Visual Perception Lecture 2

Visual PerceptionGestalt PrincipleImportance of Visual Perception in ArtElements of Art

Art Visual Perception * Lecture 2

Philippine Women’s College of Davao

Wilfred Dexter G. Tañedo

Review: Identify the Images based on Perceptual Processing Categories

Visual Discriminationability to be aware of

the distinctive features of forms including shape, orientation, size, and color.


Visual Figure Groundability to distinguish an

object from irrelevant background information


Visual Closureability to recognize

a complete feature from fragmented information.

Gestalt Psychology

Tries to understand the laws of our ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world.

The central principle of gestalt psychology is that the mind forms a global whole with self-organizing tendencies.

This principle maintains that when the human mind (perceptual system) forms a percept or gestalt, the whole has a reality of its own, independent of the parts.

"The whole is other than the sum of the parts” by Kurt Koffka

The Founders of Gestalt Psychology: Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler. Created sometime in 1912.

Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception

We impose visual organization on stimuli


Illusory

Contours

The Kanisza triangle as figure-ground illusory contours


Three Main Principles:

Grouping (Proximity, Similarity, Continuity, Closure)

Good of Figure or Law of PragnanzFigure/Ground Relationships

Gestalt Laws of Grouping

Humans naturally perceive objects as organized patterns and objects.

Gestalt psychologists argued that these principles exist because the mind has an innate disposition to perceive patterns in the stimulus based on certain rules.

Proximity, Similarity, Closure, Good Continuation, Common Fate, and Good Form

Law of Proximity States that, all else being equal, perception tends to group stimuli that are close together as part of the same object, and stimuli that are far apart as two separate objects.

This allows for the grouping together of elements into larger sets, and reduces the need to process a larger number of smaller stimuli.

The brain groups together the elements instead of processing a large number of smaller stimuli, allowing us to understand and conceptualize information more quickly

Law of SimilarityStates that, all else being

equal, perception lends itself to seeing stimuli that physically resemble each other as part of the same object, and stimuli that are different as part of a different object.

Allows for people to distinguish between adjacent and overlapping objects based on their visual texture and resemblance. Other stimuli that have different features are generally not perceived as part of the object.

Our brain uses similarity to distinguish between objects who may lay adjacent to or overlap with each other based upon their visual texture.

Law of Similarity in connection with Shape, Scale and Color

What Principle of Art is exhibitedby this examples?

Pattern/Repetition/Rhythm

Law of Good Continuation/Continuity

States that when there is an intersection between two or more objects, people tend to perceive each object as a single uninterrupted object.

This allows differentiation of stimuli even when they come in visual overlap.

People have a tendency to group and organize lines or curves that follow an established direction over those defined by sharp and abrupt changes in direction

Law of Closure States that the mind has a tendency to see complete figures or forms even if a picture is incomplete, partially hidden by other objects, or if part of the information needed to make a complete picture in our minds is missing.

For example, if part of a shape’s border is missing people still tend to see the shape as completely enclosed by the border and ignore the gaps. This reaction stems from our mind’s natural tendency to recognize patterns that are familiar to us and thus fill in any information that may be missing.

Law of Common FateStates that when visual elements are

seen moving in the same direction at the same rate (optical flow), perception associates the movement as part of the same stimulus.

This allows people to make out moving objects even when other details (such as the objects color or outline) are obscured.

Application of The Law of Common Fate is used extensively in user-interface design: For example where the movement of a scrollbar is synchronized with the movement (i.e. cropping) of a window's content viewport; The movement of a physical mouse is synchronized with the movement of an on-screen arrow cursor, and so on.

Law of Pragnanz (Law of Good Figure/Law of Simplicity)

States that people tend to order their experience in a manner that is regular, orderly, symmetrical, and simple.

Law of Good Figure

States that people have the tendency to group together forms of similar shape, pattern, color, etc.

Even in cases where two or more forms clearly overlap, the human brain interprets them in a way that allows people to differentiate different patterns and/or shapes.

An example would be a pile of presents where a dozen packages of different size and shape are wrapped in just three or so patterns of wrapping paper.

Gestalt Principles of Visual Perceptionon Figure/Ground Relationships

Figure/Ground Relationships between these 3 Elements:

Figure – seen as the foreground

Ground – seen as the background

Contours – “belong” to the figure


Reversible Figure/Ground

relationship



relationship

Can be affected by the principle of smallness:

Smaller areas tend to be seen as figures against a larger background.



Relationship:

Tessellation – interlocking figure/ground

M.C. Escher

In General

Gestalt laws of Grouping organize the visual scene into units

The Law of Pragnanz, or Goodness of Figure creates the simplest most meaningful pattern

Figure/Ground relationships define important parts of the scene

Importance of Visual Perception in Arts

Builds up the Elements of Art and Principles of Design/Art

Distinguish one art form to the other Creates the point of interest or disinterest in a

work of art (Commercial and Design Industry has been relying on these studies of Visual Perception)

Recognized Creativity of Specific person or group of people

Assignment for June 23

Review on the Lecture 1 and Lecture 2 for a quiz on Tuesday, June 23.

Read on further on the Element of Art: Line, its properties and effectiveness in an art work

Education

Visual Perception Lecture 2