Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY
ways in which perception is involved in generation
of computer programs and applications (Sternberg,
2011). Computer imagery, which can be easier
described by its structural characteristics than by
visual ones (Lambert, 2011), has been described
by Timothy Binkley (1996) as both abstract and
concrete because various different originals can
be derived from the same collection of numbers
included to the program. Moreover, according to
Binkley (1990), the computer is not a medium,
as it does not have physical material for image
production but only a file of numbers that controls
the image. Lambert (2011) examined virtual space
as a Platonic construct. As he pointed out, “in a
Platonic sense, all these forms already exist (in
potential or in actuality), and the computer-using
artist is exploring this space of potential forms to
bring them into being” (2011, p. 442).
Knowledge is important in imagery because
our tacit knowledge about physical relations in
the world supports information about objects that
is depicted in a visual buffer or working memory
- a mental space for manipulating, scanning and
inspecting visual images. Both visual mental im-
agery and visual working memory are processing
visual information in comparable ways; both rely
on depictive representations of the same format
(Borst, Ganis, Thompson, & Kosslyn, 2011). The
visual buffer activates mental images induced by
stored information; we may redraw maps from
memory. Visual buffer has limited resolution,
can be rotated and scaled at will. It fades if not
refreshed. It may take information from long-term
memory or develop a 3D model representation
in a long-term memory store. Kosslyn provided
a computer model of the cognitive processes in-
volved in visual imagery. The attention window
selects a region within the visual buffer for further
detailed processing. The size of the window in
the visual buffer can be altered and its location
can be shifted. We can scan to portions of visual
mental images that initially were off the screen,
An Austrian philosopher, poet, and dramaturg
Christian von Ehrenfels (1859-1932) developed
in 1890 the gestalt psychology focused on a whole
shape. This theory of mind tells about a brain as a
parallel, analog, self-organizing holistic structure.
According to the gestalt psychology, perception
requires the grasping of the essential structural
features. For example, a melody can be recognized
even when played on various instruments or in dif-
ferent keys. Von Ehrenfels argued that the whole is
not simply the sum of its parts but a total structure.
The perceiving eye and the mind are looking for
pattern and simple whole shapes. When we look
at more complex visual images such as paintings
we can see that they convey visual information.
When our early ancestors, and also contemporary
aboriginal artists have created paintings on sand,
a rock, their own body, or a bark, they created a
variety of meanings, sometimes hard to decipher,
often providing the evidence of abstract thought as
early as in the Middle Stone Age, at least 70,000
years ago (Limson, 2010; Wong, 2002). Gestalt
systems, which have been elaborated with the
therapeutic applications in mind, discussed key
principles of the emergence (formation of complex
patterns from simple rules); reification (which hap-
pens due to the generative, constructive ability of
mind, which allows more perceptual information
than is provided in the sensory data); multistabil-
ity (ambiguous perceptual experiences with more
than one interpretation possible, visual illusions
such as a Necker cube, which can be seen from
above or from below, or the Rubin vase that can
be also recognized as two human profiles); and
invariance (experienced when we recognize simple
geometrical objects in spite of their rotation, trans-
lation, scale, elastic deformations, or lighting).
Modules of perception have been modeled with
the use of computing and examined in terms of
the computational theory of vision, to explore the
