Art and Visual Perception 2010

2010-05-12T07:01:00.000-07:00

Images for presentation

2010-05-12T06:33:00.001-07:00

2010-05-11T22:13:00.000-07:00

2010-05-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

"Crying at the Light": Monet's Struggle with Cataracts

2010-05-11T19:59:00.000-07:00

Regatta at Argenteuil, 1872

Water Lilies (The Clouds), 1903

Water Lilies (1914-17)

Left: Pathway in Monet's Garden, Giverny, 1902. Right: The Rose Path, Giverny, 1920-22

Top: Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge, 1899. Bottom: Japanese Bridge, 1918-22

Both entitled House Seen from the Rose Garden, 1925

The House at Giverny Under the Roses, 1925

Waterliles Morning with Weeping Willows (Detail)

Grandes Décorations. Morning (left panel)

Grandes Décorations. Morning with Willows (left panel)

Architectural Form

2010-05-11T18:20:00.000-07:00

Political or Not?

2010-05-11T15:42:00.001-07:00

presentation images

2010-05-10T07:28:00.001-07:00

2010-04-28T20:12:00.000-07:00

I was looking at my friend Morgan's blog last night and I came across the following images and was truly struck by them. After seeing the images Lizzie showed us in class in relation to faces and illusions I was prompted to share the images I came across because they definitely correlate. If you read the blurb under one of the images you will notice that the photographer was striving to display natural beauty in this photo shoot which overlaps with Solso's chapter concerning faces and the expression of facial emotions and facial beauty. The idea of feminine symmetry is definitely displayed.

The Haptic in Bacon

2010-04-25T20:29:00.000-07:00

The Scream paintings of Francis Bacon during the 1950's serves as an excellent intersection of face, motion dynamics, and expression found in this week's readings, particularly Study After Velasquez . The film frame of the bespectacled nurse shot in the eye from Eisenstein's film The Battleship Potemkin 1925 (possibly the most famous close-up in cinema history) and Portrait of Pope Innocent X 1644 were appropriated image parts implemented into the painting's whole.

In Dynamics, Arnheim had differentiated between the inhibited image and the mobile image. This was one of Arnheim's most thought-provoking moments for me. In this endeavour he seems to abolish the notion of the atemporal visual image. It is clear that all paintings contain time and refers to movement for their very construction is through a multiplicity of convergent and divergent forces (visual, formal--the force of inflicting paint on canvas itself) which is quite literally movement while the image often implies a specific kind of movement--even frozen movement is movement a result of what he termed as "directed tension."

The claim made by Lessing in the first utterances about medium specificity that the image is in lack of time unlike literature and music is made irrelevant. The claim was founded on the misguided idea that the emotional effect of a painting can only be taken in as a whole rather than as a build up to a climax available in other "time" mediums. Well, I think this is something we've all proved as an incorrect discredit to the multivalent emotional capacities possible in the visual image through the class's heavy study on gestalt theory. And Bacon's Study After Velasquez is a visualization of painting's unlimited time elements--merging history in his aggressive brush stroke and color application that take in Velasquez's pope and a prominent piece of Soviet visual culture and most definitely merging both frozen time and mobile time in one full sweep. The result is a discordantly harmonious image--a visual fugue that elicits guttural physiognomic responses in the spectator.

The injured nurse is a frame taken from a moving picture. The pope is a frozen composition of inhibited movement, comparable to El Greco 's St. Jerome, a painting which Arnheim studies briefly in the reading. Arnheim called attention to the counterbalance of forces in the composition that resulted in the cancellation of immobility. Bacons turn the mobile immobile by slapping Eisenstein's expressive face onto the pope's bodice and thrusting the throne into a state of ambiguous ascension and descension. I had called the response to the painting as gutteral for it elicits not only visual but also physiological cues, culminating in a haptic sense. The painting acts as a function of both sight, sound, and touch. He first institutes a juxtaposition of unblended paints. The yellow is strong and true in this painting and is particulary potent in contrast to the dark space of the paiting. the interaction between the bckground of starkness with the bold yellow produces this effect of light and explosion creating an unlimited activity of engagement through color. the yellow sparks are rising out of the painting to extend the interior space of the painting into the spectator's outside world. The pope's robe of purples which emerge from the dark smokey streaks also aids in the effect. What this does is allow Bacon to introduce into the pictorial plane imperceptible effects of sensation on the body. While the face of an open-mouthed scream generates the audible noise--just as Arnheim had noted that seeing a painted boat can suggest movment--the screaming face and the painting's mode of tension channels a collective empathy in the sound and feeling of a violent force that is overtaking the painting.

Like what Arnheim had noted about St. Jerome, in Velasquez's portrait, there are clear visible forces that direct the tension and stabilize the dynamism inherent in the painting. In Bacon's the invisible are made visible and are turned against one another. In Study the forces of effect that weigh in through oblique angles in and around the body-spaces (both within the painting and outside the painting) are manipulated to obscure and implicate deformation and expression. Perhaps what's most important in this amalgam is the commentary that could be drawn out on religion and political ideology with the Pope/Soviet Prole seemingly strapped into an electric chair. For context, the nurse was shot in the film along with the baby she was taking care of--in the film it implies that the Tsarist regime is killing the future of Russia. The woman dies as a martyr to the Bolshevik movement. Are we imprisoned and punished by our own restrictive dogmatic beliefs? I think so. The implantations of Soviet visual culture and Catholic visual culture is important here for symbolic effect. I leave everyone with this question, what exactly is Bacon trying to say?

2010-04-25T10:56:00.001-07:00

In reading for this week's class, I couldn't help but be reminded of the time we spent on mirror neurons the other week. Solso's chapter on faces was really fascinating for me, and I think it ties in directly to what Livingstone had to say about the mirror neurons. Solso states that "Faces touch us. These faces deserve your careful attention. Study them". To me, what is so fascinating about faces is our ability to read them with such ease. Of course, there are various neurological disorders that can prevent people from being able to understand the expression on another's face, but for most people the act of understanding an expression is as simple as looking at the face. Of course, cognitively speaking there are many complex activities happening in the brain that allow us to reach this kind of expression comprehension, but we aren't aware of those processes.

The pictures of faces that Solso uses are excellent examples of this kind of immediate understanding of the feeling described by the faces. Migrant Mother, California and Weeping Woman (page 141, figure 5.4) both impart a sense of sadness and loss- even if one were to view these pictures out of context and without the titles, the observer would still understand the emotional messages.

All of this reminds me of an experiment I took part in last spring. My brother-in-law is currently working on his PhD in Sweden, and he is studying mirror neurons. I was spending time with him in the lab as we were working on a mirror neuron study together, and he asked me to do a test in the MRI machine. The experience itself was rather unsettling, as I'd spend the previous three weeks in an intensive sort of 'intro to fMRI' course with him, and was acutely aware of the fact that he was about to see inside my brain- a thought which, in itself is very strange. Before I got into the machine, he had me kind of strapped in with a sort of head gear on- this was a pair of goggles with screens on the inside, so that Benny could show me a series of images while I was inside the MRI machine.

The images were a series of faces, probably about 60 in total- but each face was of a different person with a 'disgusted' look. My only job in the first part of the test was simply to view the precession of faces. In the second part, I had to physically imitate the expressions as each face was shown on the screen. The point of the work, though Benny did not discuss it with me in any great detail because I was a subject, was to establish first that there is a kind of specialized recognition area for disgust as an emotion (there has been some debate, as I recall, as to whether or not disgust is truly an emotion), and then to establish that the mirror neurons code for both the perception of disgust and the expression of it- just as we discussed in class, with monkeys viewing someone grabbing for an item and then grabbing the item.

It sounds like a very simple test, just to view faces and them imitate them; and I suppose that it seems so simple because of the fact that this kind of research has become popularized by contemporary neuroscientists like Oliver Sacks and V.S. Ramachandran. But if you stop to think about the fact that, over the course of the barely 30 minutes I was in that MRI machine, Benny was able to actually see which part of my brain were activated by the stimulus- I am floored by the fact that we as a scientific community have been able to come so far. Thoughts are suddenly categorizable in a very quantifiable way, despite their inherently qualitative and hard-to-describe nature.

I seem to have gotten a little bit off track with this, so I will try to bring myself back to Solso. I think that part of the reason I was so fascinated by his chapter About Face was the notion of specific brain regions being devoted to this act of recognition. Surely faces are not the only things we recognize in this way. I couldn't help but thinking of my conference work, which is on typography. One of the things I'm looking at while writing my paper is the actual act of reading- and in Maryanne Wolf's book, Proust and the Squid, which is about the reading brain, she gives a great insight into the cognitive processes of reading. According to Wolf, the second stage in the half-second-long process of reading a word, is to recognize the letters. Wolf asserts that instead of there is no area of the visual cortext directly dedicated to recognizing words; i.e. there is no fusiform gyrus equivalent for letters. Rather, "Learning to read changes the visual cortex of the brain. Because the visual system is capable of object recognition, the expert reader's visual areas are now populated with cell networks responsible for visual images of letters, letter patterns, and words. [...] Donald Hebb proposed the notion of cell assemblies, groups of cells that learn to operate as working units. If a common letter pattern or a word like "bear" appears to an expert reader, it will trigger its own networks, rather than individually activating the large number of unrelated individual cells responsible for the lines, diagonals and circles within the letters."

In other words, Wolf is telling us that there is no specific spot in the brain that processes letters as the fusiform gyrus processes faces; but in some ways, the reading brain is far more astonishing. An "expert reader" (each of us in this class are expert readers, after our years and years of experience and our practice with a great number of types of texts) has a brain which has actually learned the specific organizations of lines, diagonals, circles, etc.. that make up each letter. Put even simpler: our brains have actually changed their cyto-organization, have learned the Gestalt organization of each letter- and various words or letter patterns. That, to me, is incredible. That our brains have actually adapted to the act of reading- which is not at all evolutionarily necessary.

Psychology and Dynamic Expression

2010-04-24T19:25:00.000-07:00

There was a lot going on in this week’s readings, but it was all extremely interesting so there was a lot to think on. Particularly I thought Solso had a lot of interesting and crucial things to say about face processing in Chapter 5, which we haven’t really talked so much about. That aspect of art really represents the intersection of neuroscience studies, anthropology, and art, so it was particularly cool for me. Besides all the neat stuff about facial recognition and processing that goes on in the brain, Solso brings it back around to a discussion of how faces play such an important role in artwork and how that translates to the brain.

His pretty ingenious study of the portrait painter Ocean in the MRI gave some great perspective on how the artist’s brain differs from a non-artist’s brain. While it was confirmed that the “facial fusiform area” of the brain was active while looking at faces to draw, Solso was initially surprised to find that the non-artist’s brain activity was stronger in those areas than Ocean’s. He concluded that a portrait artists would not have to look at faces for an extended period of time; he would pick out the key features almost immediately whereas the non-artist would spend more time gathering information about the face. Relatedly, Solso also found that Ocean displayed greater activation in other regions of his brain, particularly the right prefrontal areas. This perhaps signifies that artists activate a deeper meaning behind the face they are drawing than a non-artist. This shows that artists seem to use more of the brain than would be involved in just a mechanical reproduction. and may give some insight into why they are so good at what they do. I was also interested in how different artists would perform on this task, and what their brains would tell us. Would a landscape painter be different from Ocean, or a photojournalist, or an actor?

I also really enjoyed Solso’s discussion of how our sensory systems do not give as accurate a representation of the world as we assume they do. Blocking our way to a “true” perspective of the world are sensory illusions that distort the perceptual system, cognitive illusions that are the result of intellectual paralysis caused by linguistic coding of visual information, and artistic illusions created by a visual scene. Solso describes the relationship between physical energy and psychological sensation as far from direct, and in fact “curvilinear,” signaling that our visual system does not give an invariable view of reality. Additionally we are faced with the problem of translating our experience, which is sensory, into words. This is true when looking at the natural world or at artistic depictions of it. Because of these distortions (what Solso refers to as “the power of the mind to see these as they ought to be, rather than as they are”), artists have the tough job of depicting a world that looks natural to the deceiving eye. Artistic illusions have to be created in order to match the psychological interpretation and the sensory one, and portray the natural world in a way that makes it “psychologically correct.”

As Arnheim discusses in his chapters, this is not always an easy thing to do. Even in the most “accurate” snapshots of the world, i.e. motion photographs, images can look still and lifeless because they do not posses dynamic qualities. Arnheim explains that this dead effect occurs when artists assume that dynamic qualities in art are re-enactments of actual movement, which is a false presumption to make. In fact, he says, “when immobile shapes come closest to giving the impression of actual displacement in space, they do not look dynamic, but, on the contrary, painfully paralyzed” (414). Arnheim uses one of Kandinsky’s theories of art in explicating the answer: a sense of ‘movement’ is only demonstrated by creating ‘tension’ within the artwork which is directed for the viewer. This can be achieved by showing moments “outside the dimension of time,” for example by portraying multiple phases of an event in the same image. Obliquity enhances dynamic qualities, as do non-primary colors, which strive toward or away from the primaries.

Arnheim asserts that by providing dynamics in art, we immediately attach expressive meaning to a piece. One of the most interesting parts of this chapter for me was when Arnheim makes the distinction between expression as an anthropomorphizing of the natural/art world and expression as attributing psychological meaning. He explains, “The willow is not sad because it looks like a sad person. Rather, because the shape, direction, and flexibility of the branches convey possible hanging, a comparison of the structurally similar state of mind and body that we call sadness imposes itself secondarily” (p. 452). When we attribute expression to something non-human, we are not humanizing that in as much as everything that we see is imposed with some kind of meaning. Human actions do not carry more importance than non-human things, our visual brain works uniformly to find expressive meaning in the world.

Art and Assumptions in Childhood

2010-04-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

I, like many, found the levels of differentiation very interesting, as general concepts are broken down into specifics. So, early child art is concerned with generalities (simple structural features) that become slowly more representational. I thought the way Arnheim proved this point was fairly ingenious: we know that children draw what they see, but we know that children see much more than they draw. They are clearly able to recognize faces and people from an incredibly early age, but a drawing of "dad" looks surprisingly like "mom" who looks quite a lot like "sister." Thus we must acknowledge that there is a simplified representation going on that is not imitation but invention (of both the final product and the tool by which to represent this simplified version of real life).

As others have also pointed out, the discussion of "tadpole" drawings shed a lot of light onto our adult assumptions about what is "present" and what is "missing" from a drawing. Having read some literature on the psychoanalytic interpretation of children's drawings (which Arnheim briefly touches on), adults are very concerned with what is present/absent in a child's drawing, and also with what sizes the objects present are. Arnheim does an excellent job of explaining some of the constraints on child art that explain some of their drawing tendencies. For example, the fact that children's perceptual identity does not rely much on size, so size does not really factor into their drawings. Size can designate importance, but more often shows a relationship between things.

I was also amused (and surprised) to think about the enduring impossibility of the child house design that places the figure within a (2D) house so he can be seen. This is problematic when we expand the scene to 3D, where the house is then required to have no front wall in order to be able to see inside to the figure. I had not thought of this, just going along with the magic assumption that you can see through walls. Arnheim identifies this structure at work in even some of the most famous pieces by Durer and Altdorfer where "the Holy Family is housed in a building without front walls, camouflaged unconvincingly as a broken-down ruin" (p. 201). Some tendencies clearly don't disappear after childhood.

Kids art is more fun.

2010-04-19T18:13:00.000-07:00

I think art by children is the most brilliant of all art. When considering children’s art, one must wonder where along the line of maturation the purity of creation, imitation and simple fun turned into (in some cases) the convoluted, messy expression that passes as art by adults. One of the things that frustrates me the most about visual art is that as significant and profound a piece INTENDS to be, the message is not always easily discoverable. And then what are we left with besides a piece that at most stimulates a pleasurable visual sensation? One never encounters that problem when observing a child drawing a picture. Though their creations are not always artistically legible, when asked they will tell you exactly what each element is supposed to be. Their intention is clear, whether it be simple motor activity or depiction of common scenes or shapes.

I know I touch back here often, but I was again reminded of the Waldorf system of art education for young children. As kids, our artistic tendencies were both closely monitored and carefully nurtured. We were taught to explore with many media, both conventional (block crayons, watercolor, pastel) and not (mud, leaves, tables and chairs). The reason for this was the belief that the most important area to cultivate in very young children was not the mind per se, but the hands. By teaching children to observe their environment and express their findings in multiple outlets, one is encouraging them to be more aware of and active in their surroundings. The output of the child, rather than the input of the teacher was prioritized in an educational setting.

In addition to the emphasis on visual art, unusual guidelines were used to gently steer children in what I suppose will call a Waldorfian direction. These guidelines were not directly imposed, yet in retrospect were enforced in a subtly strict way. For example, if a child would veer into the dangerous realm of straight lines, the teacher would not admonish him, but would come to his desk and say, “we don’t you try it THIS way?” Things like that. As mentioned, straight lines were rarely acceptable in our drawings, the reason being that straight lines do not occur in nature. For the same reason we were discouraged from drawing things like machines and buildings. Another rule was that we were not supposed to draw outlines, which for a child is extremely difficult. The natural tendency for a child is to draw an outline, and if necessary go back and fill it in appropriately. For Waldorf children, everything was supposed to come about organically. For example, if one wanted to draw a person, perhaps one would begin with the head. From there, the person would have to grow from the head down, that is, neck, shoulders, arms, torso, legs, one growing out of another. Actually, we rarely DID draw people. Most drawings were done of abstract shapes and patterns, a class called form drawing (yes, it was a whole class). Form drawing would consist of drawing a series of geometric patterns free hand, highlighted by color shadings that grew from dark to light.

Of course, though Waldorf kept me on a fairly strict artistic diet, I like all children drew on my own time, where I was free to draw as many outlines as I pleased. It is difficult for me to see what affect, if any, the art curriculum had on me other than being proficient in several media. But I am in no way a very good artist, I certainly cannot draw or paint with any real skill. So did the Waldorfian method really do anything at all, or was it trumped by my nature as a child to follow the biological evolutionary path into artistic adulthood?

Growth

2010-04-18T18:00:00.000-07:00

It was very interesting how many things that this chapter tied together for me. I have done conference projects on both children's art and schema. I had heard before that 'dogishness' is perceived earlier than the characteristics of dogs, and that children often over or under assume characteristics. They may, for example, think only their own pet is a dog, or that all four legged animals are dogs.

It was good the way that Arnheim tied this fact back into art, and how artistic representations can be expected to be concerned with generalities. I have been, for a conference project in another class, been studying 'schematas' (and the way that they and nonverbal cues can help children learning English as a second language).

I had not heard the term used in a way meaning that the child is bound by rigid conventions that bind them to primitive templates that must be broken for the child to be able to gain freedom of expression. The reading that I have done about schemata has desribed them as a necessary thing for a child's development, and a way for the child to organize the world around them and make sense of events that happen more than one time. This is close to what Arnheim himself says, but I almost would like to know where he was reading so many of these harmful discussions of schemata, so that I would be able to see how they differ from both what I have said and what Arnheim has to say. I thought his analogy of the stairs was very helpful, and I had not heard it before! It makes much more sense to think of them not as obstacles, but a prerequisite that is indispensable.

I found the second half of the Arnheim chapter a little bit more difficult to get through, but loved the part about the 'misnamed tadpoles' on page 197. I have, while working at the ECC, seen drawings just like these! I had been wondering why the whole central part of the body is left out, and had never thought of the possibility that it only looked like something was 'left out' to me, while to the child it is perfectly complete.

Kids Art

2010-04-18T17:11:00.000-07:00

I thought this chapter of Art and Visual Perception was especially interesting. It immediately got me wandering about the nature of art, as well as the way we, and our relationship with the world, change throughout our lives. I was particularly struck when I read that "'Triangularity' is a primary percept, not a secondary concept. The distinction between individual triangles comes later, not earlier. Doggishness is perceived earlier than the particular character of any one dog." I was very interested in the idea that a child draws something that can depict every instance of said thing, while an adult draws a highly specific object whose depiction is limited to itself. I found myself thinking that there was a certain virtue, and advantage in the basic, transmutable drawings of children. This sentiment reminded my of a set of coffee mugs my friends mother had made when I was a child. On one side of the mug was a drawing done by a child. On the other side were the words "Children's art is real art."
We think of a highly detailed drawing done by an adult to be far superior to the abstract scribbles of a child. This is because it fulfills a perceived goal of drawing: exact replication. I was now, however, reconsidering the validity of this goal. While a refined, detailed drawing certainly does do a great job replicating a specific visual field, its specificity limits its definition, and this limitation began to seem like a weakness. There is something ingenious about the representational simplicity of a child's drawing. Because a child depicts "dogishness" instead of a specific "dog," it has not only reproduced an image, but skipped over the facade of an instance and reveal its essence. In effect, the child has produced the fundamental essence of an object. The object is not only reproduced, rather its truth has been distilled.
Arnheim himself, writes that while children's art may seem abstract and symbolistic, whereas adult art work is realistic, adult art work is, in actuality, abstract and symbolistic in the exact same manner. The difference, is that its abstractions are far more complex and weave together in an attempt to hide each other. This seems counterproductive, since the goal of abstraction and symbols is to simplify and illuminate. Thus, "realistic" artwork is a contradictory illusion, that smuggles truth onto the canvass.
I wonder if, as we get older, if we fill our memory banks with so many specific dogs, that our idea of what a dog is becomes a series of dogs we knew that obscure the perception of "dogishness" that we once knew. Do our experiences sully a basic knowledge of truth that we are born with?

Children and Civilization

2010-04-18T15:16:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed reading Arnheim’s chapter on growth. Since studying a conference works worth of children’s artistic development, I am drawn toward the correlation that many authors make between children’s artistic development and early human representations. Assumptions that a child of a certain age must have a certain set of skills can be harmful to the observations of the true nature of what is being expressed. It is important to consider the experience an individual has with a given material, else interpretations can be without objective support. Just as, I think, Livingstone pointed out, it is more biologically efficient to code for similarities than the numerous incorrect associations that can be assumed. The similarities between the development of the individual and the development of visual representation in cultures are important to understand. This relationship is especially clear to me in my experience with a past conference project. For my sophomore year art history conference, I studied Minoan pottery and learned how to throw pots on the wheel. Teaching myself to control the clay was difficult but I could see and feel myself develop more skill as I practiced. As I spent more time in the ceramics lab, I was able to make more delicate pieces. At the end of the project, in my review of the experience, I noted that my technical development was similar to the Minoan’s understanding of the ceramics. I like to consider the technical skill they must have developed independent of their use of the wheel, as the potter’s wheel had been in the lands surrounding Crete for almost a thousand years before Minoans included it into their production.

It is also striking to follow the increasing complexity and combination of different designs and motifs that were used over time. Early Minoan ceramics were limited to dark and light color differentiation that clearly distinguished the organic, swirly figures from the empty background. Eventually colors began to be included and designs began to include clear simple shape and not just designs. Soon, the handmade motifs incorporated the designs into larger shapes on larger vessels and everything evolved into more complex versions of the past. However, similar to the artistic development in children, certain techniques or mastered skills may be “dropped” in order to “pick up” a new, possibly more mature technique. The forms of the vessels remain within a certain number of variations function, with small differentiations between Early, Middle, and Late (with internal divisions of Early I, Early II, etc.)

) Late Minoan II

Growth

2010-04-18T15:12:00.001-07:00

I enjoyed this week’s Arnheim reading, and its discussion of the development of visual perception and artistic creation. I have worked at the Early Childhood Center for the past three years and often find myself in the “art corner” watching the children paint, draw, glue or cut. I’ve notice tremendous shifts in painting style and scope from the two-year-olds that I worked with last year and the year before to the three/four-year-olds I teach this year. Two-year-old painting seems to be about movement and feeling. Their painting is often about the movement of the brush and the feel of the paint. This seems connected to Arnehim’s discussion on page 172 of the child painting the man mowing the lawn, because it demonstrates more of an awareness of movement than of object. At the same time, these are slightly different observations because the four-year-old was replicating the movement of the lawn mower with her paint brush while it is hard to know exactly what my two-year-olds were thinking about, perhaps they were just experimenting with moving the brush in different ways.

The group of three/four-year-olds that I work with have started painting more defined patterns and figures. Arnheim’s discussion of children’s development of an understanding of a “solid spatial trellis” and preference for the vertical or horizontal seems relevant to their painting. I have started to see the children make figures with long legs and circular bodies. I’ve also noticed that the three/fours sometimes create clearly defined patterns, for example horizontal lines in alternating colors, polka dots or a combination of lines and polka dots. The two-year-olds only sometimes made “patterns” although they were far less intentional. For example, sometimes the twos made a few dots and then continued to make more dots after discovering and being excited by the first couple of dots. However they would not alternate color. Any use of more than one color on the page was generally a sort of color mixing, i.e. experimenting with mixing blue and red and discovering purple.

Certainly, some of these developmental shifts are cognitive ones. As Arnheim discusses, a tremendous amount of perceptual development occurs. One must become aware and integrate the horizontal, the vertical, and different perspectives. Also, a child has to figure out what they want to depict and then figure out how to capture it in two-dimensional space. Additionally, they need the motor control to execute the picture. I would say, and I feel like I would be supported by Arnheim, that both cognitive and motor development are responsible for the differences between my two/threes and three/fours’ artwork.

Leaving, the children from the ECC behind, there were a number of other parts of the chapter that I found interesting. One part was what Arnheim said about representational concepts. “Representational concepts furnish the equivalent, in a particular medium, of the visual concepts one wishes to depict, and they find their external manifestation in the work of the pencil, the brush, the chisel” (169). I thought this was a really useful and interesting way of thinking about an artist’s abilities. This is the ability that most baffles me. My mother is an artist, a painter and I cannot really understand how she is able to paint what she paints. I cannot understand how she knows where to start and what to use to realize her painting. However, I can realize my visions in photography. I wonder if Arnheim would consider representational concepts to apply to photography as well, I would think so but I’m not sure.

I was struck by Arnheim’s discussion of the circle. Circles fall under Arnheim’s concept of simplicity, “the circle, which with its centric symmetry does not single out any one direction, is the simplest visual pattern” (175). He also says that circles are easiest for humans to make because of the lever construction of our limbs. Furthermore, he explains that children normally begin drawing people by drawing the circle of the head. It seems that circles are attractive and important to human’s sensibilities. Additionally, think about all of the meanings and imports circles have in our culture. There is something inherently important and comforting in a circle, which based on Arnheim’s discussion of children’s visual development, children become attuned to at a very young age.

2010-04-17T09:27:00.000-07:00

A video showing every painting on display at MoMA

I saw this and thought of our class. There's something fascinating about being shown so many images in rapid succession. Check it out.

a thought...

2010-04-13T20:48:00.000-07:00

Nifty movement link

2010-04-13T19:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.allmyfaves.com/blog/weekly-faves/are-you-artistic-or-logic-maybe-both/

I'm no sure about the artistic/logic dichotomy that this page talks about, but after a few of my friends and I had stared at this for a while, some noticed that they could influence which direction the figure turned based on what types of things they thought of. I noticed that it changed when I moved my head. Check it out, tell me what you guys think.

WHAT we SEE...what WE feel...

2010-04-13T19:05:00.000-07:00

Since taking Lizzie’s Feeling brain course I have become obsessed with the mirror neural system and focused my conference work on emotion regulation. It’s only natural that Stafford’s chapter “Mimesis Again,” would prompt me to write my blog post about its relevance to visual communication and perception. Mirror neurons are potentially a neural correlate to empathy. This is all very intriguing to me being that I have an over active mirror neural system. I'm extremely empathetic to others. Lizzie brought to my attention in one of our conferences so I began researching it. I wanted to learn how I could control being too sensitive or crying all of sudden and not knowing (consciously) the exact reason behind it.

The neural organization of the emotional brain has infused the linguistic study of the role of mimicry. Mimesis orients beings both animals and humans. Identifying with another begins with involuntary shared emotion. As social beings we bounce off one another. Our perceptions of pleasure and pain are worked on day to day. We are moved to either draw experience in, making it intimate or refute it, making it distant. Our visual communication is essential to how we interact in and with the world.
Emotions are part of self-regulating homeostasis. The development of emotions starts at birth, activated consciously as well as sub-consciously. The most dramatic changes occur in prenatal development, infancy and childhood. From the moment they are pushed out of their mother’s womb they express emotion, typically they are crying and screaming. The first distinction a person can identify in a baby’s emotional state is between positive and negative affect; meaning whether they are content and happy expressed through a smile or whether they are sad or upset expressed through a pouty face or crying. Many important emotion regulatory skills and strategies are developed during the first five years of a child’s life. The emotional environment in which a child is raised can enhance or interfere with their ability to learn to regulate emotion and function with others.
In the first few months of their infant’s life, mothers claim to have the ability to differentiate between their ranges of emotions. The primary emotions are most likely discernible at this stage, happiness, interest, surprise, sadness, fear, anger and pain. Anger and pain become increasingly easily distinguished from each other when the baby is around seven months or so. For the most part after infancy emotional expression is learned from others, through observation and imitation.

When a mother and baby are interacting usually exchanging expressions, the baby is more often than not simply responding to the mother’s initial expressions. Say if the mother differed to a frown as opposed to a smile or spoke in a harsh tone of voice the baby would not automatically recognize this emotion as anger. The baby would identify that this tone of voice is un-pleasurable or very different from what they are accustomed to. Social referencing studies have proven that infants can sensibly interpret the emotional expression of their mother. Social referencing is defined as a process characterized by the use of one’s perception of other persons’ interpretation of this situation to form one’s own understanding of the situation. Ambiguous situations, are well studied i.e. reactions to strangers or reactions to strange toys. When a baby comes in contact with a stranger for the first time they will usually look at their mother’s current expression so they know how to act in this situation. If the mother reacts positively to the stranger, so will the baby. But, if the mother ignores the stranger then the baby will not react positively to the stranger.

Emotional experience originates with autonomic nervous system arousal. Sometimes emotion precedes cognition, sometimes emotion is preceded by cognition. These two systems work together. The autonomic nervous system is aroused by prominent change in this person’s world. An environmental event, the individual’s actions, memories or actions of others. Negative emotionality does not always stem from self-related experiences.

In social interactions indirect induced anger can result in disregulated behavior, behavioral constriction, or concern for the person or persons expressing the anger, depending on the child’s coping method. Children who experience sympathy frequently try to assist others in distress; in contrast, children who are anxious or distressed in reaction to others’ negative emotions often avoid dealing with the distressing situation or may even respond aggressively. Some children are able to deal with anger, aggression, and anxiety in a constructive manner in social contexts, while other children have difficulty regulating their emotional reactions and emotion-related behaviors.

The forms we see all around us mirror the deep structure of the cosmos. It is our innate cognitive proclivity to mimic and to respond to features of the ambient that correspond to our neural architecture. Stafford states that imitation may even trigger patterns among individuals in a process akin to culture, meaning cross-generational copying of social interaction.

Motion is an intrinsic component of emotion. Arnheim tells us that motion is the strongest visual appeal to attention. There is a mirror system for movement and action comprehension. I believe filmmakers are also masters of mimesis just as painters Hogarth and Greuze. I attended a film screening of “Kingdom of Heaven,” for my art history lecture and Ridley Scott definitely recreated the historical war scenes over Jerusalem between Christians and Muslims, to the T. They were so realistic; the mimicry of these actual events was phenomenal and evoked the appropriate emotions. Everyone’s perception is different, based on their past experiences or knowledge of a given subject matter. However, when people are getting killed left and right, in gory depictions with blood is gushing everywhere, we can expect to have similar feelings about what we are viewing. That is unless the person sitting next to me watching the same film is a masochist.

Perception is a moving process that activates a reaction to a stimulus. This is due to vision being animate, a bodily sampling of one’s changing surroundings that locates the viewer in a particular territory. We imitate and internally as well as externally re-create. This is true on so many levels and across many mediums and it just hit me this second fashion is just like that a cycle, everything is recycled and coming back into style slightly modified. Whoa I could go for days with this one, let me know if your are interested in reading my fifty page conference paper regarding this topic. Hahaha

A Little of This, a Little of That, a Little bit of Nothing

2010-04-11T21:14:00.000-07:00

My goodness folks it’s happened again. The sun came out, the dresses were put on, the beer snuck its way…well…out and now there are only a few precious weeks left. Now, how did this happen? And for god’s sake, why? Though I have no serious or scientific answer I can hypothesize it has something to do with the heat, because according to Wertheimer a higher body temp leads to a speedier perception of time. This however has nothing to do with anything, because it is quasi conference time and nothing makes sense anymore.

This weeks reading threw me for a bit of a loop, because Arnheim didn’t talk about paintings! (enough). The chapter did however remind me of the various motion games I’ve played over the years, like that tunnel at Ripley’s Believe it or Not where you approach it and can plainly see that there is a bridge suspended through a tunnel which is rotating, however the minute you step on to the bridge you have to brace your self to fall because you a sure the bridge is rotating! Upon approaching the tunnel the larger object is the tunnel, which is in obviously in motion, while the bridge is as stationary as the floor you are standing on. However when you become associated with the bridge you lose the perspective of its relation to the floor and associate it with the walls surrounding it thus it appears to be spinning. Or when you are on a train and are sitting backwards to the direction of movement it becomes very easy to allow your eyes to release the job of watching the some what nauseating scenery go by and suddenly your are moving forward! It feels something akin to watching a scene in a movie shot by a poorly trained steady cam operator, your gut kind of wrenches because the movement you are perceiving is not correct to according to the settings in which you exist.

I suppose this Arnheim chapter was a little difficult for me because I have become so accustomed to his use of paintings as examples, that thinking about the human body in motion was shocking. I tried to think of mobile pieces I had seen in the past (Calder?), in reference to his mention of statues on pedestals, however I was at a loss. However I do recognize the importance of being able to navigate a statue or large sculptural piece in your own time, if the David was on a rotating base there would constantly be hoards of tourists running around and around just trying to get a good look at his eyes. Keeping art stationary, in this case, gives us the ability and the authority to take as much time as is needed to understand this angle or that.

On the subject of movement in painting Livingstone was enlightening if terribly brief. I wish that her chapter had investigated more artists and had delved deeper in to the application of equiluminance and color contrast in painting, print, and photography. Which reminds me, many of the texts we have been reading have thrown a kind of wrench in my head about photography. How do you all feel in terms of the break down we’ve been learning about as applied to painting/drawing/sculpture, applies to photography? More importantly (for me) how does the artist’s hand show in a photograph? In a painting, it could be said, we respond to the abstraction of a familiarity, or perhaps we respond to the amount of work we can see went into that piece, the time and training. Does that come across in a photo? Or do we respect (or not) photography, more now than ever before, because it seems like anyone could do it well enough?

The Stafford reading is directly related to my conference project for neuroscience, but I think I’ll save that for conference.

Movement

2010-04-11T20:44:00.001-07:00

Livingstone’s discussion of the way advertisers manipulate our what and where systems in order to force us to pay more attention to what their ad says was both interesting, and a little off-putting to me. The tactic of disorienting one of the systems so we have to try harder to figure out what the distorted text says and, thus, spend more time looking at it and taking in what it says, is fairly ingenious, particularly since spending that time isn’t a conscious decision on our parts. Yet, the unfortunate downside to this tactic is that often the text, particularly equiluminant text, is unpleasant to look at. I know from personal experience that if a product’s ad is actively painful to look at, as much equiluminant text is, I am less likely to seek that product out, regardless of how much I absorb about the product while looking at its unfortunate ad. I admire the advertisers’ inventiveness and the insight involved in figuring out how to exploit our visual systems, but I have to wonder if their own methods aren’t backfiring on them.

Since I am doing my conference work on ballet, it is less than surprising that I was fascinated by many of the points Arnheim raised in his chapter. Aside from his discussions of dance, I really enjoyed much of his discussion of how we contextualize movement and how we see it in relation to everything else around us. His descriptions of experiments where a room spins around a stationary chair, during which the observer sitting in the chair experiences a “sensation that the chair is turning…so compelling that the observer will fall unless he is tied down” (379), reminded me of sitting on a stationary train while another train goes by out the window. There is something so compelling about the sight of the windows of an adjacent train whizzing past that fools me nearly every time. I almost invariably have to look out of a window across the aisle to see whether we have, in fact, started moving without me realizing it. Even though, like the observer in the experiment, all of my kinesthetic sensations indicate that the train I’m sitting on is not moving, the visual cues are so convincing that I have to double check.

I was also fascinated by Arnheim’s discussion of our visual hierarchy, simply because I had never thought about how I categorize things before. As he so astutely points out, we see things based on a hierarchical order of dependence: “[t]he mosquito is attached to the elephant, not the elephant to the mosquito. The dancer is a part of the stage setting, not the stage setting the outer rim of the dancer” (380). It honestly would never have occurred to me to think of the mosquito/elephant relationship any other way, but once he pointed it out it seems bizarre that this is the case. And I have to wonder if this is a natural tendency or something that we just pick up on when we are very young. And if it’s a natural tendency, where on earth did it come from? Is it just another mechanism we have adapted to cope with and make sense of the world around us? Or does it serve a greater purpose?

Finally, I really enjoyed all of Arnheim’s discussion of dance, but particularly when he pointed out that “[t]he movement of the dancer can be more extensive than that of the actor, whose visual behavior is subservient to speech” (408). One thing I have noticed over the course of my conference work is just how much dancers use specific, carefully planned movements to convey extremely complex themes and situations. I realize this sounds obvious when stated so simply, but understanding to what extent this is the case has been incredibly eye opening. In depriving themselves of speech, dancers are forced to compensate with their bodies, to draw upon familiar gestures and shapes and distort them or make them their own in order to communicate. They create entire stories, entire characters out of movement, allowing their bodies to speak for themselves.

Movement

2010-04-11T20:34:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago I came across this photograph (Miss Grace, 1898 Clarence H. White) and its peculiarity has intrigued me ever since. The slight tilt, the flattening of dimensionality (with the exception of the legs), and the blurring of the face makes the photograph at once captivating and disorientating.

While the floor and wall appear to be a continuous plane, a tension arises between the askew carpet and the dark baseboard band so that our perception alternates between the two dimensions. Against this restless motion of the background, the languid young girl is suspended diagonally across the photograph. She appears cradled within the nook of the sofa and yet mirroring the continuous planar effect of the floor and wall, her body seems to be on the same dimension as the sofa. And while this similarly tense movement between the background layer and the girl/sofa layer is occurring, the girl’s legs, positioned just below and to the right of the center, arrests all movement. Arnheim explains that “a moving framework imparts action to the whole setting and the objects it contains, and it can translate timelessness into active resistance to motion.” And so the girl’s legs are perceived not as outside the dimensions of motion, but appear as resistant, petrified against motion.

Aside from the disorientating movement, the girl’s unfocused face is puzzling. Compared to the defined gilt edges of the sofa, the girl’s head hovers, seemingly separate from her body, in an almost transparent haze. Her head is lowered and she appears wholly absorbed in her book. But even though she is distant, we are drawn to her face seeking within it any signs that we may connect with. Rather, the sofa offers up its own clarity. Stafford asks a key question, “How do we make sense of the fact that subjectivity emerges when the brain-mind simultaneously produces not just self-images and the organisms response to its surroundings but…an organism in the act of perceiving and responding to some external object?” In Miss Grace we seek out her face so as to reflect upon her state of mind and ultimately upon our own. However, this “natural impulse to stimulate the figure’s expression and so comprehend the situation” is suspended. We could say that her awkward age, suspended between girl and woman, or simply a girl lost in the realm of novels accounts for the rather distancing effect. But that is on the whole, largely unsatisfying and does not even begin to indulge my curiosity with the image.

Binoculars!

2010-04-06T21:19:00.001-07:00

I found a bunch of interesting stuff in this weeks articles, so I'll go through only a few of the. One thing that intrigued me was the descriptions in both the Sacks and Morgan articles about what it is like to live with monocular vision. Just as Sue was unable to imagine what she was missing before she learned to see binocularly, I found it extremely difficult to picture life on a mostly two-dimensional plane. My first thought after reading her description of flowers with her newly acquired 3-D abilities, how they seem "'intensely real, inflated,' where they were 'flat' before" was along the lines of well yes, they look real because they ARE real. How else would they look? Yet Sacks, as usual, has a way of communicating a condition that is normally completely out of the grasp of a neurotypical individual in an impressively relatable way. He utilizes a recognizable artistic trait that most everyone does, closing one eye in order to frame a shot with a camera, to illustrate the effects of monocular vision. Morgan on the other hand, with his Cyclopean vision, fails (in my opinion) to relate the condition as clearly. This is a classic example of the big dilemma in neuropsychological literature; how does one convey, in simple terms, the extent of a disorder or condition that is to the majority of the audience simply ineffable? How far can words go to describe visual phenomena, and can those words in the end give enough information?

Another part of the Sacks article that I found interesting was Sacks' willingness to incorporate all sorts of angles into his investigation of Sue's vision, that is, not simply looking at how her eyes or brain functions but also considering unexpected, abstract objects like will power and desire. Sue writes in her letter to Sacks about how she always, almost subconsciously, wanted to see in more depth. Sacks responds to this, "Was it possible that the intensity of this wish had made her believe that she was seeing in stereo when she actually was not?" This readiness to consider other aspects like emotion and conviction make Sacks' musings intriguing if inconclusive.

Additionally, I want to draw attention to the craziness that is the response Sacks got from Shimojo about the variation of binocular and monocular balance in individuals...I think the idea that the brain takes an average and dubs sit good enough is a bit of betrayal on my brain's part. Are my eyes lying to me? How different is the world I see from the world my friend sees? How much more or less depth do I enjoy in my visual field? In any case, I'm glad my binocular vision developed during my critical period, when it was supposed to!

2010-04-06T20:55:00.000-07:00

Just Some Thoughts and Stories

I was reading the Michael Morgan article and was interested in the idea of living your life with only one eye. I was Particularly attracted because my great aunt who is 93 years old, has lived most of her adult life with only her right eye. She drove around South Jersey until about five years ago. On a visit we were driving around south jersey and my mom was driving and my aunt was giving her directions. She kept having my mom make right turns. It became obvious to us that we were driving almost in circles and going out of our way. We realized this was because when she was driving she could turn to her right to see but would have to turn her whole head to the left to gather enough information to make a left turn. On the way home my mom drove a more direct way and my aunt was totally lost. She became confused and thought we were heading in the wrong direction. All the little things and traditions she did to compensate became apparent to us. She would move her head slightly to the side to judge depth. One might have never figured out that she strutted a glass eye until she lost it once... but that's another story…

I was listening to the NPR story and I put my finger in front of my face trying to figure out what she meant by "not seeing space". I always cross my eyes and have intrigued by the multiplication of the images I then see. I also cross my eyes knowing how silly I look and love it. I started to see what she meant by not seeing space. It almost felt like taking a picture and focusing on one image while the background appears blurry. The other day I took some pictures playing with my camera and focused on different on parts of the scene. In first picture (below) I focused on my friend who was close to me and the other on the people and landscape in the distance. It seemed to me that Susan saw the world like the first photo with the closest things in focus and the world around out of focus and blurry.

Binding Vision

2010-04-06T19:53:00.000-07:00

Sorry that this is a wee late! I was a little thrown by the schedule due to Spring break and didn't realize it's already my turn until I went to post a comment! Anyway. Here goes.

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte features the notion that it is the retina, rather than the painting, that creates the light and effects of ocolor and depth. One of Seurat’s main interests in his color theories is to address and understand the forming of the image. He invented a color theory surrounding a law of contrast where color achieves maximum intensity once brought closest to its complementary, creating an optical unification in the viewer’s eyes at a given distance. With the use of modern scientific thought Seurat believed that the theory assured his predecessors’ (The Impressionists) close attention to light and color, rendering colors more vibrant than standard brushes.

A clip from Ferris Bueller's Day Off depicts pointillism's binding physical and visual effect quite well, also demonstrates the scale and dimensions.

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

The repeated dots is an excellent example of the illusion of depth through the repetition of a pattern as well as the persistence of vision that accounts for a fusion of a new vibrant color between dots of pure color. The flickering dots bind the viewer's vision, activating a stereoscopic view through pure color contrast. In the painting each adjacent dot is another image, causing the two eyes to oscillate between the two. The scientifically achieved painterly effects uses the engagement on a physiological level to short circuit the painting's implicit social criticism.

The scientific and methodical manner in which the dots are applied and their presence once implemented in an artwork seem to erase originality, an end impressionism earnestly sought to reach in the movement’s spontaneous renderings of moments in nature. This undeniable aspect of homogeneity and depersonalization found in paintings produced by different artists who relied on the common method was so imposing that at the first opening between Seurat, Pissaro, and Signac, visitors were unable to distinguish one artist’s work from the other. In implementing a new color theory and a new method of rendering images as a continuation of impressionists’ studies in light and color, Seurat championed the modernist ideal to isolate form from the fiction of the painting. The isolation between form and fiction is quite literal. These dots were in fact stacked on top of a finished painting. The human figures appear to be caricatural, rendering the subjects critically in the stiff, cutout like imaging overemphasizes class difference that percolate under a screen of equalized dots. The rower in the foreground is strikingly different to the uptight top hatted gentleman. The corsetry to suggest women's fashions is also exagarrated.. The sardonic portrayal of the bourgeoisie, mirrored the socio-political milieu brewing in the last quarter century of France. In this endeavor he challenged the laws of legibility upheld at the time. Salon paintings entailed clear relationships and social, economic, and moral hierarchies. These lines are decisively blurred in La Grande Jatte by the facture, causing the painting to veer towards anarchy.

This overlay of modernist, scientific technique, which sits atop a traditional promenade schema, is an aesthetic blurring between old and new forms and styles that disrupts the painting's fiction of a utopic union of classes along the Seine. The painting is shrouded by a cloud of equality that is not actually present in the society. This ethereal mist is unnerving and through a contrapuntal application of egalitarian dots, anti-utopian aspects of democratization, urbanity, and industry emerges from the fragmentation. The reality is there is no mobility. The stiff silhouettes alludes not to heroism, but the restrictive social stratification industry perpetuated under capital.

a life of photographs

2010-04-05T17:42:00.001-07:00

I was incredibly engaged while reading the Sacks story about Stereovision. Sacks tells the story of a woman named Sue who was born cross eyed. After three surgeries she was able to gain control over the direction of her eyes, but still the two retinas did not create a stereoscopic vision of the world. Instead, Sue saw the world flat and without space. Although, as explained by Sacks, and Livingstone as well, this lack does expand one’s peripheral vision, it also makes everything seem flat. When I try picturing it I imagine seeing the world in front of me as almost a photograph I am always unable to enter. Sue saw the world in this way, although she was still able to intellectually understand what she was missing from her vision. Through this understanding she was still able to interact in the 3D world in a way that wasn’t noticeable to others and manage motor skills.
Towards the end of the article Sue explains how once she was learned to exercise her eyes to work as two separate retinas while still working together. She describes seeing snow for the first time in 3D, how she saw every snow flake individually and wrote “. In the past, the snow would have appeared to fall in a flat sheet in one plane slightly in front of me. I would have felt like I was looking in on the snowfall. But now, I felt myself within the snowfall, among the snowflakes.” It seems so disturbing and upsetting; the inability to penetrate the scenery of your own life. I am curious to know how stereovision could potentially effect people in their perceptions of self, others and social interaction. When I imagine myself in Sue’s beginning position I immediately feel removed from the world and my surroundings. Sometimes when I have a moment of anxiety I take a moment to feel/observe myself in my surroundings with the hopes of grounding myself. I wonder how this would look different to a person with monocular vision… I would imagine that there is almost a part of you that always feels a bit disconnected from scenery or persons. Also, if I saw the world monocularly, I would find it odd to touch things. How would it be to hold someone’s hand? If there hand looks flat, how would it feel to cup it within yours? Furthermore, I am curious about how motor skills are affected when one’s vision is unable to properly determine the depth of an object. When we reach for an object our brain identifies the object and then sends messages from our brain to our hand to determine how to sufficiently pick-up the object. For a person who is unable to see the object in 3D, I would imagine this is quite challenging.
Last night my grandfather and I went to see an awful movie in 3D. Having just read Sack’s article on “Stereo Sue” I began paying close attention to the experience of watching a 3D film versus a more typical flat version. It was interesting to notice that when fast paced action happened while wearing the glasses I felt it much more challenging to take in all the information on the screen. I had to keep my eyes focused in a singular position for a moment to gain a cohesive image, and then would spend a bit of time getting grounded in another segment. Ultimately, I felt that I missed a lot. It is almost like an exaggerated version of how we do not have as great peripheral vision as Sue did while seeing the world flat. My grandfather complained that he couldn’t see anything while having the glasses on, and found it much easier to see images with the glasses off for the entirety of the film.

Visual Reality

2010-04-04T21:48:00.000-07:00

I was interested in how our method of perceiving 3-d space is somewhat sloppily stitched together from many different mechanisms. It makes sense that our brain would analyze a number of factors within our visual field and synthesize them to create a perception. However, the analysis of these factors can be so ill-defined that sometimes they conflict with each other. In any given visual situation, certain factors overpower others. It is rare to process an image with equal attention to all of its aspects. Perception is not defined by the results of any standard process. Instead, it is highly adaptive which means it cannot be grounded by any default.

This adaptivity is highly advantageous, of course. It is what allows people who live in dense jungles, and those who are restricted to monocular vision to function. But it also robs them of their sense of reality. While they have constructed a reality of their own, the jungle inhabitants cannot understand the view of a far off mountain and Sue was shocked to understand the definition of space. Our perception of the world through visuals is in no way tethered to its reality. It does not take long for our visual perceptions to rearrange our perception of reality given their stimuli as shown by Oliver Sacks' anecdote about his post surgical visual phenomena.

I was very struck by the part of the Conway-Livingstone article in which they discuss our acceptance of paintings with incongruous forms or shadows. We are ready to accept these changes, and though they are unnatural abominations, they don't bother us much. Conway and Livingstone explain that this may be caused by the fact that unnatural things don't happen in nature and distinguishing them is therefore an undeveloped and unimportant trait. This may be true to some extent. But constant exposure to specific lighting and spacial conditions and exclusion from others will quickly and effectively change the "reality" of perceiving space and objects.

It may be important for humans to be ignorant of the existence of their version of reality in order to focus and adapt to be successful. Perhaps it is our disregard for reality that separates us from animals. The lives of animals are closely linked to reality. Their existence is based on realistic necessities that need to be accomplished such as food and shelter. Meanwhile, we are preoccupied with other, more subjective activities. In order to think, and to create we must be able to divorce ourselves from reality and live in a perception. Our tendency for diverse visual experiences may be part of a larger list of attributes that make up our humanity.

Seeing in Stereo and Other Thoughts

2010-04-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

This weeks readings brought to mind an anecdote about an acquaintance of mine: after seeing a 3D movie in theaters (with much-improved technology since Tussauds’s “House of Wax”), he took off the glasses and said “I wish the world could be in 3D.” We all laughed at him, thinking that the world is, of course, already in 3D. But the joys of someone like Sue, who experiences stereopsis for the first time, very well did feel that longing for her vision to produce three dimensionality. And, of course, Sacks mentions how the process can go the opposite way, and how Paul Romano lost recognition of objects, as well of a sense of spatial orientation when he suffered an ocular hemorrhage in one eye.

Sacks’s own memoir of losing stereopsis after his stint in a recovery room was fascinating to me; we have all of course experienced changes in vision after reading for an extended period of time or starting at a computer screen, but to lose something as huge as stereoscopy (and related spatial judgement) after a fairly brief period of time (three weeks) was frightening, in a way. I shared Sacks’s wonder about prisoners and people living in dense rain forests who judged mountaintops as within arms length.

Her wonder and excitement at her new ability to see also paralleled my experience upon first getting glasses for my near-sightedness that had gone unnoticed until I was a sophomore in high school. When I put them on, I looked around, immediately noticing all the fine details of the world around me that I hadn’t questioned as blurry, like the edges of leaves that made up a green of a tree. I could so fully relate to Sue’s joy at finally seeing the levels of a three-dimensional world, just I rejoiced at being able to see crystal-clear details of things that were far away.

In terms of artwork, this creates another interesting paradox. Livingstone comments on the fact that finely detailed pieces of art provide a good stimulus for stereoscopic depth perception, and thus stereopsis provides a strong signal that the painting is flat, rather than three-dimensional. To remedy this effect, Leonardo da Vinci recommended closing one eye and standing a distance from the painting, to remove those cues and allow the viewer to see the monocular depth cues without interference from the “flatness” of the painting. (I grew up around artists and often saw this tactic used, but had little idea what it did until now!) The Conway and Livingstone article hypothesizes that artists, Rembrandt being an example, were more likely to be strabismic than non-artists, allowing them to use monocular depth cues to a greater extent.

Conversely, Livingstone writes in her book that paintings without fine detail, such as Impressionist works, do not invoke a strong signal from stereopsis to convey that the painting is flat. Other depth cues can then give the illusion of three-dimensionality. This effect can be exploited to a greater extent by the coarse dabs of paint that are present in many such paintings. The mismatch of these dabs between the two eyes can create a strong sense of three-dimensional volume which is filled with small floating objects (just as Sue eventually saw the noctiluca and the snow).

In line with Conway and Livingstone claim that Rembrandt and other artists may be strabismic or lack stereoscopic vision, I was really fascinated by the fact that children with autism had greater success with overcoming cognitive biases and drawing objects realistically. This section of the article reminded me of our conversation about the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, which in effect works to overcome many of these cognitive biases by isolating aspects of the drawing, drawing upside down, etc. This allows children with autism to draw objects as they see them, without interjecting their knowledge about the three-dimensional shape of the object (this knowledge itself may not even be present or relevant to the child with autism). The authors go on to say that these drawings rarely have a single point perspective, and change perspectives based on consistency for a local region or object in the scene.

To finish my thoughts, here is a cute video from a movie I used to watch all the time as a child, The Thief and the Cobbler. While not wholly relevant to this week’s readings, it is certainly relevant to the concepts of three-dimensionality, and the reorganization of space based on interruptions of our assumptions. It’s quite short, and has an M.C. Escher-like quality to it.

Enjoy! Thief and the Cobbler Video

we're all magical creatures

2010-04-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

In this week's readings, I was really struck by the theme of our personal experience of vision. Listening to the radio spot on Stereo Sue, you can really hear the awe and delight in her voice as she describes her first few experiences with things floating and popping out in her field of vision.
Sacks' piece also focused on the personal experience (as his work so often does--his own experience and that of the object of the case study). In typical Sacks form, he describes with glee his youthful forays into photography and stereoscopy. And this hobby continued into his adulthood. I thought it was an excellent illustration of how childhood interests inform our adult selves, how we keep coming back to the same kinds of curiosities and questions. One sees it as quite fitting, that a boy who liked to play with his visual perception and explore ways of manipulating it would become a man who studies the brain and its aberrations.
Sacks spoke of the stereoscopic society he belongs to:
"Unlike most, we do not take stereoscopy for granted but revel in it. While most people may not notice any great change if they close one eye, we stereophiles are sharply conscious of the change, as our world suddenly loses its spaciousness and depth. Perhaps we rely more on stereoscopy, or perhaps we are simply more aware of it. We want to understand how it works. The problem is not a trivial one, for if one can understand stereoscopy, one can understand not only a simple and brilliant visual stratagem but something of the nature of visual awareness, and of consciousness itself."
I was thinking about this, too, in regards to our next paper topic. Like Sacks, artists explore and exploit the ways that they interact with and perceive their environments. That sense of discovery and play really links, for me, artistic experiment and scientific experiment. Artists and scientists both are both "shaprly conscious of the change", whether we're talking about stereoscopic vision or other kinds of phenomenon we encounter.
On the other hand, we have Sue, who intellectually understood stereoscopic vision, and could even teach on the subject--but never experienced it. Then, when her vision training began to pay off and she started seeing depth in relief, the scientific knowledge she had only added to the wonder of this new facet of vision--and more broadly, life.
I was reminded of a time when I was a small kid, before I'd ever been given a Magic Eye book or read anything about vision. The walls and ceiling in my bedroom were textured, one of those unfortunate features of suburban development from the 80s. I used to lie in bed and make the texture reverse depth. I thought I was magical because I could do this, and it was my own secret game--then I began turning it to things in the outer world. When I got a Magic Eye book, I reveled in the fact that I could grasp the hidden images faster than my family. Then I got to talking to my father about it, and he explained how the Magic Eye worked, and for the first time I realized that my secret magic talent was actually a somewhat ordinary function of human vision--the ability to converge or diverge the images. I sulked about it for a while, but as I've grown older I'm more and more interested in those perceptual tricks we might discover as children and then learn that they are common to all people. It's a different kind of magic.

A magic eye image for you! (Another note: I was really surprised to find that these images can be viewed on a computer screen. I thought maybe the LED display would interfere with the effect. But no!)
http://wright-pc.com/pyr0/magic.eye.jpg

2010-04-03T16:57:00.000-07:00

Stereopsis and Depth

This week, the readings have had a huge impact on the way I look at the world. Sacks points out that "the subjective quality, the quale, of stereopsis is unique and no less remarkable than that of color". Like color, stereopsis is an aspect of vision that I had never taken the time to consciously notice. Reading Sacks' article on Mr. I earlier in the semester caused me to really consider the presence of color in my actual field of vision, in terms of its practical importance. Previously, I had only really paid attention to the importance of the symbolism we attribute to color, especially in an artistic expression. While I felt intrigued by this new perspective on color, it can't compare to what I felt upon reading Sacks' article about stereopsis. Sue's letters to Sacks were extremely evocative for me, and it probably took me at least half an hour longer to read the article than it should have, as I was constantly looking away from the page, covering an eye, and trying to view my surroundings as someone with monocular vision might. I have a very hard time picturing the 2D world that monocular vision presents, I think because stereopsis is just so inherent in my own vision. Just as Sue couldn't imagine stereoscopic vision (or that it would improve her perception of the world), I cannot imagine viewing the world without it. I was especially intrigued by Sue's diary excerpts: "When I was eating lunch, I looked down at my fork over the bowl of rice and the fork was poised in the air in front of the bowl. There was space between the fork and the bowl. I had never seen that before. . . . I kept looking at a grape poised at the edge of my fork. I could see it in depth." Not once have I ever thought of things as 'in depth'- but now it's all I look for. Even now, as I write this, I am suddenly kind of shocked by the way my computer sits in space, between myself and the wall in front of me. I'd never consciously noticed this kind of placement. I can't imagine the shock Sue must have had the first time she saw things as 'popping out' toward her. It must have been like an unexpected Magic Eye picture.

All of this thinking about depth is making me curious as to how artists play with our depth perception. Last week we read a lot about how artists were able to employ various techniques, like shape from shading, in order to create the sense of depth upon two dimensional canvases. These works were concerned mainly with depicting an accurate portrayal of a scene. But I wonder about the effect of an artwork that intentionally tries to play with our perception of depth; how this can be achieved. We've mentioned View-Masters and Magic Eye pictures, which both take advantage of the eyes' positions in relation to each other. These seem somehow more sensational or novelty-like than artistic. However, there are some stunning modern works that I can think of that take advantage of our depth perception to artfully manipulate our experience of the work.

The piece that I kept thinking of during our class discussion last week, and while I was reading for this week, was a sculpture by Anish Kapoor called The Healing of St. Thomas. Here is a picture:

As Chris Bergeron wrote in 2008, "Instead of carving marble or forging bronze, Anish Kapoor sculpts with materials that can't be held like mirrored reflections, the laws of optics and space around your body." Kapoor's work is extremely evocative, as he is able to really change the way you experience what you see. For some reason, The Healing of St. Thomas seems to me to be especially relevant to our discussion about depth. I saw the work in 2004; I entered the room from the left side of the wall, so that I was walking parallel to the wall. At first I couldn't even see that there was an artwork on the wall; then, as I approached the centre of the room, I saw what appeared to be a dash of red paint across the surface of the while wall. As you can see from the picture, neither the white of the wall nor the red color of the paint really show any shadow; they seem to really absorb light. The paint actually covers the internal surface of a kind of inverted wedge carved into the wall. I think that what is so striking about this piece, to me, is the fact that its depth only makes itself known once the observer has spent time and effort viewing the piece from multiple perspectives. Also, once you realize what you are really looking at, suddenly the emotion of the piece is revealed. What appears to be an innocuous splash of red paint is actually an extremely evocative wound, reminiscent especially of the wound in Christ's side on the cross. Homi K. Bhabha wrote a very powerful essay on this piece, in which he illuminates the importance of viewing the work from multiple view points, and I'd like to quote some of it here:

The wound gathers like a gaping aura, drawing us to it – disciple, artist, writer, viewer – to witness the making of a miraculous rebirth, the Resurrection, through the repetition of a shape, the void, each time for a different purpose.[...] You lead me to the precise position and location of the wound.Just this red slash, and nothing else, and yet, somehow, the space around it comes alive, making an expanded emptiness, beyond the supporting wall, to bear the wound…, I observe.

Kapoor plays with our pre-supposed visual norms a lot, and I really reccommend taking a look at his website (www.anishkapoor.com), where there are photographs of a lot of his work. Obviously, the full effect of their shape and color can't really be conveyed through the flatness of photography (just as the complexity of depth in the world cannot be conveyed fully through flat images), but you can get the idea.

Kapoor's work doesn't necessarily capitalize on stereopsis, but it does play tricks tha cause our brains to confuse three dimensional objects or shapes for flat surfaces, and I think the implications of this are really fascinating. I especially like the fact that to fully understand the true shapes employed in his sculpture, one must view the work from multiple angles, and one must spend time integrating the possible meanings of the piece into ones literal physical interpretation of the piece. Because we get the scriptural reference inherent in The Healing of St. Thomas, we are able to perceive it as a wound in the otherwise blemish-free wall, and not as simply a painted concavity. I can't think of any other work I've seen that does this; does anyone know of another artist whose work has this effect?

The Law of Simplicity

2010-03-30T22:50:00.000-07:00

In his chapter on Growth, Arnheim introduces the Law of Differentiation, which helps me understand why I have not hitherto managed to post any image examples on this blog. Ah-ha. I am at this point not quite capable of being moved by visual phenomena, not without rigorous analysis and aid of other intelligent brains. Nor am I much lettered in art history. Well what's the solution? Is the solution for me to go to a museum and look at works of great genius? As Arhneim states in his introduction "mere introduction to masterworks will not suffice." No, essentially, I am at the level of the primitive, in which forms are highly undifferentiated, and representation is manufactured with the crudest possible schemata. I will have to start at the bottom, and work my way up from the bottom.

What's marvelous is that the chapter on Growth (which I know was not the reading for this week) equates the developments of art history with the development of our visual capacities from birth, so that both paths parallel each other. And meaning that those of us in our maturity who wish to perhaps start from scratch need do no more turn to the history of art, and begin at the beginning.

Arnheim makes it possible to view artistic creation as a narrative. In other word, we can pose a problem or question such as "how is the artist going to represent such and such a phenomena on a two dimensional canvas using colored paints?" and then follow the protagonist (the painter) or the collective protagonist (painters and artists throughout history) as they find ever more complex and effective solutions to the problem. Obstacles present themselves (the introduction of central perspective makes it more difficult to represent a simple phenomena like three people sitting around a square table fig 87, the introduction accurate illumation makes it harder to clarify borders between objects, as in figure 232), and the artist must overcome them.

Aesthetics then becomes not a matter of taste, but of effective solutions to problems.

Similarly, our visual perception can be thought of as a narrative in which our perceptive mechanisms solve the problems presented to them by eyesight. HOW our mechanisms solve the problems is subject to debate. There are behaviorist theories. There are blah blah blah theories. And then there are the Gestalt Theories, which are moving in that they are the most effective. According to Gestalt theory, we solve the problems of resolving visual information according to the law of simplicity. So that a given shading, or a given light patch will be interpreted as illumination IF that organization produces the percept of greatest simplicity.

All this is a development of Arhneim's stated desire at the beginning of the book to depict the visual perception of art as a dynamic, and not a receptive, act.

How shading works

2010-03-30T14:21:00.001-07:00

First of all, I was totally amazed by how Livingstone breaks down the artistic dilemma of having to visually portray differences in luminance through art using tools that cannot even approximate the number of luminances in the natural world. Furthermore, our visual system cannot even signal the scope of these different luminances, so we must rely on center/surround organization that discriminates locally. Thus, we see the abrupt differences between how dark/light something is and its immediate surround. In order to achieve this effect in artwork, artists use chiaroscuro by creating subtle opposing gradations in luminance between foreground and background The very idea of creating an artistic representation of something that cannot be accurately produced, which is in turn seen through a visual system that cannot biologically handle that difference in luminance is fascinating (and quite vexing).

I also really liked Livingstone's discussion toward the end of the chapter on how color and luminance was stretched by modernist and impressionist painters such as Monet, Matisse, and Derain. These paintings seem visually accurate, however, because the luminance values create depth cues that are easily perceivable. There is something of a dissonance in these paintings, as one aspect seems entirely realistic whereas another is not readily comprehendible. For Monet, Livingstone posits that the colorblind Where system detects the overall shape and spatial organization that creates depth, though the low-luminance contrasts also keep the viewer from being able to clearly or immediately identify the objects (What system). In the Monet example here and in Derain's work, aspects of the What system may create expressive rather than realistic dimensions while preserving the (colorblind) accuracy of depth.

2010-03-29T15:56:00.000-07:00

Michelangelo mixed the pigments in the highest contrast to create consistently realistic luminance, thus producing an artful three dimensionality on a two dimensional canvas. Looking at the images in Livingstone, one print of the original and one of the black and white, it’s really impressive to see how unmistakable and clear the shading is. “Luminance is necessary to perceive depth,” which is clearly what Michelangelo was striving for and accomplished quite successfully. Trying to achieve depth and three dimensionality made me think of Mondrian’s striving for a perfectly flat, two-dimensional image. However, he did seem to use pure colors, which have varied luminance. Brightness distribution over the whole visual field helps to orient objects in space. So a large, bright red section might seem much farther forward than a small blue square underneath it. Also, the local schematic would have impacted the changes in luminance, thus creating the perception of depth.

Our visual systems are able to process thousands of luminance levels with a finite number of excitatory cells. Because of the center/surround organization of the retinal ganglion cells and the thalamic cells, they respond to abrupt changes, in this instance, in changes of luminance. The visual system organizes brighter areas and darker areas in each area of the painting, rather than constructing an entire gradient from the whole visual field. Rembrandt was able to successfully manipulate luminance by creating gradual shifts in the background and using sharp local changes to increase contrast. Similarly, Daddi used luminance changes to enhance the throne, painted in perspective. The alternating lights and darks and highlights make the curvature of the seat perceivable.

Arnheim’s discussion of the location of the light source, either inside or beyond the painting, was interesting. The idea of the objects “becoming enlightened” by way of contact with the light source was really intriguing. Bringing the viewer’s attention to significant objects without throwing off the balance or meaning of a piece can be a tricky process. But in The Holy Family, Rembrandt uses lights and shadows to create a dynamic piece. The “glowing” book seems to make no sense until Joseph’s gigantic shadow lends to the location of the light source. In addition, that the illuminated book and the pale pink cherubs in the top left corner both stand out against dark shadows. Mary’s face is also brighter as it is caught between the reflections of the angels and the (good) book.

I've just finished a painting that I adapted from a black and white photograph. As you all know, a

B &W photograph can have some confusing shadows, especially if you're trying to paint them in color. I too am guilty of undermining the importance of shadows, but I have to say that once I added ( what I thought was going to be a big reddish black mistake) the arm it was on and the microphone it was from seemed to pop! It all came to life and started to look like a real painting.

Shadows and Light

2010-03-28T21:17:00.000-07:00

It was difficult separating my interest in architecture from Arnheim’s chapter of Light, since light and shadows play such a significant part in the experience of architecture. And I find it interesting that Arnheim distinctly notes that while light is prominent in causes of visual perception, light is “more than just the physical cause of what we see…it is the most fundamental and powerful of human experiences.” And this is precisely where light fits into architecture—it is not simply an object, although the unveiling aspect of light does reveal a surfacing of texture, depth, and form of a space, but foremost it is towards an experience. It is fascinating how the energy of a space can become diminished or sustained through the blending of light and shadows and we feel it perhaps most poignantly in our childhood homes. For example, the light which marks the interior of the home is simultaneously cozy and remote which is in part due to the contrasting darkness. Void and presence, interior and exterior, become part of the bodily experience and through this blending of light, a room is transformed into an embodied, sensory place. Demonstrating quite clearly this ‘phenomenon’ is the opening pages of Proust’s Swann’s Way, in which the narrator is desperately trying to fall asleep against the disorientating effects of shadows, “ But my sadness was only increased by this since the mere change in lighting destroyed the familiarity which my bedroom had acquired for me (9).” The lighting of homes offers profound experiences and I find it truly uncanny walking in residential neighborhoods at night when rooms becomes visible through illumination. Not only do you see the depth and texture of a room but you see where the shadows creep and fall.

But what happens when we lose our confidence in the mystery and depth of shadows? Like the sculpture Arnheim noted in the modern museum galleries, architectural spaces also become “murdered” by a flooding of illumination. Depth created by shadows projects a qualitative dimensionality to space, which establishes itself as distinct from the geometry of a given place. In turn, the converging of geometrical properties and lighting create an environment, which affects the entire body experience. However, in spaces that are flooded by light, for example office cubicles and classrooms, the play of depth and texture become paralyzed and erased of all diversity. In work places such as these, shadows are deemed inefficient to the atmosphere of production. It is no wonder that people working in such places are unhappy! As Arnheim noted, light gives form but in aggressively lighted spaces, appearances are forced without form. Without form, without texture, and without shadows which lead us into place, the site disembodies and disturbs the relation between body and architectural space.

shadows and matisse

2010-03-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed the Livingstone reading for this week. Having all of those images makes what she is saying so much easier to understand, and I find it much more easy to concentrate on than Arnheim. I liked the way she began by saying simply that our default assumption is that the light source is coming from above, and the simple shading examples she gave (the spheres) were fantastic - I kept turning my book upside down over and over. I don't know much about art from before the renaissance, but I could easily see what Livingstone was talking about when comparing the images in the chapter -- earlier artists tried to achieve a wider range of luminanace by adding white to some pigments, and after reading it it kind of makes sense why they looked so choppy and disjointed to me.

I especially enjoyed the Matisse images at the end of the chaper, after reading about the poor reaction of Monet's work it reinvigorated me to see Matisse's bright colors and fascinating exploration. I couldn't help looking up more and more of his portraits.

The part of the Arnheim reading that I found the most interesting was the section on shadow. I typically take them for granted, but they are a huge part of some people life. I am not sure if I agree, however, with the way that he thinks about attached and cast shadows. I agree that attached shadows are an integral part of the object and can be seen as an outgrowth of the object, but it also is the one that some people take the least notice of. And I don't think I agree that cast shadows are always an imposition/interference. Unless I misread it and he is referring only to some types of art? Because I do not think that is true in everyday life, and not in art because there are many types of art that have beautiful cast shadows.

short example

2010-03-28T14:47:00.000-07:00

Finally after all this time I think we can start to talk about artist’s intent. Color, shape, and object placement can convey a certain something, however light, as Arnheim points out, is one of the most active informational sources in our life, Light is easily taken for granted in our day to day existence, as we perceive it to be everywhere and when it is not or in limited supply with see not the absence of it but another incarnation of seeing. By using this information artists can manipulate most effectively the gaze and attention of the viewer.

While in the Uffizi this break I came across a Parmigianino I have always admired “Madonna With the Long Neck”. My particular attraction to it stems from Modigilani who I was exposed to at a young age citing a similarity in the long necks of his female subjects and my long neck ( I think my dad was trying to make me feel normal, which I did, so the whole mission was a little weird).

Parmigianino uses a very basic light source from the top right to selectively highlight in order of religious importance: the Christ child, the Madonna, and then the on-lookers and background information. The child’s bright pale body is seen as brighter because it lacks intense detailing as opposed to the Madonna’s clothing, which is highly textured revealing the form of her body. In this instance Parmigianino uses the light’s interaction with the fabric to create and human form beneath her holy garb, but also to keep the viewer interested in her figure, as it seems that the theme of this painting is merely a vehicle for his interpretation of Madonna. The light that falls of her breast brings the viewers eye back to her extremely long fingers and then to her neck, both so elegant that one almost forgets that Christ is glowing happily in her lap. The light, however, does not land with any particular brightness on her face- instead in seems to pool on her chest and lap. This creates a circular focus of light, the heaviest part of the pool is with out a doubt Christ but his luminance brings the viewer back around again and again to Parmigianino’s realization of the Madonna. His use of light to focus the viewer on his technique seems to be a play on the his general style which is one of manipulated fancy, sometimes with light, sometimes with shape, and sometimes, with view point.

Light and Shadow

2010-03-28T12:06:00.001-07:00

Arnheim’s discussion of how children and early art use outlines, local brightness, and local color reminded me of the difficulties I experienced when I learned how to shade drawings. For years and years, despite the many lessons I was given in shading, I refused to apply them to my own work. Rather than adding depth to the images, I felt that shading a face simply made it look dirty. Dramatic changes in brightness values, like clothing or hair or eyes would be a different color, but anything that is theoretically the same shade all over, such as skin, was left blank. In hindsight, I wonder why I thought these uniform figures were more realistic than the “dirty” shaded ones. I don’t think it was a matter of my shading being wrong. I didn’t learn any new techniques or have any major breakthroughs before I began to apply it to my work. I honestly think it must have been a difference in perception. What that difference is, I can’t begin to say, but the way I saw the world changed once I began to think of images in terms of shadows and light.

On a related note, the idea that light creates depth is not new to me, but it is one that I have always found fascinating. That, given the right lighting, a three dimensional object like the cone that Arnheim discusses (311) can appear to be two dimensional is hard to imagine. Logically, it seems like all three dimensional objects should remain that way and should be easy to perceive in their true form. Yet, in light of how much time and energy is spent on making two dimensional objects look like they exist in space, it should not be so surprising that the reverse is possible. It just emphasizes how easy it is to trick our brains into believing one thing about an image when the reverse is actually true.

Finally, I loved Arnheim’s discussion of cast shadows, particularly his description of the tribesmen in western Africa who “avoid walking across an open space or clearing at noontime because they are afraid of ‘losing their shadow’” (317). The idea that a shadow is an extension of the person it belongs to has always been interesting to me (and just might have stemmed from my childhood love of Peter Pan…), so the idea that the process of a shadow shrinking as the sun gets further and further overhead is actually a manifestation of it getting weaker is intriguing. In fact, now that I think of it, the tendency to see a shadow as separate from the object it belongs to just might explain the absence of shading in early art. If a person believes that cast shadows are separate from objects and people, the idea that other shadows are an integral part of the person or object itself would be hard to grasp.

Chasing Light

2010-03-28T09:18:00.001-07:00

Arnheim (1974) writes, “But the prevailing view throughout the world seems to have been and to be that light, although originally born from primordial darkness, is an inherent virtue of the sky, the earth, and the objects that populate them, and that their brightness is periodically hidden or extinguished by darkness” (p.304). Thus, mentally light’s ownership is given to the object (material or abstract) that reflects it. This suggests that light is not an entity in itself but rather a property of something else. Arnheim (1974) explains that only in the 20th century has disembodied light become a subject worthy of artistic consideration.

James Turrell has taken up the challenge to tackle light as an artistic subject, rather than a property or agent of the visual scene. In his work, Turrell explores the behavior of light and plays with human perception on a fundamental level. The following light projection, or more appropriately sculpture, exemplifies the illusory qualities of Turrell’s work.

What follows is an attempt to understand how Turrell creates a 3-dimensional mass of light. Perhaps someone can chime in with a theory or further insight? This is what I have so far: Turrell is able to create the shape of a wedge using projected light. Livingstone (2002) explains that luminance contrast creates a sense of depth. Turrell applies this principle when constructing the wedge or jukebox like structure. When converted to grayscale the viewer can see that the wedge is much brighter than the background area and as a result, juts out from the wall.

The points at which the wall and floor meet in the background create two distinct perpendicular lines that the viewer mentally continues behind the foreground mass. Additionally, the mass is translucent and as a result the bottom of the mass has a lower luminance grade than the portion of the mass resting on the wall. Interestingly the edges of the wedge touching the floor and wall appear brighter than the rest of the wedge. It may be that the phenomenon is a property of the photograph, not the sculpture. However if it is not (and I think this is likely), the visual effect suggests that more light is being pressed into the corners of the sculpture, like mini-congregations of light. Perhaps this is the result of an exaggerated luminance contrast. The edges appear brighter because in relation to the wall and floor they are. Arnheim (1974) summarizes this phenomenon: “Whether or not a handkerchief looks white is determined not by the absolute amount of light it sends to the eye, but by its place in the scale of brightness values provided by the total setting” (p.306).

The question remains if Turrell was successful at treating light as an independent body. Although he has manipulated light as a subject it is debatable as to whether he has freed light from the bounds of a material concept. In the above description I unintentionally referenced Turrell’s treatment of light as a wedge, jukebox, mass that has a luminance value. I conformed to Arnheim’s stereotype—light is a property of an object, not an object in its own right. Thus I remain at a loss as to how to conceive of light as anything other than a visual attribute. As I wrote the previous sentence I thought of the treatment of “Tinkerbell” in Peter Pan and how she is sometimes represented as a moving light. Perhaps this is the answer—light must be given life.

On a final note, and returning to the quotation referenced in the beginning, Arnheim (1974) argues that we conceive of light as an internal property of an object that projects outwards. Darkness is created by the blockade of light. In the sculpture below Turrell experiments with this notion, in it, the inverted pyramid is reflected on the ground. What would be the pyramid’s shadow is not darkness, but rather light. This gives the appearance that the pyramid is radiating light, rather than simply reflecting it. In contrast, the viewer could interpret the pyramid as being in the spotlight, and thus a witness to light. Either way, the origin of light is falsified.

Luminosity and Shadow

2010-03-25T17:24:00.000-07:00

Light is a crucial and fundamental element of our visual perception, I completely agree with Arnheim in his explanation of its importance in the first paragraph of his chapter on light. In fact, Monet lost much of his vision due to acute cataracts in his eyes. Ultimately, distinguishing the direction of light was the last remaining element of visual perception he possessed with the cataracts. By reading both the Livingstone chapter and the Arnheim chapter, one understands the true importance of light and all of the parts of our visual perception that it affects. At the beginning of the Livingstone chapter (pgs. 108-109) there is a figure that demonstrates how shifts in the intensity of light, or luminance, are the most successful and powerful indicator to our eyes of depth. I thought the last circle in the figure, the one which has a very faint gradient illustrates this principle incredibly successfully. When one views that circle, its depth becomes immediately apparent, however, the circle next to it that has merely a color gradient appears totally flat and two dimensional.

Livingstone goes on to trace the evolution of artists’ techniques in conveying depth, and variations of light in their work. Adding white or black to a color as Michelangelo did to convey depth and the effects of light sources had such a different effect from those employed by Rembrandt and Ingres who used gentle shifts in background light combined with abrupt shifts in local shading to achieve the impression of depth in their work. Relativity seems to play into light/dark visual perception immensely as one can see illustrated brilliantly in Rembrandt’s Meditating Philosopher on page 124. Areas of the painting feel lighter or darker, yet much of this is based on the contrast between local areas and lightness or darkness of the surrounding background. For example, Livingstone brings to the viewer’s attention the fact that the cross on the window appears to be darker than the crown of the philosopher’s head because of the way we perceive its location in the whole image, yet in actuality the reverse is true.

Shadow is something that Arnheim discusses in detail in his chapter on light, which I think is an important and interesting addition to an examination of the perception of light. Arnheim distinguishes between two different types of shadows, cast or attached. “Attached shadows lie directly on the objects by whose shape, spatial orientation, and distance from the light source they are created. Cast shadows are thrown from one object onto another, or from one part onto another of the same object” (Arnheim, 215). I understood these definitions to describe two different types of shadows within the painting El Jaleo by John Singer Sargent. The shadows on the wall and the ceiling are cast shadows caused by the strong angled light from in front of the dancer as it falls over the crowd and the dancer. The shadows within the folds of the dancer’s clothes are attached shadows. These shadows define various aspects of the painting and the scene. For example, the cast shadows show depth and distance between the dancer and the crowd of figures behind her. The shadow on the ceiling cast by the dancer is much larger and at a different angle because she is standing practically above the light source whereas the figures behind her are father away from the light and lower. The attached shadows within her clothes define the folds of the fabric and the volume of her form. In so doing they also convey some movement and tension because they provide cues to the viewer of the location and positioning of her body.

El Jaleo by John Singer Sargent

Madame X by John Singer Sargent

Madame X is another painting by Sargent and it helps to illustrate concepts of luminosity and shading. Madame X’s skin captures much of the intrigue and allure of this painting. It is so white, and bright, it almost glows. It is luminous. Arnheim explained, “an object appears luminous not simply by virtue of its absolute brightness, but by surpassing the average brightness established for its location by the total field” (Arnheim, 325). This is certainly is involved in the painting of Madame X and is responsible for making her skin so eye catching. Contrast between her skin, her dress and the background makes her skin appear incredibly bright and luminous. The gentle shading on her arms, shoulders, neck and face give the forms just enough definition without detracting from the luminosity. This is the sort of gentle shading that Livingstone demonstrated our perception of in the figure on pgs. 108-109. Madame X’s dress also has some shading, but as Livingstone says, in instances such as this it is hard to discern the form of her dress because attached shadows on black are much harder to see than attached shadows on any other color. Nonetheless, the shadow is there, important and perceived however faint it may be.

pERSPECTIVE/PERception

2010-03-08T18:26:00.000-08:00

Perspective is quite intriguing and can be applied across the board in all aspects of life: whether discussions regarding personal struggles, a bad relationship, a new friend, optimism versus pessimism or viewing artwork. Our perspectives and our perceptions can be extremely similar or can be at total opposite ends of the spectrum. Tricky indeed pertaining to art when observing the same composition and it evoking meaning to you that did not resonate in another person. Livingstone begins her chapter, “From 3-D to 2-D: perspective,” discussing the challenge that many artists face concerning representationalism. As an artist myself, it definitely can be problematic to portray the three-dimensional world I see onto a two-dimensional canvas. Preservation of the frontal plane is key and obtaining the desired depth. The subject matter and how accurate I want to be in my depictions and consideration of the medium I am working with all play a vital role in this portrayal of 3-D onto a 2-D surface. Representationalism of depth perception would present itself differently in an impressionist painting divergent to an abstract painting and the use of gouache versus acrylic for instance.

The location in depth of frontally oriented surfaces has been shown to be by a number of perceptual factors. In order to make depth relationships visible artists make the eye grasp the representation of space directly. The viewer can then infer the relative spatial position of objects in paintings. The artist controls the frontal plane to make sure there is unity of the work. This enhances the interplay between the positive figures and the negative, aiding to the expression of the overall composition. Arnheim states that the perceptual effect conveys the expressive meaning of the work. He continues to say that knowledge determines the spatial effect only when perceptual factors are absent or ambiguous. Yet in the next breath, he says that these situations are useless artistically because in them the spatial structure of the visual field is overruled by non-perceptual agents. This is where he perplexed me a bit. There are so many rules to consider in order to maintain accurate perceptions of the spatial structure of a composition.

Arnheim throws me off again, “no intention and no skill, will ever make the depth effect truly complete, except on the far away ceiling of a church or in combination with stage tricks? Why is this Why does the physical space of a picture remain a flat surface to its observer? Is it because of our inability to perceive 3-Dimensionality precisely onto a 2-Dimentionality surface? Are there varying perceptual effects that apply when conveying architecture; specifically open and solid areas, the function of doors, colonnades and ornamental elements that make the depth effect process or goal a success? What are the rules for figure ground representation with depictions of people and other non-structural designs?

Sorfori "Jazz"...Artist from Ghana I felt that this composition was an excellent example of depth perception and how perspectives can differentiate within a single piece.

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: The Use of Art Schema

2010-03-07T21:23:00.000-08:00

I would like to build on Solso’s analysis on Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Solso brings up the similitude between Picasso’s rendering of the ladies and the Egyptian’s images of women and African masks. The artist “drew partially recognizable features from different views on the same canvas.”

The women in the painting are held in mid action. One woman is entering into the visual frame from the left. Her eyes as Solso had mentioned is represented in a similar fashion as Egyptian art. Her arms are rendered in a cylindrical shape, giving her the illusion of three-dimensionality. Another woman is crouching with her back to the spectator. She wears a mask that is eerily swivelled towards the back of her head. The woman on the right drawing the curtain is entering the scene. The two central women with arms held up is half covered in what appears to be a sheet. They appear to be echoing a more traditional image of the female nude. They are posing like renditions of Titian’s Venus and stand in stark contrast to the dynamic qualities of the masked figures.

So there is a mixture between representations of traditional European beauty and art in the two central females, and the other three with masks on. There is also a mixture in dimensional representation. The image as a composite is a depiction of a brothel with women all vying for the male spectator’s attention, but there is a severe lack of cohesion in spatial and linear perspectives in the painting. The figures and the ground are being held by the situation of the frame only and the contextual fact that all figures are nude. Each woman appears separate from one another and from the space that surrounds them.They appear unaware of one another occupying the same space. They seem to be jumping out of the canvas.

This separateness contributes to an image of anxiety. The painting is a prelude to Cubism; it also marks an anxiety towards inter-racial sexual relations. The crudely drawn image of the sacred African masks seems to tug at the spectator’s consciousness of the idea of sexuality and male dominance to take in a woman from an exotic culture. The masked pros who are situated around the unmasked figures, in their juxtaposition with the unmasked appear to be acting in aggression against the male fantasy of the commodified woman.

However, Picasso’s painting does even more than mark aggression from a gender being treated as objects, but by applying the masks he addresses the idea of exotic cultures being preyed upon by men. Picasso exposes an implicit truth about racial relations in Western culture where the male sex sexually exploits a gender and a culture. However, Picasso’s effect is twofold, a female spectator could discern from her own personal schema and art schema.

If this is indeed a brothel then we the spectators are forced to take on the role of the customer. Picasso’s placement of African masks over the faces is not simply as a symptom of stylistic influence of African-Oceanic tribes, but the discomfort stunts the viewer in gazing at the prostitutes.

Upon first glance the image of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is at once jarring and frightening because of the unconventional visualization of the painted female nude on a 96in. x 92in. surface. With all five female figures nearly lifesize standing before the observer, the image addresses the spectator more than any other work before. Picasso violates lines of spatial and linear perspective in the painting and uses multiplicity of art styles and geometric form to work off the spectator’s personal art schema. Relying heavily on top-down processing in this engagement with the art schema artwork unleashes startling political implications. While the visual dissonance of Picasso’s innovative formal techniques strikes the viewer with corresponding discomfort.

How did everyone else interpret this painting and did you get the same immediate reaction as I did from the discordant mixing in style, perspective, and form?

Schemata and Depth

2010-03-07T16:35:00.001-08:00

This week, the Livingstone and Solso readings kept sparking off thoughts for me--as Solso would say, my personal schemata kept distracting me from the readings and sending me off on other tangents.

First, I thought Solso described the process of making canonical images, and our dependence on/propensity towards storing prototypical images in an illuminating way--articularly as relates to viewing art. We've talked before in class about how each of us, after organizing the visual information, applies his or her own personal experience and knowledge to the work. Solso described how artists can work within schemata, or play against our expectations, creating tensions that can make art disturbing, thought provoking, and memorable. Here I thought of Escher--linking, actually, the ideas of those tensions and the earlier chapter on perspective. Escher creates images that both confirm and deny our expectations of the visual world--he tricks us into thinking the stairs in this piece are continuous. They appear one way, manifested in two dimensions on the page, but our logical experience resists the visual evidence, giving us that eerie gap between what's real, what's possible, and what we're seeing.

I also appreciated Solso's description of how we create larger schemata that encompass, say, baroque art, or impressionist art, or Christ figures. I had an odd experience last fall--when traveling in Paris, I went to the Louvre and saw the painting below. Before looking at the title (or, rather, the translated title card, since I don't read French), I was bemused as to the subject. I thought, "This must be a Madonna and Child painting, because of the colors and the attitudes of the figures and the time at which it was painted...", and yet another part of me resisted this interpretation because I had never seen a painting in which Mary was nursing and had a breast exposed. It didn't fit with my Madonna/Child schemata. Yet, of course, this is a representation of Mary and child, and once I had registered that within my consciousness, suddenly in every museum I went to I found a painting of Mary nursing. Because I'd never noticed it before, the idea of a bare-breasted Madonna was not part of my experience of art--but once I had seen one example, I was able to incorporate many more images into my schemata.

Did anyone else do the depth perception tricks? I happened to be holding a mechanical pencil when I read that passage, and it was quite hard to insert the lead with one eye closed. However, the other little trick--trying to connect your index fingers--was quite easy. I later tried a needle and thread and experienced the same trouble as with a pencil. Then it came to me that obviously I'd be able to touch my fingers together without visual cues, because I can do it with my eyes closed, based on my kinesthetic awareness of my own body. This led me to question our reliance on visual cues for certain tasks--or rather, to wish to know more about the interdependence of visual cues and kinesthetic cues. For example, I'm not an extremely experienced knitter, but I have been knitting for years, and can make quite complicated things. Yet I can't knit without looking at the work, even though so much of it is based on fine motor control memory. Surely if I can type without looking at my fingers, I should be able to knit. Is my inability to do so caused by a false reliance on visual cues? In other words, if I turned out the lights and tried to knit would I find that it was easy, based simply on the sense of touch? Are we blind (forgive the pun) to certain over-reliance on sight?

A third personal connection I made to the readings--Livingstone talked about various methods artists employ to "flatten" their visual scene, in order to render it two-dimensionally. I spent a lot of time seeing if I could do the same thing, lose my sense for the depth of my visual field--and then I realized I already had my own method for this. Its aim is different, however. I'm a stage manager, and when calling cues during a show it's often necessary to be able to see the entire stage at once--if, say, you have a sound cue based on one actor's movements and a light cue based on an actor on the other side of the stage. To acheive a full-stage focus you have to relax your gaze and let it hover a little above everything--I find that this makes it seem as though I'm watching a flat picture, like on a television. I do this so I can see everything, not specifically to lose depth perception, but it's interesting that it has the same effect. I've also noticed that it makes movement much more noticeable. I wonder if this is because my brain is trying to latch onto depth cues--as Livingstone and Solso both explained, relative movement is one of our primary ways of perceiving depth--just as I'm consciously trying to remove them.

Depth and Schemata

2010-03-07T16:10:00.000-08:00

I found this week’s reading very interesting because they, like many parts of this class thus far, made me analyze aspects of artistic and everyday visual perception in a way that I was not accustomed to, and allowed me to see and conceive of many things I hadn’t considered. For this reason I particularly like the two Solso chapters, and I consistently found myself amazed at the distinctions he brought up and the way they were illustrated.

In chapter 7, he outlines the ways that we analyze the space between objects through monocular depth cues. He describes how our assessment of relative size is affected by both size of the image that is seen (bottom-up processing) and knowledge of the object (top-down processing), and how occluded objects tend to appear as complete but layered shapes. I found his examples of shadow particularly riveting; not only does the addition of darkness and highlights create the illusion of depth in a two-dimensional image, but that concavity and convexity can be reversed with the simple reversal of those shadows (by turning the picture upside down, for example). He includes orientation, elevation within the frame, linear perspective, and texture gradients, and makes very interesting claims about how color influences depth perception in relation to atmospheric depth (where colors and shapes become more blurry, pale, and blue as they recede) and the fact that warm colors simply advance to the foreground over cool colors. The church in Milan was a particularly fascinating example of these tools at work (I had to stare at the photograph for several minutes before I could convince myself that it was not in fact three-dimensional).

I ran into trouble with these depth cues, however, in Arnheim, when he claims that the United States map provides unreal depth effects that must be avoided: “...we see that a corner of Wyoming lies on top of a corner of Utah, and that a corner of Colorado lies on top of Nebraska. No knowledge that this is not so prevents us from seeing what we see” (p. 248). As I read this section, I was perplexed, as I didn’t think I had ever experienced the illusion before; of course when I looked at a map I immediately saw it this way, having just read the chapter (for the life of me I cannot now remember if I ever saw the states as overlapping now). What interested me beyond this point, however, as I was looking at the map more thoroughly, was how states like Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Florida, etc. did not provide this illusion to the same extent, unless I tried very hard to make it happen. Firstly, I hypothesized that our general schema of maps (see next paragraph) presupposes that states/countries border each other rather than overlapping, and that they are not perfect, simple shapes. When the states do remind us of more simple shapes (e.g. the rectangle-shaped states of the West), the overlapping illusion is easier to sustain, or for Arnheim, impossible to escape.

Part of this is of course related to chapter 8 in Solso, where he explicates prototypes and how they influence how we think things should appear as opposed to how they do appear. Solso explains that certain schemata, derived from our experiences with the world, are activated when we participate in certain activities, telling us what to expect. In this way, Solso argues, and I am quite inclined to agree, that though all viewers perceive a visual stimulus in the same way (i.e. light is reflected off of it, which falls on the retinas, and signals are sent to the brain), this stimulus will activate different schemata that will result in the stimulus being experienced in a different way. In other words, the semantic value or “meaning” of the stimulus will change.

These schemata become abstracted into prototypes, Solso says, which in turn can influence our conceptualization of art and perception of individual art objects. Particularly, art often serves to violate these prototypes resulting in visual dissonance and psychological tension. In some ways, Solso seems to claim that this is in fact the purpose of much of art, “to demand active participation [from the viewer] in the construction of ‘reality’” (p. 237).

Finally, Solso also revisits the question of artists and scientists, brought up somewhat facetiously in the Wade article (I think?) from a few weeks ago. Solso, however, puts artists and scientists in the same camp, seeking out aspects of perception that excite viewers in some way. He says artists “do not invent art” in the same way that scientists do not invent science: “As scientists discover the laws of the universe that are congruent with mind, artists discover visual images of the world that are harmonious with mind” (p. 257). Of course, “harmonious” can have many different meanings, and I don’t think Solso intends to exclude visual dissonance. In fact, I think he means that dissonant with expectation or not, art (or perhaps “successful” art, just like successful theories) accords with the mind in such a way that it merges with the mind of the viewer and provokes thought.

Schematic Skipping Stones

2010-03-07T09:56:00.001-08:00

In figure 170 (p.235), Arnheim (1974) outlines the five different percepts an observer could process based on the one image—a woodcut by Hans Arp. To me, the image resembles a stack of stones that would be perfect for skipping in a lake on a sunny day in July, with hands that were sticky from having just devoured a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. In addition, as soon as I interpreted the figure as skipping stones, I was reminded of the children’s book by Chris Van Allsburg, “The Mysteries of Harris Burdick;” particularly, the image below:

This would be an example of Solso’s (2003) use of a particular schema. In his explanation of the police/nurse scenarios, the subjects conjure a generic police or nurse identity and perceive and remember details accordingly. Schemata, as a result of top-down processing, can inform or transform percepts into intimate reminiscences. This is not the whole story however. Schemata depend on perceptual capabilities to succeed in shaping visual scenes. I was only able to envisage a stack of skipping stones, because I could perceive a sense of depth on the two-dimensional image. What I am wondering is, in what direction did this process of reminiscence happen? Was my experience like that of the participant in the police/nurse experiment? Was I already thinking about sunny days in July and ripples in the lake and therefore would interpret any seemingly round shapes as skipping stones? (This is quite possible, given how nice it is outside today.)

Or did “generative retrieval” occur from the bottom-up? My visual system first differentiated between the black and white shapes, and monocular cues suggested occluded objects of varying sizes, directing me towards three planes. If this is the case, we learned in Arnheim’s (1974) chapter why it happened—what cues led me to process the image as consisting of three planes, but I want to know how. What area or point in the image did my eyes attend to first? We have learned in class readings the perceptual diversity that is possible with the human visual system, but I am still in wonder as to how a multiplicity of percepts could arise from one structural skeleton? I think I am seeking a sense of active agency from my visual system. Right now, I feel that I am a passive observer, bound by gestalten principles and intangible schemata. I am beginning to understand how frustrating it must have been for the painter Mondrian, attempting to supersede the laws evolution has dictated to the human visual system.

Or perhaps (in all reality most likely) my reminiscence emerged somewhere in between bottom-up and top-down processing, the (temporal or physical) point at which my schema and percept synergized.

In reference to Mondrian, an idea occurred to me—if the principles that allow us to envisage more than that which is on the canvas (in other words, if bottom-up processing played a crucial role in my nostalgic visualization of skipping stones on a summer’s day) are eradicated from an artwork, as is the case with Mondrian’s “Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow” is that why I have significantly more trouble utilizing the piece for my next daydream? In other words, do I depend on gestalten principles for cognitive entertainment?

On an entirely different note, I find Arnheim’s emphatic focus on a perceptual interpretation of art is, a refreshing response to the human mind’s susceptibility to external influence as suggested by Solso’s (2003) description of schemata. The question is no longer, “Do you see the same “red” that I see?” but rather, “Why are we both seeing “red” in the first place?” Perhaps the Bauhaus movement’s employment of gestalten principles facilitated the visual accessibility of its works? This goes back to the question of priors and conventions; by relying on priors, rather than (culturally specific) conventions, does art become more intellectually accessible?

THIS VERSUS THAT

2010-03-02T20:11:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed reading Van Campen and Behrens’ articles this week. They definitely summed up the gestalten way of thinking and clarified any of the once ambiguous details that I was struggling with in the beginning of the course. I want to bring up the connection/resemblance between the gestalt principles and the Japanese inspired aestethics that Dow and others propagated as discussed in Behrens’ article. Behrens’ states, that the gestalt emphasis on the dynamic interplay of parts and wholes had been anticipated as early as the third century B.C. in China by a passage in the Tao Te Ching that states that although a wheel is made of 30 spokes, it is the space between the spokes that determines the overall form of the wheel. The yin-yang symbol can be looked at using the gestalten principles and and in Japanese art, it is an example of the notan meaning having the compositional equivalence of light and dark. The gestaltists' ideas of structural economy the propensity to perceive incomplete forms as complete are reverberated in the Japanese emphasis on elimination of the insignificant. The viewer has to be able to ‘mentally complete the incomplete to see the beauty’ in its entirety. Gestaltists are likely to say that all of a color are legitimate, because we always experience percep-tual wholes, not isolated parts. We never see figures (or swatches) alone, only dy-namic "figure-ground" relationships.
I included a few of the lattice compositional grids referenced in the article in order to compare them to those composed by Piet Mondrian and others even though it is said that there is no evidence that the gestalt psychologists were directly or knowingly influenced by eitherJapanese art or aes-theticism.

My friend’s work who was greatly inspired by Mondrian two semesters ago:

Piet Mondrian:

Oriental lattice patterns:

Form!

2010-02-28T21:09:00.000-08:00

I am fascinated by the way this chapter in Arnheim reflects on the task of translating the three dimensional vision into a two dimensional representation. When the chapter discussed this translation directly, it focused mostly on the failure of a two dimensional rendering to capture a three dimensional seen sufficiently. The problem was that objects on a two dimensional plane could not simultaneously display all aspects of themselves and appear as a correct, unified image. The tone was one that condemned the effect of flattening, implying that it failed on a fundamental level to achieve its implied goal of total reenactment.
A bit later on, however, Arnheim made a very interesting claim that allowed me to reconsider and reassess the accomplishments of the two dimensional translation. Arnheim writes:

"The method of copying an object or arrangement of objects from one fixed point of observation--roughly the procedure of the photographic camera--is not truer to that concept than the method of the Egyptians.... When figures in Egyptians fail to present the human body the way it 'really is,' but because the observer judges their work by the standards of a different procedure. once freed of this distorting prejudice, one finds it quite difficult to perceive the products of the 'Egyptian method' as wrong."

Arnheim goes on to say that in adopting the goals of realism, Western art lost an appreciation of the value of other methods of visual record. Without the pretense of the impossible expectation of perfect representation, the qualities in drawings and paintings that subvert the illusion of reality become exciting new visual entities unattainable by objects in the real world.
In reality, a cube can only exist in one form. It's form is dynamic so it may appear to change its form, but whatever variants occur, the cube will always be firmly and easily tethered to its simple unified qualities. When drawn, however, each different perspective of the cube becomes a distinct, autonomous entity. A simple adjustment of perspective does not begin to scratch the surface of the many ways in which a cube can exist upon canvass. The analysis involved in the 3-d to 2-d translation allows for the creation of infinite objects wherein reality there can only exist one. In this way, the translation is not one that fetters reality, rather it frees it.
It is Gestalt psychology that allows shapes freed from the laws of reality to be coherent and therefore valid. Because we inherently make something out of what we see, we allow images to have only loose ties to what would be considered thoroughly coherent. When less of the effort of the artwork is spent on recognition there is far more room to incorporate more interesting aspects of the work. Each aspect of the whole work then accrues meaning and makes for a richer experience.

2010-02-28T19:36:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of Arnheim’s third chapter on Form, he introduces the philosophical debate about art making: “that arm aims at deceitful illusion, and that any deviation from this mechanical ideal needs to be explained, excused, justified.” Essentially, this view supports the theory that the image portrayed in a painting should have such similar physical resemblance to the object that the viewer should confuse it with the object itself, otherwise the renderer must have a lack of skill.
But, refuting these statements, he goes on later to posit that “image-making, artistic or otherwise, does not simply derive from the optical projection of the object represented, but is an equivalent rendered with the properties of a particular medium, of what is observed in the object.” This chapter, when paired with the other two readings for this week, speaks interestingly in support of Arnheim’s sentiments.

The van Campen and Behrens articles both give historical context for the rise of Gestalt psychology running parallel to the rise of the Bauhaus and other early avante-garde movements such as de Stijl, whose artists asked their viewer to reconsider the way in which the viewed even the most basic shapes and lines. Indeed, as van Campen points out, artists and scientists were employing the same ocular phenomena with radically different intentions. My sociologist brain wants to know, Why gestalt at this point in time? This seems like a radical paradigm shift from the very “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” way of looking at the world and at art, as proposed in beginning of Arnheim’s chapter.

I was also fascinated by Arnheim’s discussion of the visual conception of objects. Not only do we see an object, but our total experience of that object is not just what we see from the angle at which we are looking at it. It comes from our knowledge of what it might look like from the side, bottom, up, down, etc. David Hockney, in his photographic collages, plays upon these basic principles by showing the viewer all sides at once. In this photocollage, entitled Chair, Hockney combines images of the chair from multiple different angles – maybe he is actually showing us something closer to the totalness of our chair-viewing experience.

form

2010-02-28T17:40:00.000-08:00

I find that the more Arnheim I read, the more I like him. At first I found him very difficult, but I guess it just took a while for me to get into his writing. I liked the simplicity of the begining of his chapter on form - it is so fascinating to think about parts of vision I do not normally pay attention to at all. He simply says, 'the difference in appearance between a teacup and a knife indicates which object is suited to containing a liquid and which to cutting a cake' (96). When you look at a teacup, you can mentally break it down into its shapes if you try to - the circular rim, the curve of the handle, the hollowed center. But what a person sees when they look at a teacup is a kind of shape; it is seen in the context of other whole objects, and not as a assemblage of parts.

My favorite part of the chapter was towards the end - the drawings of humans on page 143 made by elementary school age children. Arnheim says, 'Certianly these children were not trying to be original, and yet the attempt to put down on paper what he sees makes each of them sicover a new visual formula for the old subject" (142) It is so interesting to think, this is the way that they see the human form - and who is to say whether or not it has 'imagination' to it, they certainly do have originality and an individual take/perspective on human bodies.

Arnheim defines artistic imagination as 'the finding of new form for old content, or ... as a fresh conception of an old subject' (142). According to that definition it would be impossible for childre to do imaginative drawings, solely because of the fact that they have not learned/seen any other types of artworks and therefore cannot compare it to what they are doing. I don't know if I can articulate this very well, or if it even make makes much sense, but here we go. If a young child looks a a human, and draws them in a new and unique way, is that not a type of artistic imagination? Arnheim does talk about how surprised he is at many different ways of representing the children come up with, in fact he is impressed with 'the abundant resources of pictoral imagination that are found in the average child until lack of encouragement, unsuitable teaching, and an uncongenial environment suppresses them in all but a fortunate few' (144). I guess I am just arguing semantics in his use of 'artistic imagination'. There is an immense amount of individuality in the drawings, and they are quite different from real life (dare I ask, could this not be the 'old'?)

I also was, in addition to the post down below mine, interested in the discussion of schizophrenic artists. I have studied Nijinsky for another class, but never had the opportunity to look at his art after he stopped dancing (and was in an out of sanatoriums). I would really like to see some of the drawings/paintings he did, but can't seem to find any online right now. I would be very intersted to see how and if they connect/contrast with his previous drawings and designs for his choreography or costume designs. Anyone who has any luck with this, let me know please! Ill post anything if I find it

Disturbing Perspectives and Schizophrenic Artwork

2010-02-28T11:27:00.001-08:00

I found Arnheim’s chapter on form interesting and thought provoking. In particular, his observations about perspective and how foreshortening or distorting perspectives can have such a confusing and intriguing effect on the way we perceive things. When I think about these shifts in perspective I think of Arnheim’s discussion of Eidetic images and visual concepts. Eidetic images are “physiological vestiges of direct stimulation” (107). They are similar to afterimages and can enable a person to see a space and project a previously viewed image on the space. Visual concepts on the other hand, are concepts that people have in their minds of the three dimensional appearance of an object. Visual concepts enable people to mentally “see” all the way around an object. Works of art that have an odd perspective or are foreshortened are disturbing or shocking to us because they pick a view of an object that is not as prominent in our visual concept and cause us to struggle to integrate this perspective. For example, the image by Fernand Léger from Ballet Mécanique, offers the viewer an uncommon perspective of a person, our visual concepts of people don’t normally focus on this perspective. We struggle to integrate this view into our existing perception of a woman. (I don’t know if I’m taking Arnheim’s theories too far here but these are the connections that formed for me while I was reading.)

I was also drawn to Arnheim’s discussion of art by people with schizophrenia. He explains that order and pattern are central aspects to this work. “Since the sensory sources of natural form and meaning are clogged and the vital passions dried up, formal organization remains, as it were, unmodulated…In some of Van Gogh’s last paintings, pure form overpowered the nature of the objects he depicted” (148). This made me think of the work of Louis Wain (1860-1939), an Englishman who only painted cats and developed schizophrenia. Pattern and form do seem to overpower the cats as his schizophrenia worsened. The cat itself becomes less and less the focus of the image, as the radiating patters and halos surrounding the cats grow larger, ultimately overtaking the cat. When I first saw his paintings of cats I thought about Van Gogh, because I remembered the radiating lines that Van Gogh used in his work. Looking at his "Self-Portrait with Felt Hat," (1888) one can see these radiating lines. He used small short and defined strokes throughout his paintings but in particular made energetic encircling rings in the background surrounding his head. This painting also has these energetic strokes throughout, for example defining the collar of his jacket, and the hair of his beard.

The effect of these lines and radiating patters both in Van Gogh’s work and in Louis Wain’s is that they bring a tremendous amount of energy to the painting. One wonders how this aspect of the form of the painting provides a glimpse of how the world actually looked to Van Gogh and Wain. Were these radiating lines, these halos part of how they perceived their visual surroundings? Arnheim continues to talk about Van Gogh’s work and his schizophrenic mind: “The violence of his disturbed mind transformed the world into a tissue of flames, so that the trees ceased to be trees and the cottages and farmers became calligraphic brush strokes. Instead of being submerged in the content, form interposed itself between the viewer and the theme of the work” (148). The “tissue of flames” seems to describe the form of Wain’s work. In the lower left picture of a cat, one can organize the picture perceptually both as a cat or as an eruption of flames. I wonder if Wain and Van Gogh fought to see the cats and the trees and not a mass of flames, whether their schizophrenia caused them to organize their visual perceptions in hallucinatory ways and struggle to see the actual images and objects before them?

2010-02-27T14:19:00.001-08:00

Post for Class March 3^rd 2010

(Nicole and I switched weeks)

Upon reading the Crétien van Campen article for this week, I remembered what Danielle had posted last week, about her difficulty in deciphering a figure from Arnheim’s chapter on Shape. On page 70, Arnheim gives the reader Figure 42, which appears to be two completely opaque shapes, one a rectangle and the other a square, lying on top of one another on the page. Danielle described her struggle with the figure: she could recognize that the figure as a whole was made up of two parts, a rectangle and a triangle. Arnheim describes that, “At first glance, the figure may look awkward, strained, not in its final shape. As soon as it appears as a combination of rectangle and triangle, tension ceases, the figure settles down and looks fortable and definitive. It has assumed the simplest possible structure compatible with the given stimulus.” This amalgamation of the two shapes into one definite form, however, is not how Danielle saw the shape. Instead, upon first glance, she “looked at it and saw the rectangle as a layer above the triangle. I then told myself this was impossible because they were both the same color black and sitting on the same plane (the page of the book). After I told myself this, the rectangle at second glance, still appeared on top of the triangle.” For Danielle, these two “overlapping planes”, as van Campen calls them, were not perceived as “one whole or one Gestalt” (van Campen, 133). Instead, her perception of the form was focused on a figure/ground relationship. Personally, I was able to form that one whole Gestalt for the figure, though I admit it was not easy. But Danielle’s questions of whether other people also saw a figure and a ground in the form, and if so, which shape was ‘on top’ of the other, was illuminated for me as I read into the van Campen article. Specifically, as I read the perceptual rules of the figure-ground phenomenon, as established by Rubin (given by van Campen on page 134), I began to think about the various abstract artworks I have seen- and to wonder about the figure-ground phenomenon in relation to them.

My mind instantly went to the paintings of Mark Rothko. Rothko’s paintings use color and shape to distinguish different parts of the canvas. To be honest, while I have always loved viewing Rothko’s work, I have never truly understood or tried to analyze his paintings. As I began to consider the rules governing figure-ground relationships, I found myself trying to apply them to the Rothko paintings I could recall. I ponder the rules’ applicability in Rothko’s work- do I really perceive one block of color as a figure and another as the ground? And if so, do I also perceive depth between them? In this case, I think that the use of color must also really affect my perception of the work, as the visual forces put into play by the simultaneous contrast of the colors must surly affect the visual balances I perceive therein.

Another artist that comes to mind is Olafur Eliasson. Eliasson plays around with the paradigms of perception in a multitude of ways. He manipulates light and shape to produce forms that seem ethereal and confusing- and the result is often extremely unnerving. Multiple Grotto for example—you can walk inside this structure, which is lined with mirrors. The glimpses that you see of the outside world appear fragmented and are then reflected back on themselves within the mirrored spiked interior. In this way, Eliasson causes a perceptual confusion, messing with the familiarity of shape and form, forcing us to observe otherwise the normal forms of people walking around outside the sculpture in an entirely new way. I think this is extremely interesting, especially if one takes into account the ideas about the task of the observer, and what previous experiences the observer brings to his or her observation. The manipulation of otherwise familiar objects must have repercussions on the associations one will have with those objects.

Another work of his that I’d like to mention briefly, though it has little to do with the ideas that I initially addressed in this post, is one called Take Your Time. In this piece, Eliasson deliberately manipulates the physical processes of visual perception. The light in the exhibition is one wavelength, an orangey-yellow. This causes every hue in the room to become a version of that wavelength, which in itself is interesting. However, if one remains in the room for long enough, shadows will begin to appear as a purple—the opposite of the yellow wavelength of light in the room. The effect is eerie and visceral; Eliasson literally changes the way the observer views the world. The more I ponder Eliasson’s deliberate attempts at changing the visual processes of his observers, the more I feel as though his works are a true test of the gestalt principles of visual perception- and a sign of their power.

Reading Arnheim’s initial words on meaning and shape in the beginning of his chapter on Form make me want to question the applicability of these gestalt theories to work like Rothko’s and Eliasson’s. The shapes formed by the blocks of color in Rothko’s paintings do not seem to “represent something, and thereby be the form of a content,” (96) as Arnheim describes it. And the non-specificity of these geometrical shapes seems to preclude their ability to “tell us about their individual selves” (96) and to teach us “automatically about whole categories of things” (96). In other words, shapes are one key aspect of the dynamic series of associations we make as observers. I have a hard time relating that to my experience of a Rothko painting. When I see the forms and the colors, I am not directly reminded of other boxes or squares I have encountered in my life. However, it must be true that my perceptual processes are following the rules we have been discussing- because I do have a dynamic and definite reaction to the paintings.

Olafur Eliasson: Multiple Grotto (Interior view)

Olafur Eliasson: Multiple Grotto

Olafur Eliasson: Take Your Time

Mark Rothko: No. 14, 1960

Thoughts on Right-Left Bias in response to Jenna's response to Sarah.

2010-02-23T21:52:00.000-08:00

(this got pretty long so I thought i'd post it on the main page)

This issue should yield insight on the nature vs. nurture question. I didn't know exactly where to look, and I'm sure Elizabeth would have the answers, but until then: I found this abstract of a study done on french vs. tunisian children (who write from right to left in arabic). It doesn't address the issue of a gestalt tendency, or the phenomenon of asymmetry in adults, but tests for ipsilateral bias in line bisection (the tendency to mistakenly identify a midpoint to either the right or left side of a line or circle), clockwise direction in circle drawing, and something called "outward tendency for horizontal displacement in dot filling" which I'm afraid I don't understand.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a713754473

The study found a bias in children after the age of 7-9 (those who have learned to read) paralleling the directional movement of written text.

That may or may not prove anything about the idea "anisotropy of physical space" on a horizontal axis as presented in chapter 1. Written script can move from right to left, from left to right, from top to bottom, and even from bottom to top (I'm not sure if any culture has developed bottom-up writing organically, but I know that Labanotation, the system developed to notate dance and movement, starts at the bottom of the page and moves upwarddddlllllly)

On the other hand, the hands of a clock will always move counterclockwise, in order to mirror the direction of movement on the shadow of a sundial as the sun moves from east to west. For readers of a left-to-right alphabet (or I should say for people who experience a left-to-right anisotropy and I don't know if I'm using that word correctly) the hands of the clock would seem to be moving in accordance with a "natural flow.' Which would mean that someone who experienced a right-to-left anisotropy experiences the hands of the clock as having to overcome resistance as they moved "against a natural flow." This is at odds with our inherent understanding of time as a force which moves effortlessly from past to future. It seems unlikely that an opposite conception of time could develop organically. Which implies that in certain right-to-left cultures, a standard clock would be seen as out of sync with the movement of time itself. And so thank God for the digital watch.

Before leaving the analog clock: clockwise movement contains both a fall from top to bottom (12:00 to 6:00) and an ascendance from bottom to top (6:00 to 12:00). I'm not sure how to synthesize the idea of monodirectional movement around a circumference with the idea of a top/bottom anisotropy (again not sure if I'm using that word correctly). The momentum generated by circular movement makes the 6:00 to 12:00 motion less burdensome than a vertical lift.

Top to bottom is a non-cultural bias, as it incorporates our awareness of gravity (a counterexample would have to come from a culture which had developed in a weightless environment, such as those which are the future of space space space travel). Horizontal bias seems to have both cultural and non-cultural origins, and it'd be fun to get specific about what exactly influences what.

An interesting example from the world of conceptual thought: if you imagine a river flowing down-hill, you will almost certainly picture it moving from left to right.

Second to last thought: the sun always moves from what we call east to what we call west. In our culture we conceptualize this trajectory as movement from left to right, but this is a map-making convention. A right-to-left-reading person could view the sun's east-to-west trajectory as movement from right-to-left. Note that according to the windroses on our culturally biased MAPS, which place west to the left and east to the right, the sun actually moves in the OPPOSITE direction of our written text. A reader of arabic or hebrew could derive comfort from such a map, as he or she could conceive of script as moving in the same direction as the sun. Alas, for similar consolation, a reader of english would have to move to the southern hemisphere, and flip his or her atlas upside down.

Last thought: It seems like it would be worthwhile, if it were possible, to study composition and directional movement in the art of those cultures that had not yet developed a written alphabet.

Please excuse this completely subjective comment on an obscure art form...

2010-02-22T12:21:00.000-08:00

As I was reading Wade article I found myself relating strongly to his description of Gestalt psychology derived from mosaics. It harkened back to conference week of last year’s Narrative Neuropsychology and the challenges I faced with communicating the significance of the correlation between my paper on The Diving Bell and The Butterfly with the stained glass I had made to go along with it. Had I read this article then (or had just familiarized myself with Gestalt psychology), it would have been a far easier task. I often failed to draw the viewer’s attention to the fact that there are more dimensions of perceptual stimuli than immediately meets the eye, and, further, that it was this element of layers of stimuli that mirrored the layers of my intentions as an artist. The elements of stained glass that are most salient to the eye are the color and shape of the pieces and the overall picture. It is interesting to apply Gestalt to the actual design of a stained glass, because the individual pieces themselves are the fundamental building block of the piece yet they are integrally tied to their context. Indeed, it is rarely the piece itself but what surrounds it that gives a piece its significance. For example, if you remove a piece from the template, say you decided you wanted to change it, you have no choice but to make an identical piece to replace it, or else you have to change every other piece you have made. You could change the color or the opacity of the glass, but the shape is forced by it surrounding pieces. Another option would be to cut the piece into smaller ones and thus create more grout lines to distract from an off shape. A piece may itself be defined by the pieces around it, but the grout lines define the relationship between the pieces. The impact a stained glass has is reliant on the viewer’s perception of lines, giving the borders of the glass pieces an equal amount of importance as the pieces themselves. As Wade remarks when comparing pixels to tesserae as individual components of a whole, “They were not laid out with the linear regularity of pixels in computer images, but often were arranged in curves to convey the continuity of contours in the scene represented”. In my own work, I like my lines to be graceful, flowing, and indefinite. It is important to me that I can follow my grout lines from any point in the mosaic to almost any other point. Because that is my aesthetic, my individual glass pieces mirror that, and are themselves flowing, alternating rounded and pointed. The whole is perceived to have a fluid dynamic to it because it is inherently composed of parts with identical characteristics. To illustrate this point, I converted a picture of one of my glasses to grayscale. Although the vibrant colors that more clearly demarcated the outline of the tree are gone, the shapes and the lines characteristic of the ground, tree, and sky remain, making the design visible even though the theme of all the parts are very similar. Also noticeable are the variety in opacity, another element of stained glass that relates interestingly to Gestalt.
The reason I think it is appropriate for me to lecture about the artistic virtues of stained glass is that the significance, at least in my pieces, lies in neither the perception of the whole nor the attention to the individual components, but to the relationship between them. As I mentioned above, the perception of the whole is dictated by the parts because the parts have the same aesthetic as a whole. This is unlike some of the examples given in the Wade article such as the portrait of Max Wertheimer made of open and filled dots or the mosaic of lozenges that create ambiguous cubes. I am fascinated by the phenomenon of Gestalt grouping when applied here, and hope that I am not finding meaning here that is undeserved!

Rectangle or Triangle?

2010-02-22T09:33:00.000-08:00

As I started reading Arnheim I was intrigued by figure number one. As I read his description of how we look at the square and the dot as a whole I started looking around trying to find other things that we see as a whole while figuring out the distance and symmetry. When he started going into how we are looking at his book but also seeing the room around us, I became disoriented. The book became harder to read as I became consciously aware of my environment while not trying to look around. My surroundings were out of focus and I started to have to focus on not seeing them to continue reading. His idea: " What a person or animal perceives is not only an arrangement of objects, of color and shapes, of movements and sizes. It is, perhaps first of all, an interplay of directed tensions" started to come into focus for me. He mentions that the black circle is "striving" towards the center, but for me it was moving more to the right side. I wonder what makes it different for different people? Maybe the first glance makes the difference? Maybe I am just weird? The two images reminded me of conversations I've have had with people about symmetrical verses unsymmetrical things. I have always favored non symmetrical artwork when it comes to paintings and sculptures but I seem to like architecture that is more symmetrical. I have friends who hate symmetry and friends that love it. I wonder if this is just plain preference or if it individual perception and vision that makes us like one or the other. He begins to answer my questions when he talks about whether the forces are physical or psychological. He states that there are physical molecular and gravitational forces that hold the objects and images together but none that would make the black dot appear to be drifting more or less towards the center of the square. This leads him to the conclusion that it is all psychological. Which then leads me to the conclusion that what I am seeing is not "weird" but just how I see it. This half answers my question though, according to Arnheim is is all psychological but still I want to know why do I see it that way? What makes my vision "weird" or "different"? After looking at the provided figures 1-5 and continuing to read I got to his description of balance. Balance enters into how we read and look at a painting. " Balance is a state of distribution in which all action has come to a standstill… In a balanced composition all such factors as shape, direction and location are mutually determined in such a way that no change seems possible… Under conditions of imbalance, the artistic statement becomes incomprehensible." This gave me a mission. I pulled out a old art history text book and started looking at the images. I was now conscious of my eyes and tried to figure out where I looked first, and if the image seemed balanced. I found most of the the images to be balanced and my sight focused first on center figures and then drifted outward to a landscape or other figures in the background. These easy images to look at made me want to search for an image lacking the balance that Arnheim deems necessary for the comprehension of a painting. I came across, Susanna and the Elders by Artemisia Gentileschi (see image at the end of my post), it stood out because of my immediate acknowledgment of how off center the figure of Susanna is but how you are immediately pulled back towards the right as the man in the red cloak comes into view. Even though he pulls you back the image was hard to look at and hard to focus on. I felt I could't focus on one section while also not able to look at the image as a whole. I think part of this is because of the man above her and his dark clothing, the strong detail on the stone behind her and her nude flesh tone that are all positioned on the left side of the painting, leaving the right side, a strain to view and somewhat lost and empty. Here I understood Arnheim but yet again started to wonder if other people would find this painting balanced or not ?

It was funny to me when Arnheim started talking about simplicity in his chapter about shapes. He states that simpler images are easier to look at because they are easier to break down and organize. I found this funny because I could only think about how simple the image of the black dot in a white square that he provided at the beginning of his book which became so complicated to me. Instead of breaking it down I seemed to be making it even more complicated. Not only did the image become complex but so did the thought processes and a black hole of questions emerged. Figure 42 stood out to me. It is a image of a black triangle combined with a black rectangle. At first I looked at it and saw the rectangle as a layer above the triangle. I then told myself this was impossible because they were both the same color black and sitting on the same plane (the page of the book). After I told myself this, the rectangle at second glance, still appeared on top of the triangle. I then decided to see if I could switch the two and see the image with the triangle above the rectangle. It definitely was a strain and my face got much closer to the book, but it did finally appear that I could switch the two and make the triangle been seen as a layer above the rectangle. Did some people see the triangle above the rectangle and some the rectangle above the triangle? Do some people see neither, and just a black strange shape? Can some people switch the triangle and the rectangle and some people not?

In the Wade's article I spent a good deal of time looking at figure 2 with the small black dots and white outlined dots that are arranged in a pattern. For some reason it took me a very long time to see that that two different groups of dots were the same just differently rotated. I saw how the below patterns fit but I didn't see at first that the groups were really the same. I liked the statement " Circles and squares are good figures in the Gestalt sense. That is, they are simple and symmetrical, and will tend to be completed if parts are missing." I liked this statement because I agreed with it and an image of a broken outline of a circle immediately popped into my mind's white board and then the lines joined like someone had drawn to fix the circle. I read on and became unsure if I agreed with his declaration that the Artists making the Roman mosaics were like scientists. I found them more the science project and his ideas and the ideas of other phycologists the scientists.

I must be Arnheim's way of writing and ideas that draw me in more than some of our other writers that we are discussing and reading. He seems to get my brain racking and sometimes even distracts me from his own book. The what Ifs, and why nots and whats!? sometimes become too much to keep reading until tested a few times.

Ooops! Forgot to post these

2010-02-22T07:11:00.001-08:00

I realized I had forgotten to post my images of equiluminance and simultaneous contrast.

Here they are:

For simultaneous contrast, I found this image from loukregel.blogspot.com which the author called Dot Door

For Equiluminance, I found this image, demonstrating the theory from a neuroscience site via Wellesley University:

http://www.wellesley.edu/Neuroscience/Neuro320/Images/colorinthebrain006.jpg

2010-02-22T06:32:00.000-08:00

It is difficult to articulate oneself after confronted with such a surfacing of material on visual perception. I feel it is a surfacing material because it reveals an inner dialogue that exists intuitively outside of conventions. It is material not only applicable to our individual ways of seeing (I cannot help now but be distracted by the forces of balance and shape on visual perception), but resonant as a larger matrix registered from the layers of social convention and intuitive priors. From Form As Figuring It Out, Stafford draws our attention to the reflections of the parallel disciplines of neuroscience and humanities that have until relatively recent remained as such parallels. However, within each shifting reflection Stafford reveals, “the modern dynamics of being are indelibly etched from the history of the system.” Illustrating further upon this idea is Vico’s concept of verum factum, which is the principle that ‘the true (verum) and the made (factum) are convertible’, so that we can only know for certain that which we have created. Stafford reasons that kinds of formal order- symbolism, dreams, rituals- are only intelligible to us because other human beings made them. Thus, the natural sciences can only yield approximate truths based on our attempts to imitate nature in experiments, whereas the human sciences offer exact knowledge because societies are our own creations. It is within this framework that art and neuroscience begin to reveal the hidden interior of our intuitive and instinctive ways of visual perception.

Stafford writes, “Art as cognitive imagery can be seen to shadow forth certain underlying truths about brain function that we still intuitively recognize today.” From Arnheim, we are introduced to such “underlying truths,” from the way in which we understand the affect of color, size, and spatial depth upon the weight of an object to our predilection for left to right movement. Arnheim is very much aware of the influence of the past, by admitting that the “interaction between the shape of the present object and that of things in the past is not automatic and ubiquitous, but depends upon whether a relation is perceived between them.” But how do we reveal the beginning of these relational perceptions? In a similar stance, Stafford takes the position of the Romantic and asks, “how does art…enable us to detect the cognitive apparatus of its original creators” and “what makes people persist in replaying formal categories handed down to them from the distant past?” These questions are indeed provoking and Stafford acknowledges the understanding that “creating, feeling, and decision-making functions some how ride atop biological systems that operate largely beyond our awareness.”

hmmm...

2010-02-21T19:40:00.000-08:00

Stafford’s chapter concerning, Form as figuring it out leveled with me for the most part, I enjoyed the reading. The middle section highlights how the human brain’s reorganization has effected how we think, perceive and react to a given stimulus. “The disproportionate enlargement of the prefrontal cortex with respect to the increase in absolute brain size (occurring some 50,000-100,00 years ago) helped increase the ability of humans to suppress reflexive responses to stimuli, thereby increasing behavioral freedom and the chances for rational reflection.” Arnheim would state that emotion is a consequence, rather than an instrument of discovery. George Bret, tells us that, “All emotions begin from a stimulus which disturbs the balance of the organism. The response varies with the nature of the organism and is more or less complex according to the level of development.” I couldn’t help but be reminded of my conference project I researched for Lizzie last semester, regarding emotion regulation. I focused on this exact issue of automaticity, conscious and subconscious reflexive responses to stimuli and when it is okay to allow certain urges that are so natural roam freely and when it is more appropriate to control them as well as how to distinguish between these situations. Temperament, emotion and the development of self-regulation and the relations between emotional dispositions and environmental qualities shape social development.

Stafford continues the discussion focusing the discovery of mirror neurons. Ramachandran reminds us that the important implications of mirror neurons are the explosive evolution of the ability to imitate or mime complex skills enabled their cultural transmission. I must say as someone with an extremely active mirror neural system, emotionally (wise), I found this paragraph quite intriguing. In humans the most dramatic developmental changes occur in prenatal development, infancy and childhood. Many important emotion regulatory skills and strategies are developed during the first five years of a child’s life. The emotional environment in which a child is raised can enhance or interfere with their ability to learn to regulate emotion and function with others. The very early development of emotional display infants does seem to suggest that some of the mechanisms for producing emotion are innate, or strongly canalized in development. For the most part after infancy emotional expression is learned from others, through observation and imitation. When a baby comes in contact with a stranger for the first time they will usually look at their mother’s current expression so they know how to act in this situation. If the mother reacts positively to the stranger, so will the baby. But, if the mother ignores the stranger then the baby will not react positively to the stranger. Although Stafford notes that we remain in the dark about the interactive context of such development, I believe the research I have conducted and have included above proves otherwise. My only question pertains to the statement she makes after in the core of this paragraph, “Perhaps this ignorance serves as a cautionary reminder of the limits of brain modularity research-despite its revelations.” I wasn’t to clear on where she was going with this assertion. She mentions the 18th century so I am unsure if we are still confronted with said limits regarding brain modularity research.

In an earlier section of the chapter Stafford praises, Gyorgy Kepes for structuring or what Kepes called the “discipline of forming” which is a fundamental part of perceiving because either we forget to remember the passing show so quickly or, the bits we do attend to, still must be actively accessed later through mnemonic re-performance. I am currently studying Kepes for conference this semester and the previous sentence emphasized an excerpt from Kepes; book Language of Vision. It is not an exact translation more so a trigger in thought of how I connected the two passages. “Every day something new is the inheritance of the last century’s disastrous urge. Continuity means development. Every period changes. But these changes have to be rooted in other than purely materialistic considerations. They have to grow from other sources. The different movements have a common denominator: a new spatial conception.” I interpreted the original statement differently from how others may swallow it. Basically the passing show is history, the various eras of and the impact they had on art at those specific times; Baroque, Gothic, Renaissance, etc. In order for new genres to be born we take the bits and pieces that we automatically form a connection with that we build upon to recreate anew.

Navez, Balance, and Shape

2010-02-21T18:45:00.000-08:00

I, like Emma, was very pleased with this weeks reading of Arnheim (unfortunately due to poor scheduling I was not able to do a complete enough reading of Stafford or Wade to make any sort of intellectual comment). The chapter that caught my attention most was the chapter 1 on balance through lines, forms, vertical weight, and the reading of a painting from left to right. I have always been familiar with talk referring to the weight of an image and the idea that a composition should be balanced, but I never knew what it meant. Immediately upon reading the first few pages on the example of the black disc in the square I began to feel the tension of the images, the forces of the different lines and vertices. I became acutely aware of the margins on the page and how the space between the edge of the paper and the beginning of the black letters create the exact format that we consider to be the page of a book. I would like to attempt to apply what I learned from that chapter, as well what we have talked in previous classes, to a striking image I saw this weekend at the Met.

In wandering around galleries, still thinking about Rodin’s “Hand of God” I was suddenly stopped in my tracks by a large painting with filled with bright colors and gently lit female figures; Navez’s The Massacre of the Innocents My eye was immediately drawn to the central female figure whose yellow bodice, green cape, and jeweled gold necklace demand your attention. And indeed the eye is manipulated in a very specific pattern in this painting, in a sort of spiral. The eye is drawn quickly down by a stark contrast, to the ghostly pale flesh of the beautiful young boy in her arms. The light seems to fall directly on the boy’s shoulder and face, ignoring all others except the gently wash over the woman in yellow’s face. One looks at his face first, as it is of biological importance, his cherubic beauty and flowing golden hair make him seem almost female. He appears to be a child, before the age of changes voice or facial characteristics towards one gender or another, suspended in sleep. His shoulder and chest are equally illuminated, but do not at first seem as important as his face. This changes however when one notices the trickle of dead red coming down his chest, his slumber is interrupted and a sense of urgency comes over the viewer. Seeking more information you move to the hand (the actual center of the canvas) reaching out to touch his wound and travel down the arm attached to arrive an a kneeling woman whose face is in shadow. Because her face is not a readable the viewer moves on to her blue dress and then to the subtle equilibrium of her red hat and the mothers green cape. A yellow sleeve then catches the eye and we move for, perhaps not the first time but for a more in depth look, to her face that is held in profile. She seems to paralyzed with sadness, her eyes gazing downward, which I believe brings and slight weight to the bottom of the image. We follow the line of her face back to her sleeve, up her arm, to her hand. Her fingers indicate that the viewer must now move to the far right of the canvas, muted brown negative space is interrupted but the illuminated hand of a small child. We then notice the bright red of a turban worn by a woman whose face indicates extreme fear; a glance is taken at the child in her arms who is the first openly crying figure in the painting. The inclination however is to follow the red turbaned woman’s gaze to the background of the image, which reveals the massacre in progress. The intensity of her gaze brings weight back to the left side of the painting thus giving so much pain and suffering a context. As Arnheim mentions a right to left motion can give a viewer the sense that whatever is moving back to the left is working against a currently, facing a kind of struggle.

When put through a grey scale it is revealed that the yellow bodice of the mother and white flesh of the son are equiluminant; as are the deep red turban and green of the mother’s cape. To me this indicates the importance of these three figures to the viewer; their positions, emotions, and placement in the image take us through the layers of the scene. The four women in the scene create a triangle weighted at the bottom, which exists in the foreground. As the image is weighted to the right of the frame a balance to the left is struck by the strength of the red turbaned woman’s gaze and the line of primary colors of the left line of the triangle. While the muted colors of the background action is rendered present and some distance away by the grey column in the bottom right hand corner and by the viewer’s ability to see through the archway in the background.

I believe that because of this week’s readings I can now not only break down an image into its most important components, but also have a better understanding of how to read an image (long winded though it might be). So my question for the class is, have you been able to begin to break down images and the world around you? Does it inspire you?

Balance and Shape

2010-02-21T14:10:00.000-08:00

I found this week’s Arnheim reading fascinating, particularly his discussion of shape. I was drawn to the idea that our experiences influence how we perceive objects and shapes. The example of how if “we are shown a melon that we know to be a mere hollow leftover, a half shell whose missing part is not visible, it may look quite different from a complete melon that on the surface presents us with the identical sight” (47) really struck me, because it illustrates just how impossible it is to look at something subjectively. This issue is something that bothered me in the Livingstone reading we had for last week. Her claim that she was able to view the Mona Lisa without succumbing to her prior knowledge of it as a work of art seemed kind of preposterous to me. While I am sure that it is possible to suspend such preconceptions, the act of suspending them involves keeping them in mind; they will always affect what you see. For example, if I were to look at half a melon that I knew to be hollow and tell myself to look at it objectively, I would have to actively overcome my knowledge that it was fundamentally different from the way I was attempting to perceive it, and, in doing so, I would still be thinking about the fact that it was not a whole melon. The fact that we are unable to separate what we see from prior experience not only implies that there is no such thing as truly objective vision, it suggests that everything is subjective. I’m not sure whether I find that comforting or unsettling.

I was also struck by Arnheim’s discussion of our tendency to gravitate towards simplicity, as well as the idea that for something to be both simple and a “true” work of art, it must secretly be complex. I have often wondered what makes a simple drawing, such as something by Matisse, so much more spectacular than a drawing of the same thing done by a child. In all likelihood, they use the same number of lines and the same very general shapes, but there is something about Matisse’s mastery of form that adds a hidden complexity. I think the same is true of the Greek temples and Egyptian statue that Arnheim gives as examples. There is an underlying mastery that compensates for the simplicity of the actual object. In fact, I think this principal extends to disciplines beyond visual perception. In reading Charlie Chaplin’s description of how a film is like a tree and one must shake the tree to see what is worth keeping, I was reminded of the phrase I’ve heard in almost every writing class I’ve taken: kill your darlings. The idea behind this is that it is often the most gorgeously crafted, complex sentences that make a piece weak. Yet, in order to craft a solid, powerful, simple sentence, one must know what is superfluous and how to compensate for the words that they take out. As Arnheim says, “[t]he principle of parsimony is valid aesthetically in that the artist must not go beyond what is needed for his purpose” (59), but in order to accomplish that successfully, the artist must truly know what is needed.

I was also struck by Arnheim’s description of how the way we see the world differs from the way we measure objects with a yardstick. A yardstick can measure individual aspects of distance and combine them to create a complete picture, but that we impose our own ideas about structure onto objects, even incomplete ones, shows a much higher level of processing. I’d never thought about the fact that “[a]n incompletely drawn circle looks like a complete circle with a gap. In a picture done in central perspective the vanishing point may be established by the convergent lines even though no actual point of meeting may be seen” (12), but it’s true. We infer so many things about the world around us that we cannot see these things for what they truly are: a curve that fails to meet at both ends and an imaginary spot on a canvass.

Last, I enjoyed Wade’s discussion of the overlap between the work of gestalt psychologists and techniques that artists have been using for years. Yet, I think he failed to take something important into account: motive. It is certainly true that many of the works of art he discusses are far more subtle than the examples created by gestalt psychologists, but the artists were using such effects to influence a work that they were creating to be visually interesting, while the psychologists created them to illustrate a point. It is okay if such examples are heavy handed—indeed, it almost seems like a better idea to make them that way, if only to ensure that everyone who sees them will understand the point being made.

blue yellow contrast

2010-02-16T22:01:00.000-08:00

San Giorgio Maggiore by Twilight

A little perspective

2010-02-16T19:38:00.000-08:00

early stages of a color contrast painting from last semester.

2010-02-16T18:51:00.000-08:00

Self Portrait

2010-02-16T18:05:00.000-08:00

Target by Jaspar Johns and An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo (Skull Ring) by Yasumusa Morimura.

Color Contrast

2010-02-16T18:03:00.001-08:00

CO-LOR

2010-02-16T17:24:00.001-08:00

the contrast is subtle ...the beige poppinh out from my friend's blouse against the hot pink..and the blue hue all over!

Color Contrast

2010-02-16T17:20:00.000-08:00

La Danse by Marc Chagall

cOLOR cONTRAST

2010-02-16T17:09:00.000-08:00

I THINK THIS IS A DECENT EXAMPLE.

Color Contrast/Culture Contrast

2010-02-16T17:01:00.000-08:00

I'm really interested in the debate that's been going on here, particularly involving Theo and Winnie, which is trying to parcel out aspects of seeing that relate to our involvement in art and, more basically, the development of mental structures of the world. Solso breaks this down into two related processes, that of visual processing (which can be affected by physiological differences) and the brain's high-order interpretation of those sensory signals through mental representations of the world (which is affected by socio-cultural context). I'm inclined to place a great deal of emphasis on the cultural component, as one's experiences of sensory perception are shaped by conscious awareness steeped in social structures. When it comes to art, as Mamassian explores, artists use "everyday visual expectations" to define (and/or break) conventions. This step thus blends the aspects of cultural and visual expectations to create artistic statements.

Also, here is a slightly manipulated image showing simultaneous color contrast. The red bulbs on the green tree provide a strong, glowing contrast, and also highlight the red shirt.

contrast found in odd places

2010-02-16T16:40:00.000-08:00

This is a picture I took at the New Zealand premiere of The Lovely Bones. I think it's an incredibly surreal, just bizarre photo, but it has a strong green/red contrast illustrated by the red carpet and the lime green garden gnome that was thrust in front of my camera at the last minute (yes, that's what that is). In addition to that major contrast there is a smaller meta-contrast of the red reflection on the gnome. The stark flatness of the carpet juxtaposed with the texture of the gnome makes a fascinating contrast as well.

Simultaneous Color Contrast

2010-02-16T14:47:00.000-08:00

Below is my sister. I've manipulated the photograph a bit to emphasize the contrasting green and red but what is interesting is that the in "real life" the background is not green at all. The presence of my sister's red hair colored it so. When enhanced the complementary colors are emphasized even more.

Comment on Sara L's post

2010-02-16T09:06:00.000-08:00

I was also interested in the discussion of Mona Lisa, and I thought it was a brilliant way of illustrating Livingstone's points about periphery vision and fovea vision. It was fascinating to read about how the eye takes in bits of a painting at a time, and this exercise demonstrated that concept. Sometimes I notice this when I have my head leaning on my hands and my hand makes momentary contact with my eyelid. You can feel the eye moving quickly and frequently. I think it is surprising how jerky these movements are because our vision does not that jerky feeling. Any eye movements look smooth and fluid from the perspective of the eye. I wonder why exactly that is.

Simultaneous Color Contrast

2010-02-16T08:42:00.003-08:00

"In the Wings" by Edgar Degas

"Starry Night" by Vincent Van Gogh

2010-02-15T21:19:00.000-08:00

Hi. I feel silly. I made this on a computer painting program.

-T

Color Contrast

2010-02-15T17:11:00.000-08:00

Here are two images that I photographed.

I took the first image on my analog SLR. This particular roll of film became, during processing, extremely saturated (I did not process the film or develop the photos). I think that this photo displays color contrast because the darkness of the unlit parts of the room became a dense purple color. This, coupled with the yellowness of the light falling on the table and other light surfaces, creates a kind of otherworldly feel.

The second was taken in New York City. The colors here are extremely saturated- this photo was taken with a simple point-and-shoot digital camera. I turned up the saturation and added a bit of a warmer temperature to bring out the power of the red against the green. In this case, I think the color contrast has caused the leaves, especially where they are directly surrounded by the red of the flowers, take on a slightly artificial look.

simulatneous color contrast

2010-02-15T13:45:00.000-08:00

Ingrid with hat by Andy Warhol

Squares with Concentric Circles by Wassily Kandinsky

Perceptual Priors and Artistic Conventions

2010-02-14T22:10:00.000-08:00

Writing on iPhone as they have shut down the library. Forgive spelling errors, so sorry.

It may be the mood that comes at the end of a lousy valentines day, but I'd like to voice my extreme dislike of Solso''s prose style, and his affinity for goofy acronyms and statements of sweeping gushing generality about how each of us views the world through our own unique etc.

Yes, of course we do. And our perceptions are bound up in culture and in the conventions imposed on us by society. I don't see the same connotations in a square that you see, or that someone in Africa sees. Analysis of those differences in connotation is surely a worthy and fascinating study for those involved. Never mind all of that, however, because there ARE perceptual phenomena that transcend culture and individuality in all but the mentally impaired, and those phenomena deserve our attention. For example you might see a square this way, and I might see a square that way, but neither of us would mistake a square for a circle. In any culture, at any time, by any functioning human being, a square will be perceived as inherently different from a circle. The nature of that difference may be cultural, but the fact of it is not.

Why do certain visual differentiations transcend culture? There are biological reasons, as we have begun to see in Livingstone (at the risk of sounding like a broken record: red may mean love, red may mean hate, red may mean a lot if things, but no matter what it means, red will always be complementary to green.) We have had hints of certain cells which only trigger when stimulated by vertical lines, or horizontal lines, or some special type of line. Here we have biology informing our perception of difference, of certain visual phenomena deriving their meaning not from culture but from an objective relation to other geometrically different stimuli.

Once certain basic terms are in place. we can begin to reincorporate the influence of society, as Winnie is correct: just as it is impossible to make a statement free of inflection, it is impossible to create or interpret anything without the influence of society somehow encroaching upon it. In this regard, Mamassian makes a perfect segue with his discussion of perceptual priors vs sylistic conventions. The former have been experimentally proven to precede or predate the influence of culture, while the latter are inextricably bound up in it. Good good. The distinction becomes even more useful when we note that perceptual priors and stylistic conventions are both there to help us resolve ambiguities in the retinal projection. We can then say that while a perceptual prior would resolve ambiguity for all members of our species, a stylistic convention would not necessarily resolve ambiguity for a viewer unfamiliar with the cultural context in which that convention arose.

I'm not sure how to develop that point, plus I'm typing on a goddamn iPhone so I'll move on to the other thing I wanted to discuss, which is the whole question of archetypes. Whether you think of archetypes as being generated by culture or by some inborn set of human ideals, the concept is interpretable in a gestalt context. A "type" of any kind, archetype, stereotype, personality type, is just a gestalt. A way of organizing information into a simple structure. If we want to talk about Meyerhold and gesture, we could say, just as we did when comparing a circle to a square, that a gesture which is soft and light is fundamentally different from a gesture which is hard and strong. Once we've established that opponance, we can begin to categorize whatever other gestures we see as belonging to one of two "types." Of course, some gestures will not be so straightforward, some might be intricate and complex, but any gesture will land on some portion of this spectrum of opponance, and in our tendency to resolve things into the simplest possible whole, we will end up placing the gesture in the category to which it is closest. The same mechanism operates in the whole notion of character archetypes, or even in such things as astrology or those silly enneagram charts.

Artistic License

2010-02-14T20:07:00.000-08:00

Earlier in the semester in my painting class we had a guest artist come in. As a Sarah Lawrence alumna, she showed us her portfolio from her undergraduate at S.L.C. and graduate years at Yale. In her course of study, her interests shifted from perspective landscapes, to photographic adaptation, to a more present theme of femme-fatale characters based on herself and her friends. It is in this series of “fem-bots” that her paintings seem pertinent to the readings. She showed us pictures of the process of her large-scale oil paintings. Upon first glance, these images show nothing out of the ordinary; she grids the image that she has constructed onto the canvas and proceeds to paint layer by layer to completion. However, as you see the painting develop, you see that somewhere along the way the flesh toned humanoids are green! When she explained why she painted a green under layer, the artist claimed that it gave the figure more depth.

After these first few readings in the course I think that I might have an explanation why the green gives such depth to the flesh. It has been mentioned along the way that the balance of three primaries is often included in esteemed paintings. So, it seems that the compliments of green and red would neutralize one another and the natural blue-ish tone of skin (thanks to our circulatory system) would come forward. Granted the ratio of green to red is unbalanced enough so as not to create corpse-like, gray tones, but it seems that there must be some relationship between including all of the trichromatic wavelengths that the eye detects included in such a important part of the artist’s work.

Aside from my color theory, the Mamassian article made several things come to mind. First, people approach art with a willing suspension of disbelief (common to many art media, but obviously I am focusing on visual art.) It is art, an image to be viewed from reality and therefore is, at least in some ways, separate from reality. Art follows its own rules, as Mamassian acknowledged, and I thought it interesting that he sought to find connections between the conventions of art and the applications of prior knowledge to everyday perception. Both work to make sense of inconsistencies but they do so in different ways. The phrase “artistic license” comes to mind. In his section on illumination and color, Mamassian discussed shadows as they have been used throughout history in art. From non-existent to the manipulation of the dark spaces it creates to maintain ambiguity in a piece, shadows can be used in visual arts in physically impossible ways to serve the purpose of the piece.

Second, the people are able to ignore “deformations of [a] scene” and comprehend the visual image. La Gournerie’s paradox reminds be of the phenomenon that people are able to read words that are jumbled so long as the first and last letters are correct.

A quote from Solso, “Art shows us what every human from Adam to the newest baby has locked up in his eternal view of the world,” (p. 97) reminds me of Carl Jung’s archetypes, the idea that there is some set of images or concepts that resonates with each human being based on the belief in a collective unconscious. The path of each human being is to ultimately express all of the archetypes, which can be imagined in a mandala as a balance of opposites. Imagine the typical idea of a midlife crisis, Hung would justify a splurge on a little, red convertible might be the archetypal expression of a frugal responsible individual as a spontaneous, carefree spirit. Art allows us to transcend language barriers and communicate in a biologically shared way, through visual perception.

Something Winnie mentioned in her post as well reminded me of the archetypes – Meyerhold theatre. Being able to outwardly express commonly recognizable emotions.

It can be said that art and science are both relied on for truth. Science is held to a different standard, and exactness is necessary for science to be held true. On the other hand, art can exaggerate or down play… anything for the purpose of the piece and can be praised (or scrutinized) for its exacting portrayal. Jung believed that it was the job of the artist to portray those aspects of life, which were being ignored by society. Artists have toyed with the eye and what they show to it for centuries. It seems to me that artists have showed the world what the scientist would want to explain years later.

Art, Science, and Society

2010-02-14T16:44:00.000-08:00

I really agree with Elizabeth’s earlier post, this longer posting is also partially a response to Theo’s post on “Emotion and Color.”

There seems to be a tension within the readings between the social and scientific I find important to open for discussion.

Theo, in your response to “Color and Emotion” you had suggested that Gestalt psychology “saves visual perceptions from cultural and social associations.” If I understood you correctly, I am guessing you mean that Gestalt psychology when applied to art creates a sort of access point--getting at it on a more physical and visual level, focusing on the shapes, forms, and the colors and isolating the manner in which we visually process information as piecemeal. Under the Gestalt analysis, we focus on how the artist directs visual attention through contrast, familiarity in forms, and color so to guide the eye in receiving either more or less important information, i.e. The man in Shiskin’s The Forest. Livingstone and Solso provides extended and informative explanations on these very principles of perceptual organization (the What and Where systems).

However, the scientific discoveries that explain how colors and shape occur in the external world and hit our eye and mind doesn’t suddenly free entities from their embeddedness in society and how we relate to them. I think I will run the risk of repeating myself, but colors, shapes, and forms are heavily steeped in cultural and social conventions. We understand them on these levels before any scientific intervention. Science if reconsidered within the argument actually serves to reinforce the primacy of social and cultural conditions, which have shaped and are currently still reshaping our visual perception.

Gestalt psychology and of course science itself, I believe arise from cultural and social needs and wants. I am not sure if the purported message in Arheim, Livingstone, Solso, and the rest of the readings is to use Gestalt as a means of taking art outside of social or cultural associations, for he certainly cites a fair amount of social and art historians in making his case. Perhaps, someone who has had more previous experience with Arnheim can point me in the right direction. But from what I had gathered, as Arnheim cites Renaissance art and the triangular compositions of these paintings at the time he seems to reassert their social and cultural significance. To me the prevalence of the equilateral triangular form in Renaissance was utilized as much for its possible social and cultural connotations (the holy trinity, equality, the balance of church, state, and public) as well as for prompting visual acuity--And my interpretation again speaks to the mutability of visual perception relying on " the acculturation" of experience, information, and most definitely social and cultural connotations.

Solso writes about the evolution of the conscious brain and it is not a coincidence that artmaking coincided with the consolidation of a modern thinking brain, a brain imbued with AWAREness attributes of consciousness. This brain evolved though a change of environment and most importantly a change in social infrastructure. From means of survival to intellect. He goes further with this idea, into words, citing the fact that it was not until the advent of language, “a system of communication” --a system created for society that artistic creation became a concern for man. (Solso, 53) Art is analogous to language it is a visual form of communication.

If we look at ancient art, we do not look at it with the same standards. Primitive art sought to be legible, to merely illustrate what was seen in the external environment for humans at that period had just begun experimenting with image-making. There is a difference aptly pointed out by Mamassian that art and our experience of it greatly differ across periods, cultures and human development. He talks about Egyptian art and how the body is rendered in manners that are unnatural to emphasize “each body part in its most informative pose.” (Mamassian, 2144) The purpose at the time was to create a visual language to coincide with one’s culture and verbal language. It was the beginning of symbol and sign building or rather convention-building--that is the basis of all art. Mamassian prefaces with Gombrich, “No Art is ever free of convention.” Indeed, as these signs become a part of our environment, they enter into our mental bric-a-brac. In modern times, verbal, phonetic, and visual language reaches a nexus and art becomes more complicated, ridden with concepts. A jumbling of symbols and a mixing of different creative mediums. The fluidity between forms and forms of art is what accounts for the obscurity of modern and contemporary art. For me, I think this is where the split between “everyday perception” and “visual art perception” is most potent.

Gestalt psychology when applied to artmaking is actually activating the social and cultural connotations that are inherent within colors and forms to elicit emotional response. I will use an example of the role of the actor in Meyerhold’s school of theater. (Theo, as a theater student, please correct me if I am wrong about any of this). Meyerhold school of theatre used common connotations of certain physical gestures to strike a mass audience at an emotional core. Specifically this form of theatre is built by stock characters, essentially common symbols that form a sequence of physical positions and situations to arise points of excitation which are informed with some particular emotion. This is Gestalt. It is scientific. It is artistic. It is also sociopolitilcal. Meyerhold actors use commonplace forms--social and cultural constructs on the physiological level, actors playing the aristocrat, the worker, take on physical attributes commonly associated with these societal figures. The actor must utilize correctly his body’s means of expression to create pathos and ethos. It is clear, psychology isn’t saving anything from cultural or social connotation because it itself, being a form of analysis on our human behavior and perception, is necessarily inextricable to the society and culture from which we reside in.

I guess the main topic that I would like to open up for criticism and discussion in this long winded and certainly somewhat obnoxiously digressive post is the line between art, science, and society and particularly how science has become a generator of visual forms that are then weighed with social and cultural connotations? Let’s say Rorschach his inkblots and the ripple effects of these inkblots reappearing constantly in various visual and intellectual forms--(The Watchmen both film and graphic novel). Also how did the notion of “scientific fact” perpetuated by culture affected artmaking such as the case of Meyerhold whose entire theatrical program seemed to be based on the scientific innovations of biomechanics?

2010-02-13T19:31:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-02-10T17:05:00.000-08:00

Seeing As A Creative Act

2010-02-08T09:22:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-07T20:49:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-07T15:52:00.000-08:00

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.”

2010-02-07T15:05:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-07T12:29:00.001-08:00

“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

2010-02-07T11:16:00.000-08:00

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

Piet Mondrian Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue 1927

2010-02-03T01:54:00.001-08:00

The greyscale version shows the yellow square to be almost equiluminant with the white space, which gives it a vibrant and quavering quality, as compared with the red and blue squares which due to their darker luminance appear more stable and grounded in their respective positions in the upper left and lower right corners. We notice that the smallest colored square, the blue, is also the darkest. Perhaps the red square needs to be bigger and longer in order to counterbalance the density of the small, dark, blue.

An insight into the nature of "Awareness."

2010-02-03T01:34:00.000-08:00

At the moment, I'm learning a lot about the Feldenkrais method of bodywork, which I know Dylan has heard of from being in the same class, but may be too difficult to explain to people who haven't been exposed. Essentially, it's a theory of how best to form new habits in human beings. For a number of reasons, the founder of the method, Moshe Feldenkrais, decided that the physical movement, the mechanism over which we have the most concrete and willable control, was the best vehicle for re-patterning inner tendencies that might not be so much under our control. Students of feldenkrais are told that the goal in all of the movement sequences is "Awareness," and the lessons themselves are in fact called "Awareness Through Movement."

What does it mean? "Awareness?"

Feldenkrais explained it via negativa by giving the example of someone walking up the stairs. Unless he or she is paying attention, he or she will have only a generalized awareness of the exact number of stairs climbed. To count the stairs as you climb them would require a form of "awareness." Closer to a definition, perhaps. Similarly, we are engaged at all times in behavioral and perceptual activities which we can perform relatively well without requiring any awareness whatsoever. We can eat food without tasting it. We can talk without being aware of our vowel or consonant articulation. We can listen to music without registering contrapuntal patterns and repetitions over time. We can go to an art museum, see something with a bunch of pretty or unpretty colors, without any awareness of the objective relationships between colors, which, it could be said, are the contribution of any given artist which make him or her MOST WORTHY of the designation "genius." These people are creating structural frameworks which do not necessarily impose themselves on the perceptions of a spectator who hasn't been schooled or acculturated to view visual art with this type of awareness.

Mr. I's case is a perfect example of a situation in which someone has awareness forced upon them through deprivation. Mr I was obviously not unaware of the structural relationships between colors, and as a painter and lover of art, probably needed no such schooling. But if you or I were by some miracle allowed to experience his condition TEMPORARILY, and thereafter return to full color perception, we would be automatically primed for a type of color awareness we had previously taken for granted. As a result, we become much more engaged by and grateful for our peculiar ability to differentiate color in this way, and art, and LIFE, in general become a--for lack of a better word--more pleasing to experience.

The Feldenkrais bodywork is fashioned in the same vein on the principle that an increase in awareness of interrelations between structures (in this case, structures of the human body) corresponds to a decrease in general suffering, confusion and anomie, and that therefore is inherently desirable.

equiluminance

2010-02-02T20:50:00.000-08:00

equiluminant

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paul klee- southern gardens

Colors are not as they seem

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Alfredo Quevedo (in the style of Van Gogh), 2003, 24x24", acrylic on canvas

2010-02-02T10:46:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts that pertain to this week’s readings:

I’m fascinated by two concepts and am hoping to marry them together in this (brief) blog post. In Arnheim’s texts, he discusses how the vivid qualities of color in paintings decay over time due to pigmentation and the natural circumstances under which they are shown. Paintings, as we see them today, are “lies.” We can never hope to gain the full experience of, for example, Renaissance Fresco paintings simply because of preservation and restoration issues.

But what struck me beyond that, when marrying these concepts with Livingstone’s concise history of theories of seeing, is maybe we also have a different way of seeing that people did several hundreds of years ago. The eye, as Livingstone mentioned, has been actively changing and modifying throughout the processes of evolution. On a scientific level, how much has the eye evolved in the last centuries? And on a cultural level, how are do receive stimuli from the world around us that would force us to see differently? So even if we were to find some way to time travel back to the Renaissance, we might still see completely different paintings than those who viewed them during their first reveal.

Reply to Danielle's Post

2010-02-02T09:36:00.000-08:00

Danielle, I also was entranced by the Sacks piece. The account addressed the whole of Jonathan’s experience in a way that made me as the reader begin to envision the world as he perceived it. I thought it was interesting how his vision was not just a black and white version of what a normally sighted person sees, but a more challenged and confusing black and white version. He had reduced ability to distinguish shades and shapes. Arnheim explains in the chapter on color that humans can usually distinguish about 200 shades of grey. Jonathan did not seem to have that ability.
You also commented that you were surprised that when offered a possible cure, Jonathan refused. I thought this was interesting, but I was not very surprised. I have read a number of different Sacks essays and amazingly most of his subjects learn to live with and in some cases learn to love their shift in perception. Perhaps this demonstrates the extent to which out mind and our functioning can adapt and reorganize to cope with challenges. Sacks suggests that perhaps Jonathan’s brain reallocated certain areas for different functions, perhaps causing his stronger night vision and sharper long-distance vision.
I too was thinking about how different our perceptions of color may be. All of the readings asserted that color is not static, it depends on perception and context. It is constantly influenced by the surrounding colors and the ambient light. Although Livingston (I think) said that on average most people’s eyes seem to perceive colors in the same mechanical way it appears that our perception of color can still be very different. This seems like a question to continue to ponder, and one that will come up repeatedly as we read more about visual perception.

Equiluminance

2010-02-02T06:38:00.000-08:00

Monet, Poppies, Near Argenteuil

The poppies and the field are equiluminant - the poppies are invisible in the non-color version.