Principles of Visual Perception

Marc H. Bornstein; Carolyn M. Bloomer

Principles of Visual Perception (2nd revised edition) [Title page & index]

NY: Design Press / A Division of Tab Books / McGraw Hill. London: Herbert Press. , 1990

Combining psychology, art theory and cross-cultural studies, this book explores ways in which our minds construct meaning from visual information. It discusses how the mind attributes meaning to things and events, the structure and functioning of eye and brain, how we perceive color, space, depth and distance, motion, the development and mechanics of photography and how the camera affects our definition of reality and the way we think about the world, the incursion of electronic and mass-communication media, and finally, making and looking at works of art with greater awareness. First edition published in 1976: NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold / Prentice Hall, 1976-86 (six printings). Translation of first edition published in 1987 by Beijing University Press as Shijue Yuanli视觉原理，Zhang Gongqian 张功钱, translator, author name transliterated as Kaluolin M Bulumo 卡鲁琳 M 布鲁墨 (print run: 28,500). \...Read more

Principles, Visual Perception Carolyn M. Bloomer THE HERBERT PRESS

Contents Preface to the Second Edition MIND AND MEANING: The First Step in Understanding Perception VISION: In the Eye of the Beholder THE BRAIN: It Figures CONSTANCY: No Matter What Happens You'll Always Be the Same to Me COLOR: It's All Relative SPACE: The Daily Frontier DEPTH AND DISTANCE: The I as a Camera PHOTOGRAPHY: The Camera as an I MOTION: The Moving Picture ELECTRONlC VISIONS: Mind and Media ART, PERCEPTION, A N D CREATIVITY: Meaning Revisited Studio Activities Bibliography P Index A * b.

Principles, Visual Perception Carolyn M. Bloomer THE HERBERT PRESS Contents Preface to the Second Edition M I N D A N D MEANING: The First Step in Understanding Perception VISION: In the Eye of the Beholder THE BRAIN: It Figures CONSTANCY: No Matter What Happens You'll Always Be the Same to Me COLOR: It's All Relative SPACE: The Daily Frontier DEPTH A N D DISTANCE: The I as a Camera PHOTOGRAPHY: The Camera as an I MOTION: The Moving Picture ELECTRONlC VISIONS: Mind and Media ART, PERCEPTION, A N D CREATIVITY: Meaning Revisited Studio Activities Bibliography P Index A * b. Index (Page numbers in italics refer to a figure only.) A Accommodation, 29, 207 Adaptation, 18-23, 27-28, 32, 106, 167 Africa, 68,70, 102,115,191 Afterimage. See Retina AGAM (Yaacov Agam), 43,186 Akeret, Robert U., 162 Albers, Josef, 61, 91, 95, 101 Alberti, Leone Battista, 139, 141, 143 Alberti's veil, 139-40, 145, 149, 202 Albright, Ivan, 119,120 Alhazen, 137-138, 148 Ambiguity, 12, 13, 19,44, 53-55, 60, 160-61; in art, 61, 69, 214, 215; and depiction of motion, 182-83; in pictorial depth perception, 115, 122-24 Animation, 170, 171, 176, 177-78, 179, 200, 202. See also Images, serial Anomalies, perception of. See Mental models; Normalizing Anuskiewicz, Richard, 43, 94,98 Arabia, 111, 137 Architecture, 113-15 Arctic, 86, 129-30 Amheim, Rudolf, 94, 167 Arp, Jan, 166 Art, 14, 15, 40-43 (see also specific headings); as communication, 217-18; history, 14, 25, 140, 149, 205, 211; interactive, 186, 187, 201; moving (kinetic), 173, 187, 188, 201; nonobjective, 144; nonWestern, 132, 210-11, 218 (see also geographic or ethnic names); viewing, 15, 39-42, 127-28, 174, 187-88, 209-12, 217-18 Artists, 16, 72-73, 209, 210, 212-13, 218 (see also Creativity, creative personalities); in history, 136, 138, 141, 146-47, 163-66 Asch, Solomon, 15-16, 17 Australia, 109-110, 124, 182 B Bacon, Francis, 165 Balla, Giacomo, 182, 183-84 Bangert, Colette and Charles, 201 Barbizon School, 153 Baroque art, 37, 117, 130, 135, 140, 146, 148, 180, 211 Barrett, Dawn, 53 Barron, Frank, 16 Behaviorism, 24-25 Binocular vision, 48, 49, 50-51, 107, 108 Bireline, George, 99 Black, Alexander, 178 Blindness, 29, 30,44,47. See also Vision defects Blind spot. See Optic nerve Bloomer, Carolyn M., 5 6 Boccioni, Umberto, 183 Body, 18, 31, 76, 86, 105-108, 167-72. See also Ear, inner; Senses, proprioceptive Border contrast. See Contour enhancement Boredom. See Habituation Bosse, Abraham, 140 Bouguereau, Guillaume-Adolphe,165 Bower, T.G.R., 82 Brady, Matthew, 153 Brain, 20,21, 22,24, 44-64 (Chapter 3), 110, 168,218; and color perception, 96-101; damage, 47, 50; evolution of, see Evolution, of brain; hemispheres, 45, 46-47 (see also lateralization); lateralization, 44, 4648, 50; localizations, 46-47 (see also lateralization); motor cortex, 50, 168; neurons, 46, 47, 48-49, 168, 171, 172; neurotransmitters, 48-49; nonhuman, 4546, 49, 171; size, 45, 46; synapses, 48-49; visual cortex, 48, 50; waves, 44,195; weight, 46,49 Brandt, Bill, 156 Braque, Georges, 182 Brunelleschi, Filippo, 139 Bruner, Jerome and Leo Postman, 63, 74 Buddhism (Zen, Chan), 56, 112, 184,213 Burson, Nancy, 202,206 C Calder, Alexander, 187, 188 Callahan, Hany, 155 Camera, 69, 78, 156-59; aperture, 156-57, 160; filters, 86,89,97, 158-59;lens, 157-58,160; lucida, 149-50; obscura, 37, 148-50, 155, 163-64; shutter, 156-57 Canaletto, Antonio, 136, 149, 164 &-;a-, ,- Gradients; Space); effects on perception, 111-13, 117,118,119,127,160 (see also social); representations of, 111-13, 119-24, 126, 127, 132-33, 160 (see also Depth; Perspective; Space, representations of); social (proxemic patterns), 110, 111-13, 119-21, 193,194 Double vision (diplopia). See Eye muscles; Binocular vision Dougherty, Patrick, 1 8 7 Dove, Arthur, 68, 69 Drawing, 77, 79, 199-201; children's, see Children's art; mechanical aids, 134, 140, 148-50,199 (see also Camera obscura) Dreams, 175,212,213 Drugs, 28,30, 31,44,49, 50, 52,100 Duchamps, Marcel, 166,173,184, 188,210 Durer, Albrecht, 134, 141, 143 E Ear, inner, 106, 168-70. See also Motion; Senses, proprioceptive Earthworks, 40,41 Eastman, George, 154,155 Edgerton, Harold C., 175, 183, 184 Edgerton, Samuel Y. Jr., 137, 139 Edison, Thomas, 178 Edwards, Betty, 46, 77 Egypt, ancient, 20, 39, 71, 79, 80, 102, 111-12, 131, 148,154, 181 Einstein, Albert, 109, 144, 216 Electromagnetic radiation. See Light; Radiation Electronic images, 18, 189-208 (Chapter 10) El Greco (DomenicoTheotocopolis), 120 Environment, 18, 19, 25, 49, 106 Environmental art, 40, 187, 188 Escher, M.C., 53 Eskimos, 46,78,107,130,211 Ethnocentrism, 23, 124, 143,211 Evans, Christopher, 197 Evans, Walker, 155 Evolution, 16, 19-22, 25, 102; of brain, 21-22, 45-46, 47, 102; natural selection, 19, 20, 21, 27, 106; of vision, 27-28, 85, 108 Expectancy, 11-12, 17, 18, 61-64, 74, 75, 77 Expressionism, 104; Abstract, 104,144,165,166,184, 185 Eye(s), 26-43 (Chapter 2); contact, 22; evolution of, see Evolution, of vision; -hand coordination, 168, 199; movements, 38-42, 170 (see also Fixations; Scanning); muscles, 27, 38,39, 47, 51, 107; nonhuman, 26-27, 31, 85; retina, see Retina F Face perception, 13,22,118 Fantz, Robert L., 13 Faraday, Michael, 170, 171 Farsightedness. See Vision defects, presbyopia Fauves, 81, 104, 144,165,181 Fenton, Roger, 153 Field-and-frame relationship, 69, 119-121, 133, 160, 179, 193 Field dependencelindependence, 170 Figure(s), 51-53, 55; alternating, 60-61, 62; alternating figure and ground, 19, 44, 53-55; in art, 54,55,211, 212; and ground, 18,51-61,176, 195 "Filling in," 55-58, 75, 129 Fixations, 36, 107, 123, 177 (see also Eye, movements; Scanning); multiple, 38-42, 41, 116, 117, 182 Flagg, James Montgomery, 186 Flicker, 34, 44, 172, 194, 195. See also Vision, persistence of Folk art, 53, 58, 132-33, 133(Kitty Good), 179 Form(s): orientation of 76-78; perception of 74-76. See also Constancy, form Formal elements, 206, 211-12 Fovea. See Retina Frame of reference, and motion perception, 175-77. See also Context; Relativity France, Anatole, 46 Frankenthaler, Helen, 166 Freud, Sigmund, 216 Frith, Francis, 153 Futurism, 144, 165,182, 183-84, 188 C Galassi, Peter, 147 Galileo, 63, 64, 143 Gardner, Howard, 47, 108 Gauguin, Paul, 104, 131, 164, 212 Genetic diversity, 19-20, 93. Seealso Evolution, natural selection Genetic program, 18-22,25,47,77. See also Evolution: Body Geometric patterns. See Patterns, geometric; Illusions, geometric Geometry, 16, 137, 140, 141, 145 (see also Medieval Europe, optics; Renaissance); fractal, 199,203,205 Germans and social distance, 111 Gestalt psychology, 14,25, 51, 52, 55, 58, 62, 181 Ghezzi, Pier Leone, 135 Gibson, Eleanor J. and Richard D. Walk, 105,106 Gibson, James J., 17 Giotto di Bondone, 181-82 Glaucoma. See Vision, defects in God, 138,140,143 Goya, Francesco, 131 Gradients, 105, 107, 125-133, 138, 173 (see also Depth; Perspective; Space); of color, 128-129, 133; of detail, 72, 125, 126, 127, 128, 133 (see also Detail); of light, 129-132; of pattern, 125-126, 127, 128; of sharpness, 126-127, 133; of size, 127, 128, 132-144 (see also Scale; Perspective, vanishing point) Grain. See Retinal image, grain in; Photography, film; Video, Image Greco, Diane, 5 7 Greece, ancient, 24, 78, 109, 137, 138, 148,174 Grouping, 55-58, 178. See also Closure Guardi, Francesco, 149 H Haas, Emst, 156 Habituation, 13, 15, 17, 18, 83, 119, 195 Hall, Edward T., 37, 111 Hallucinations, 44 Hanson, Duane, 113 Harmon, Leon, 117-18 Hierarchy: of dependence, 176, 177 (see also Motion); of importance, 72, 73 (see also Perspective, vanishing point) Hine, Lewis W., 152, 153 Hockney, David, 116,117,182,201 Holloway, Ralph, 22 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 153 Holography, 116, 156 Homer, Winslow, 121 Hopper, Edward, 146 Horizon line, 70, 121, 125,126, 127, 134, 139. See also Perspective, vanishing point Hubel, David H. and Thorsten N. Wiesel, 171 Humanism. See Renaissance I Ice Age, 20, 187 Illusionism, 76, 103, 117, 124, 136, 137, 138-40, 164, 184. Seeglso Realism: visual, Super-, Western Illusions, ?p, 19, 58-60, 66-67, 72, 115;Comsweet, 33, 34, 35; qcometric, 58-60; of motion, see Animation; Motion, 41 sions of Image($: eide c, 35-36; extrasensory, 202-04; fusion, see Binocular vision; grain in, see Photography, film; Retinal image, grain in; Video, image; mental, see Mental Image*; processing, see Computer, graphicslimage processing; serial, 154, 176, 181-82 (see also Animation). See also Ambiguity; Pictorial imagery; Photographic imagery Impressionism, 17,33,42-43, 56, 82, 87,97, 103, 127, 144, 147, 153, 164 India, 211 Infants, 13, 22, 67, 82-83, 105, 106, 107, 167-68 Information processing, 23-24,25, 209 Ingres, Jean-Auguste Dominique, 164 Intelligence(s), 13, 22, 47-48, 108, 217 Interposition. See Space, representations of \ l Japan, 34 (Sansetsu), 54 (Ukiyo-e School), 56, 5 7 (Kumura Nagamitsu), 71j 72, 102, 107-08, 113-14, 129, 131, 168, 188,211 Jesus, 56,117,124, 130,180, 181 Johns, Jasper, 61 K Kavner, Richard S. and Lorraine Dusky, 107 Kearins, Judy, 110 Kennedy: John, 15;family, 162 Kepler, Johannes, 150 Kesey, Ken, 47 Kline, Franz, 104, 184 Kollwitz, Kathe, 131, 153 Kolomyjec, William, 198 Kosslyn, Steven, 109, 168 Kuhn, Thomas, 64 Kukele, Friedrich, 213, 214 L Land, Edwin, 89, 96-101 Lange, Dorothea, 155,161, 165n Language, 16,22-23, 79,84. See also Words Lateral inhibition, 32, 33, 58, 59, 93 Left-handedness. See Brain, lateralization Lichtenstein, Roy, 69 Liebert, Robert and Joyce Sprafiin, 192 Light, 26, 107, 137, 156, 202; ambient, 85, 87, 156; and color, 84-90, 96-101, 129, 193-94; and physiology, 47, 86; and shadow, 33, 77, 87, 129-32; and shadow, representation of, 33, 87, 130-32, 202; polarized, 89-90, 99 (see also Color) Limbourg, Pol de, 71 Lincoln, Abraham, 118, 127 Linear perspective. See Perspective, vanishing point Lomazzi, Paolo, Donato D'Urbina, and Jonathan De Pas, 6 7 Louis, Moms, 166 Lumiere, Louis and Auguste, 178 Luscher (Max) Color Test, 102-03 M Mach (Emst) bands, 33 Magritte, Rene, 69 Mandelbrot, Benoit, 205 Mander, Jeny, 194 Manet, Edouard, 131,164 Masaccio (Tommaso de Ser Giovanni di Mano), 139 Matisse, Henri, 79,81, 104, 131, 181, 212 Max, Peter, 201 Maxwell, James Clerk, 89 McDonald, Barbara Stewart, 99 McLean, Peter, 185 Meaning, 11-25 (Chapter l), 51, 55, 101-103, 190, 209218 (Chapter 11); in art, 14, 71, 79, 132, 191, 209212; symbolic, 71, 79, 130-31, 138 Media, mass-communications, 190-92. See also Mediation; Television Mediation, 189-208 (Chapter 10); of drawing and paint- ing process, 199-201 (see also Computers, graphics/ image processing) Medieval Europe, 143; art of, 71, 72, 138,181; optics, 137-38 (see also Visual cone) Memory, 12,39,49,101,109,134, 145 Mental imagery, 13, 108-111, 168, 191, 193 Mental models (paradigms), 61-64,75. See alro Preprogramming Michelangelo Buonarotti, 67, 112, 123, 216 Millet, Jean Francois, 153, 164 Minimalism, 166 Miro, Joan, l31 Mobiles. See Art, moving Modigliani, Amedeo, 131 Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo, 155 Moire patterns. See Patterns, moire Mondrian, Piet, 204, 205, 206n Monet, Claude, 42,97, 128,212 Monotony. See Habituation Motion, 18, 21, 154, 167-88 (Chapter g), 212, (see also Body; Ear, inner; Senses, proprioceptive); aftereffects of, 169, 172; and art, 179-88; illusions of, 170, 172, 175-79, 187-88 (see also Animation); illusions of apparent motion, 172,175,176,177-79; illusions of autokinetic motion, 176-77, 178; optical illusions of, 35, 39,40, 95,98, 179, 186; parallax, 105, 116, 122,125,173-74,187-88 (see also Space, experiencing); pictures, see Photography, motion picture; toys, 170, 171-72 Multisense perception, 21-22, 106, 191 Muybridge, Eadweard, 154, 178-79 N Native Americans, 30, 31, 79, 102 Natural selection. See Evolution, natural selection Neal, Reginald, 40,43 Nervous system, 21, 65, 67, 106-7 Neurons. See Brain, neurons Neurotransmitters. See Brain, neurotransmitters Newhall, Beaumont, 151, 152, 154,155,178 Newton, Sir Isaac, 85, 144, 213 Noland, Kenneth, 166,201 Noll, Michael, 204, 205, 206n Normalizing, 14, 15, 17, 66, 81, 82. See also Mental models Noton, David and Lawrence Stark, 38 0 Objectivity, 42-43, 64, 72, 135-37, 142-43, 161 Observer and observed, separation of, 141-43, 161, 188 O'Keefe, Georgia, 69, 155 Optic nerve, 27, 36, 37-38,48, 49 Optical art, 35, 40, 43,98, 127, 179,186, 188 Optics, 92, 137-38. See also Medieval Europe, optics; Visual cone Optograms, 32 Orient, 55, 70-71, 102, 132, 133, 184. See also China; Japan Orientation, 76-78, 105-07, 109 Originality, 216-17 Ornstein, Robert and Richard F. Thompson, 45 P Paradigms. See Mental models Patterns: geometric, 32, 40, 57-59, 60, 106, 126, 127; moire, 58; periodic, 53, 57-58; proxemic, see Distance, social Pearlstein, Philip, 201 Pecham, John, 138 Perception, 17-25, 75 (see also specific headings); collective, 16, 23, 193 (see also Culture); esthetic, 20910, 211; theories of, 19, 23, 24-25, 43, 61-63 (see also Vision, theories of) Perceptual analysis, 212 Perceptual defense, l 4 Perceptual prejudice. See Preprogramming; Expectancy Perceptual systems. See Sensory systems; Visual systems Perceptual transparency, 191-92, 211 Perceptual vigilance, 14. See also Salience Performance art, 40,86 Peripheral vision. See Retina, peripheral vision Persian art, l32 (Shahm) Perspective, 68-74, 132-33,138; aerial, 129; flow, 173; of disappearance, 126; parallel, 54, 72; vanishing point, 42, 65, 69-70, 72, 124, 132-44, 145, 182 Phosphenes, 30-31 Photoanalysis, 162-63 Photographic imagery, 69, 126, 127, 134, 145-47, 164, 191. See also Pictorial imagery Photographic memory (eidetic imagery), 35 Photography, 134, 145-66 ( C k o t e r 8 ) , 192, 194, 210; and art, 163-66, 205; and perception, 18, 112-13, 158-63, 191; color, 81, 86, 88-89, 101, 155, 158; developing and printing, 152, 158, 159, 160, 164; documentary, 152, 153-54, 155; film, 86, 88-89, 127, 128, 158; high-contrast, 55, 56, 129; invention of, 147-56 (see also Camera); motion picture, 119, 175, 178-79; nineteenth century, 150-154, 155, 163, 164; stereoscopic, see Stereoscopy; stopaction, 154, 156, 175, 183-84; techniques, 74, 7576, 116, 119, 123, 175, 183-84, 201; twentieth century, 152,154-56,160, 161, 175,183 Photojournalism. See Photography, documentary Photopigments. See Retina, photopigments Photorealism, 166. See also kealism, SuperPiaget, Jean, 25, 64, 82 Picasso, Pablo, 73,122, 131, 166, 182,210, 212 Pictorial imagery, 52, 70-72, 70-74, 79, 80, 115-24, 145-47, 212 (see also Photographic imagery; Pho- tography, techniques; Realism); space in, 115-24 (see also Distance, representations of; Field-andframe relationship; Perspective; Space, representations of) Picture plane, 122, 134, 140, 141, 191. See also Observer and observed, separation of; Perspective, vanishing point; Renaissance Pissarro, Camille, 96 Pixels (picture elements; phosphors), 89, 96, 193-94, 198-99, 201 Pointillism, 33, 96, 127 Pollack, Jackson, 104, 166, 184,185,216 Pop Art, 69,166 Post-Impressionism, 104, 134, 144 Pozzo, Fra Andrea, 117 Pregnant moment, 180, 181. See also Motion, and art Preprogramming, 61-64, 119, 162, 168, 209. See also Constancy, form Printing, 42,128; color, 88-89,95-96,97; half-tone, 29, 153 Projection: of meaning, 11-12, 13, 75, 160-61, 210, 214; of objects, 75, 78-79, 134 (see also Constancy, form) Proprioception. See Senses, proprioceptive Proust, Marcel, 153 Ptolemy, 137, 171 Puzzles, 15, 54 R Radiation, electromagnetic, 26, 27, 29, 84-85, 156, 206-07. See also Light; Computer safety Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), 142, 146 Ray, Man, 155 Reading, 191 Realism: a'~culturallyrelative: 18, 23, 70-74, 79, 11113, 124; 1 b ; Western traditional, 37, 42, 65, 103, 117, 134D l b - 4 4 , 162, 164, 184; Super-, 113,120 Redundancy. See Multisense perception Reichel-Dolmatoff,G., 30, 31 Reinhardt, Ad, 95 * Relativity, 121-22, 144; cultural, 23, 212. See also Ethnocentrism Rembrandt van Rijn, 37, 119, 127, 131 Renaissance, 24, 103, 120, 123, 130-31, 141, 143-44, 145,149,163,204; art, 67,130,134,139,142,148; composition, 69, 137, 138-41, 142, 145-46, 164; perspective, 129, 134, 137, 138-41, 142, 145, 182, 211 (see also Perspective, vanishing point) Renoir, Auguste, 212 Retina, 30-38,43, 172, 175; afterimage, 34-35, 39, 94; and art, 35,37,42-43 (see also Optical art); and color perception, 82-83, 92-93, 96; cones, 31-32, 34, 50, 85, 92-93, 101, 170, 172; fovea, 36-38, 50, 92, 107, 116, 125; macula, 34, 36-37, 50, 92, 107, 116, 141; peripheral vision, 36-37,150, 116, 117, 141, 170, 172, 194; photopigments, 31, 32, 34, 39, 92-93, VX 101; rods, 31-34, 80, 92, 93, 170, 172; visual field of, see Visual field Retinal image, 32-38,39,65-66,74,83; and art, 37,42, 70-74, 78, 134; grain in, 29, 30, 31, 49, 127; zones of clarity in, 36, 37 Retinal lag, 34, 170, 171. See also Vision, persistence of Retinal rivalry. See Binocular vision Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 164 Ridgeway, Robert, 92 Right-handedness. See Brain, lateyalization Riley, Bridget, 35, 43 Rivlin, Robert and Karen Gravelle, 103 Robinson, Caroleigh, 188 Robinson, Henry Peach, 164 Rome, ancient, 102, 112, 124,136, 137 Rosenthal, John, 160, 165n Rosenthal, Robert and Lenore Jacobson, 12 Rosenquist, James, 69 Rousseau, Henri, 164 Rubens, Peter Paul, 180, 181 Ruskin, John, 94 S Salience, 13-14, 15, 17, 51-52, 195, 215 Scale (and art), 39-42, 67, 68-74 Scanning, 34,38-39,40. See also Eye, movements; Fixations Schooling, Westem-type, 47, 60,82, 93, 107 Schwartz, Lillian, 205, 206 Science, 11,25, 64, 143, 144, 148, 204, 217; and photography 153-54,161; and vanishing-point perspective, 141-143; method of, 64, 142-43 (see also Objectivity) Sculpture, 174, 187-88, 201 Seawright, James, 186,201 Selectivity, 13, 14, 27, 51-52 Sensation, 17,19, 21, 65, 74, 191 Sense experience, 191-92, 193, 196,212 Senses, 20-22, 23, 44, 106; proprioceptive, 21, 76-77, 83, 106, 107, 168-70, 200 (see also Ear, inner); redundancy in information from, 21-22 (see also Multisense perception) Sensory systems, 21, 105-06, 195 Serial transformation. See Animation; Images, serial Seurat, Georges, 96 Shadows. See Light, and shadow Shahn, Ben, 155 Signac, Paul, 96 Sisely, Alfred, 96 Size. See Constancy, size; Gradients, size; Scale Skinner, B. F., 25 Social Darwinism, 23 Social distance. See Distance, social Social groups, 16, 17, 22 Social scripts, 193 Society. See Culture Sommer, Robert, 114 Space, 18, 105-124 (Chapter 6),212, (see also Depth; Distance); architectural, 113-15;experiencing, 106, 111-15, 125; positive and negative, see Figure and ground; proxemic patterns, see Distance, social; representations of, 115-24 (see also Depth, representations of; Distance, representations of; Perspective; Pictorial imagery) Steichen, Edward, 155, 156 Stella, Frank, 166 Stereoscopy, 51, 152-53, 156, 179. See also Binocular vision Stieglitz, Alfred, 155 Stuart, Gilbert, 164 Surrealism, 69, 155, 166 Swift, Jonathan, 46 Symbols. See Meaning, symbolic Symmetry: in nervous system, 106-07; in pictorial composition, 142, 146, 211 (see also Renaissance, composition; Viewpoint, central); perception of, 76 T Talbot, William Henry Fox, 152 Tanguy, Yves, 69,126 Tao (Dao), 54-55 Tchelitchew, Pavel, 62 Television, 172, 190, 191, 192-196 (see also Cathoderay tube; Photography, techniques; Video); effects on behavior of, 193; effects on perception of, 11213, 119, 195-97; picture, see Pixels; Video image; programming, 195; technical events, 195-96 Texture. See Detail Time, 69, 113-114, 131, 134, 175 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 163, 164 Transparency, 96,98, 124. See also Color, effects; Perceptual transparency Trumbull, John, 72, 73 Tune out. See Constancy, form; Mental models Turnbul!, Colin M., 68 v Valadon, Suzanne, 52,63n van der Heyden, Jan, 149 van Gogh, Vincent, 96,104,128, 129,210,212,217 Vasarely, Victor, 127 Vasari, Giorgio, 94 Vermeer, Jan, 37,52, 63n, 148, 149, 164 Vertical positioning. See Space, representations of Video, 177,194-95; image, 89,96, 101, 193-94, 198-99 (see also Television); techniques, 119,175,193,195 (see also Photography, techniques) Viewpoint(s), 74 (see also Perspective); central, 134, 135, 141, 142 (see also Renaissance, composition); multiple, 173, 174, 182; oblique, 146, 147; fixed, 70, 73, 78-79, 133, 134, 135, 136, 141, 143, 157 (see also Perspective, vanishing point; Photographic imagery) Vision: day and night, 31-33, 80 (see also Eyes; Retina, rods, cones); disturbances of, 44; nonhuman, 27-28, 36, 47, 85, 108; peripheral, see Retina, peripheral vision; persistence of, 18, 34, 170, 171-72, 178, 193; protection of, 108, 207; theories of, 24-25, 43, 137. See also Binocular vision; Color; Evolution, of vision; Retina Vision defects: amblyopia, see Eye muscles; cataracts, 29-30, 47, 207; color blindness, 92, 93; crosseyes, see Eye muscles; double vision, 38, 50; glaucoma, 30; myopia (nearsightedness), 107-108; presbyopia (farsightedness), 29; tunnel vision, 36; walleyes, see Eye muscles Visual cliff, 105,106, 126 Visual cone, 137, 140, 141, 145, 148. See also Perspective, vanishing point Visual field, 37-38, 48, 49, 50, 65, 125-26, 160, 177; and motion perception, 83, 173-74, 175, 177; and pictorial imagery, 37,116-19,132-34,137,141,143 Visual realism. See Realism, visual Visual systems, 26, 49-51, 170-72. See also Eyes Vitamin A, 32-33 Vitamin C, 85 Vogel, Peter, 187 von Helmholz, Hermann, 68 von Osten, Wilhelm, 11-12 W Warhol, Andy, 69,165, 201 West, Benjamin, 164, 180 Weston, Edward, 155 Williams, Tannis Macbeth, 192 Witkin, Herman, 170, 175 Wober, M., 170 Wollaston, W. H., 150 Words, 14, 17, 109. See also Language Wyeth, Andrew, 118,119, 210, 212 Yin and Yang, 54-55 I Zaborowski, Dennis, 185 Zola, Emile, 153

Seen within the complex contemporary context, process art and video, in particular, appear as important, cumulative fields of creative audiovision, which require more in-depth interdisciplinary, historical and ‘philological’ investigation. Peter Campus’s closed-circuit video installations offer a suitable historicising field for relevant theses and conclusions. This applies not least to the fact that the installations questioned – in respect of process arts in general – the status of the traditional ‘image’. The latter had been ‘set in motion’ by Campus not only metaphorically and psychologically, but also physically and with respect to media. Comparable to Peter Campus, Bill Viola approached the visual without any attempt to artificially conceptualize or substantiate an ontological status of image. If the image in Viola’s art is no formality and “is not to be understood as object, but as an animate, permanently changing result” then his early experiments with live video should be interpreted as indispensable components of his work, out of which the feedback topos of the early 1970s, was sublimated into the area of the transcendental. In mirroring this continued transgressive threshold of experience, Viola marked the path of his artistic development without leaving the ground of its departure behind. The shift can be traced back to Viola’s study time in Syracuse and immediately thereafter. Evidence of its conceptualisation and audio-visualisation can best be found in his closed-circuit video installations. Whilst Peter Campus famously described video as “a function of reality,” (1974) Viola continued Campus’s psychological research into the relationship between video and cogito, thus expressing his own epistemological interest “in how thought is a function of time”. (Bellour 1985, pp. 92 and London 1987) This is why the supposed contradiction between Viola’s later opulent imagery and his conceptual ‘iconoclasm’ probably meant that his research did not recognize the continuity between, and coexistence of, his earlier live video works and edited arrangements. Viola’s videographic enquiry into the field beyond visual representation with the corresponding challenges that his installations and other works offer to the ‘naturalised’ or ‘acculturated’ patterns of perception remain from the very beginning “a combination of the highly rational and the deeply intuitive.” (London 1987) Barbara London noticed it precisely in her observation of how the direct usage of the live camera in his video tapes of the seventies extended to his editing, where nothing was extraneous and very little was left to chance. This dialectic of control and failure could be traced along a ‘direct’ trajectory from Duchamp to Paik and from Nauman to Campus, but the story is not that simple and certainly not reducible to the quotes and aphorisms taken by researches from countless interviews with the named artists. Without reproducibility and a comparison of the related pieces and processes achieved in this way, the meaningful criticism and historical contextualization remain lacking. Viola’s respect for Campus’s work has been documented. Back in the eighties, Bill Viola identified Campus in an interview with B. London as “one of the most important artists.” (London 1987) This statement bears witness to the extent to which the older artist acted as a role model for the recently graduated Viola. He attended a workshop given by Campus, and then assisted with Campus’s seminal show at the Everson Museum in Syracuse in 1974. Viola’s closed-circuit video works and also some of his later pieces are comparable to Campus’s carefully lit and, in every respect, precise and controlled arrangements. The emotional gravitas evident in Campus’s “confrontational imagery” of the period (Campus 1999) was consistently present in Viola’s contemporaneous, and later, work as was, indeed, the case with its diagrammatic and non-representational character. In 2010, Bill Viola published an article in Art in America in homage to Peter Campus and his contribution to the medium of video and art in the wider sense. Even though Viola’s later visual language, popular worldwide, was drafted in 1992 (cf. Syring 1992), the content-related turn had already taken place in his last video installations at least by 1976. Bill Viola’s approach to closed circuit video was anything but a sudden vison, despite well-known anecdotes, such as when his uncle supposedly saved him from drowning in water – an event which Viola remembers as a highly aesthetical and potentially lethal one. His ‘vision’ emerged in stages as a result of an intensive (working) process, in which process art itself appears in Viola’s interpretation as an important audio-visual threshold, which art history and visual culture continuously need to cross en route to an operative joint methodology. However, the threshold ‘itself’ perhaps remains an insufficiently analysed critical term. Recent research has attempted to address it with still, I would say, inconclusive results. Thus it remains unclear how Benjamin’s thresholds and Aby Warburg’s Distanzraum and Zwischenraum might explain Viola’s works, firstly as “oscillations between distance and closeness” and secondly as openings of the latter to ‘collective memory.’ (cf. Thielebein 2014.) An objection has previously been raised with regards to content in Viola’s focus on the threshold between birth and death. Götz Grossklaus claimed that the artist had “overcoded” the interval, ‘interface’ and threshold theme. (Grossklaus 2000) Whilst Campus’s closed circuits still can be used as a model for rational description and a reproducible approach, Viola’s media installations of the last two decades can, at first glance, be taken as models and metaphors of ‘post-modern’, subliminal art, aesthetic and cognitive praxis. They share basic properties like deconstruction, uncertainty, ambivalence, heterogeneity, difference, fragmentation, discontinuity and hybridisation. All of them revolve around the threshold or interface between perceivable dimensions, as Viola concludes himself, “This constant falling, the incessant quest for some unknown thing beneath, beyond, or just out of reach has possessed Peter Campus his whole life and, like many artists, at certain times has pushed him to the edge. This, more than anything specific about his works, is what he imparted to me and, I imagine, to all the students close to him. I know that I am a better artist because of his gifts.” (Viola 2010) In final analysis and regardless of pro or contra voices, it remains valid that for Viola time remained an integral, sculptural aspect of the media and material he employed, which included either a balancing or expansion of the two possible extremes in question: boredom or drama. In the case of balance, the cognition and perception involved appear as beauty; where it is a question of lack of balance, the sublime appears. This is why Viola’s art, whilst in toto representing the historical threshold from which it emerged, does not entirely fit into the postmodern frame – in spite of numerous convincing indications that it might do so.

"Our visual relationships with architectural propositions are highly mediated by representations, and the image-technologies used to construct them. The context in which these propositions are explored and tested is conceptually framed by image-technologies, such as computer-based design and visualisation software. However, much of the knowledge that underpins how architecture is represented is derived directly from concepts and techniques indebted to Renaissance pictorial art. For example, linear perspective’s influence upon how architectural space is constructed in computer-based environments today remains relatively unchallenged, whilst other creative disciplines apply alternative non-perspectival means of representing space. Further, the re–emerging interest in surface effects throughout the 1990s has—in no small part—materialised as a direct result of increasingly powerful computer processors in combination with the seamless transfer of information between the computer–based design and visualisation software that is used to conceive complex geometrical forms, and the fabrication technologies applied to manufacture these complex geometries as built architectural forms. These fabrication technologies have allowed for the relatively cheap application of images onto almost any material and surface of a built form, with little to no consideration of the broader History of Visuality upon which these image–technologies are ultimately indebted. In order to reveal potential insights concerning how emerging image–technologies might affect the conception and experience of spatial effects in Architecture, it is necessary to better understand how space was represented and incorporated within pictures through the lens of older relations between space and image in the History of Western Art. This thesis presents a history of concepts and techniques that outline how viewers have engaged with pictures when displayed in space, how space was represented within the image’s composition (space in images) and, finally, how the space in which the image was displayed itself was subsumed within the composition of the image (space within images). This thesis makes a significant and original contribution to the discipline of Architecture by opening up issues of contemporary image-technology, exploring their impact on the tripartite relationship between images in space and space in/within images. This thesis both historicises and speculates on the changing relationship between pictures and viewers in Western Visual Culture; in terms of the dynamic interchange between static and moving images, and stationary and moving viewers. That is to say, it is both reflective and projective in attempting to provide a lens through which to suggest relevant techniques that could be applied in the conceptual and technical application of pictures on the interior and exterior surfaces of architecture today. Methodologically, this thesis primarily uses historical resources in order to instrumentally explore contemporary problems in Visual Culture and Architecture in parallel to the construction of a series of design–based research demonstrations and analytical diagrams constructed by the author. Significantly, the design–based research demonstrations and analytical diagrams aim to make explicit the conceptual and technical implications of the space–image relation in Architecture that are rarely manifest in a clear, illustrative form by authorities in the field. These analytical diagrams provide a clear visual explanation of complex space–image concepts that reveal original insights into what is at stake when old concepts in Western Art are brought to bear on new problems in Architecture today. The combination of scholarly research, diagrammatic analysis and design–based research demonstration provides a more holistic and productive method through which to discuss, assess and reveal new knowledge concerning the space–image relation. Importantly, this dissertation does not set out to provide an authoritative account of how viewers have historically engaged with images in Art and Architecture, rather it aims to seek out critical moments of transition in the History of Visuality, and reflect upon them through designerly activity. This thesis discusses four core issues through a series of case studies and design–based research demonstrations. Firstly, this thesis outlines concepts and techniques used in pictorial composition in the late medieval period. This discussion provides a series of original organisational concepts and generative techniques through which to include co-existent viewpoints within one picture: the capacity of a pictorial composition, such as Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Sala della Pace mural (1338–40), to include a series of different viewpoints that address specific scenes within the image’s overall composition. Secondly, this thesis outlines and assesses key methods of prescribing viewpoint through the application of perspective-based compositional structures in a series of case-study paintings exemplary of Renaissance pictorialism. Thirdly, this thesis outlines and assesses centralised viewpoint and immersive pictorial compositions in Art and Western Visual Culture through the formation of a genealogical connection between the nineteenth-century panorama, Apple’s Quicktime Virtual Reality panorama and Image-Objects in the 1980s, and Jeffrey Shaw’s ‘mixed-reality’ installations of the 1990s. Finally, this thesis outlines and assesses how viewpoint is affected by pictorial compositions that do not represent space, that is, compositions that are non-representational."

This paper is about the law and visual culture. Its centerpiece is Parson Weems’ Fable (1939) (fig.1), a painting by the American artist Grant Wood (1891-1942) that depicts the apocryphal story of George Washington and the cherry tree. At first glance, Wood’s image appears to celebrate an enduring myth of American virtue, namely Washington’s precocious inability to tell a lie. Studying the picture more closely, however, one finds a pair of black figures, presumably two of the Washingtons’ slaves. Stationed beneath dark storm clouds and harvesting cherries from a second tree, these slaves invoke yet another national myth, that of the domestic serenity that supposedly reigned on Virginia’s colonial plantations. In the process, they quietly invoke the country’s grievous history of racial oppression, coercion, and brutality. This isn’t the only place where Woods’ painting speaks of racial violence. To the contrary, Parson Weems’ Fable also raises the specter of lynching. Examining the shadows directly beneath the Washingtons and their fabled tree, one discovers a hanging black body. Intentional or not, this dangling corpse conjures the spectacular acts of theatrical violence that mobs of Euro-Americans inflicted on African Americans during the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. By the 1930s, heated protests emerged against lynching—in popular songs, magazines, and art exhibitions, as well as more traditional political arenas. Unlike the painters most closely associated with him, Wood didn’t participate directly in such moments of artistic protest. Nonetheless, he would have been exposed to them as he painted Parson Weems’ Fable in the winter of 1939. Regardless of Wood’s intentions, the work he created persistently connects the country’s origin myths to the murderous violence the U.S. has repeatedly inflicted on persons of color. Moreover, as the painting itself seems to realize, the law and culture forged by colonial Virginia planters like George Washington eventually morphed into a collective white psychopathy that found vicious expression in the practice of spectacle lynching. This colonial legal regime was deeply visual—a fact that accounts for not only its power, but also for the fundamental influence it continues to exert on current American conceptions of race. A deep reading of Parson Weems’ Fable in the context of both its time (1939) and its setting (1736) reveals the extent to which the law is visual and the visual is legal. Indeed, the painting gives us a valuable lens for perceiving the pervasive connections that run between the two. Our thesis is that the profoundly visuo-legal nature of the country’s racial foundations helps explain the lack of progress the nation has made in dismantling the color line. As a result, the impulse to join the seemingly unrelated disciplines of legal study and art history isn’t an academic gimmick, but rather a necessity. For centuries, images have worked in tandem with statutes, judicial decisions, and various forms of legal (and illegal) punishment to indelibly imprint a logic of racial violence in our collective mindset. In order to fully excavate this logic, we need scholars who can analyze pictures as well as the law. In terms of structure, we begin by introducing the painting and our analytical framework and method. After that, we explain the theoretical foundations for studying law and culture in this context. Finally, we connect colonial Virginia’s legal and cultural landscape to the traumatic racial violence that continues to haunt our national mythology.

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Principles of Visual Perception (2nd revised edition) [Title page & index]