assessed up close using central vision, we can see that they are not actually true flags.

Solso argues, however, that when we look at pieces of art, our eyes automatically dart to form “snapshots” of foveal vision, to create a clear picture of the entire painting. I suppose these two views are not inherently incompatible, but it would be interesting to hear them discuss it. Livingstone certainly argues that the Impressionist style is more natural in replicating the visual system than the realist style, and more accurate to the way we see and experience the world. Solso adds that realist art may be appealing because it can engage memory systems. This hypothesis seems convincing because memory does not operate as a distinct copy of how we originally experience something, but as a reconstruction of a scene, which would probably appear as though seen through clear vision, rather than peripheral and blurry.

Ruminating on Visual Perception and Optical Illusions

“Within days I could distinguish letters and my vision became that of an eagle–I can see a worm wriggling a block away. The sharpness of focus is incredible. BUT–I AM COMPLETELY COLORBLIND.”-Mr. I

This week’s reading returned yet again to the case of the colorblind painter and provided more insight into the reasons behind his dramatic shift in vision and perception. Livingstone explains that the color part of visual perception has significantly lower acuity than other parts. Meaning that because Mr. I was not using the color part, his vision was more accurate. Livingstone also divided visual perception into two subsystems, the Where system, which comprises motion perception, depth perception, spatial organization and figure/ground segregation and is colorblind, fast, has low acuity and is sensitive to high contrast, from the What system with consists of object recognition, face recognition, and color perception and is color selective, slow, has higher acuity and is sensitive to perceiving lower contrast. As hard as it was to remember which functions related to which system this was a useful way of breaking down the whole process of visual perception. Mr. I seems to use mostly his Where system and struggle more with his What system. I was not clear however, which specific regions of the brain these two systems were located. Livingstone says that the Where system is in higher visual areas while the What system is in the midbrain, but from this information I could not confidently determine which system operated in V4, which was compromised in Mr. I.

Livingstone addresses the pathway of vision from light entering the eye and being recepted by the retinal ganglion cells to the journey it takes within the brain. We covered some of this material previously in class, but Livingstone goes into detail about the different types of perception of each ganglion cell. I was particularly interested in the way the center/surround cells worked. At first it was a little difficult to understand how it worked with the outside inhibitory inputs and the excitatory inputs but the diagrams made it clearer and the optical illusion of the white lines and black squares helped to illustrate this for me. It was really neat to learn that the grey dots appear because the white in the surround part of the center/surround cells suppresses the white of the center. The visual illusions that Livingstone explains are fun and interesting to understand. I was shocked as to how much center/surround cells are at work in these optical illusions. The illustration of the newspaper also helped illustrate how these cells work and was very surprising and hard to believe. It is amazing how colors and shades play off of one another. The white of the paper made the grey of the letters look so much darker than they really were. I had to cover up the white with my fingers to perceive the color on its own. This made me think about paintings and how playing colors off of each other is an important aspect of painting and color usage. It also must be very difficult and require a lot of experimentation to know exactly what colors to mix to achieve the desired effects. Livingstone, takes her discussion in this direction as well when she addresses edges and equiluminance.

As I read Livingstone I really became overwhelmed by the number of factors at play in visual perception; light and contrast, context and distance all play important roles. For example, the equiluminant image by Anuszkiewicz was vibrating so much when I was doing the reading that it was making it incredibly difficult for me to read the adjacent text, I actually tried to cover up the image so that my eyes would stop seeing the vibrations. Yet, today as I write this post and am in dim daylight the image barely vibrates. Also depending on whether I look at it using the center or periphery of my vision the picture becomes more or less pulsating.

Solso also explained visual perception from the eye to the brain, but he also ruminated on larger questions and concepts, which I found interesting and expansive to my thinking about visual perception. He poses questions, which reminded me of some that came up in last week’s posts, like for example, what does blue look like to you and how is it different from the blue that I see? Although he did not pose this exact question he did pause to comment on the undeniable difference of individual visual perception, and the fact that we all have different brains and therefore perceive things uniquely. I thought it was also interesting when he explained that humans only have color vision in the 380-780nm range, because it evolved from needing to discern ripe fruits in the red-green range.

Another aspect of the Solso reading that struck me was the experiment he mentioned that examined parallel processing. Solso argues that parallel processing is what enables us to process information and make sense of it at such a high speed. His experiment made it possible to quantify how long it takes for someone to perceive the color red and evaluate if the color was associated to the word blood for example. This experiment in effect, calculated the range of time that it takes for us to react to stimuli and make implicit associations. This is such an isolated exercise though, when one considers how frequently we use these sorts of neural pathways and perform this task on a day to day basis or to observe a Monet painting for example, it is staggering how fast and how much our brain is perceiving!

refocusing, reconstructing, the Mona Lisa

In a previous psychology class I have taken the professor made a very strong point of explaining that while many people think of the eyes as like cameras and the brain like a super-computer, they were indeed very mistaken. I loved reading the way that Solso an Livingstone explain how the eye, primary visual cortex, receptors, and brain work - I also found both of their explanations very accessible, which is not always the case. I really found the explanation of how and why the homo sapien brain evolved in the way that it did, especially because I have been wondering why only a very small portion of light is in the spectrum that is visible to humans.

Each of us sees so much every day, I find it hard to step back and think about the process going on inside my head, and also hard to think about vision in general objectively - I cannot even imagine what it would be like to not be able to experience the world through vision, to be not be able to see color, or be 'colorblind' and not be able to distinguish between some colors. I liked Solso's point that everything is first perceived by early sensory receptors that are shared bt all humans, and then are subjected to the individuals perspective. As light enters the eye it goes through transformation after transformation, and is re-represented in many different ways - there is also a huge amount of visual information that is sloughed off in this process. It only makes sense that each of us would end up 'seeing' the world in different ways, since no persons brain is the same and it seems impossible that all brains would process visual information in the same way.

Another point Solso (and Livingstone as well I believe) makes is that the eye is constantly refocusing. Even when you think you are staring at one spot, the eye moves many times very quickly every second and what you see is an impression made up from a large number of individual fixations. When you look at a piece of art, for example, it is impossible to see it as a whole. As soon as the eye focuses on one area of the piece of art it quickly moves on to another and another - it is almost impossible to see a piece of art the same way that someone else sees it. The brain reconstructs visual impressions and adds in information from other areas of the brain. Without conscious control the brain adds interpretations, biases, memories, impressions, former knowledge to the visual stimulus. What one person 'sees' will be utterly different from what another 'sees' because they are drawing from different knowledge bases and totally different experiences and perspectives.

One last thing, I loved the discussion of the Mona Lisa in Livingstone chapter 5. I thought it was very interesting to attempt to look at a piece of art with no bias or previous feeling of it, that seems like an impossibility to me. But Livingstone claims to have done so, and the discussion of being unable to catch her smile by looking at it was fascinating! I spent a long time trying to focus on other parts of the painting and see if she was smiling more than when I looked at her face directly. I am not sure if I like the idea that her allure can be defined by the focus in the fovea and the mild blurring in the rest of the eye, but its a fantastic explination of why no one can ever catch her smile