Visual Imagination and Image

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"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it." --John Steinbeck Scientific research confirms what people have always known: answers, ideas, and inspiration do come to us in dreams. Harvard psychologist and world-renowned dream specialist Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., offers this rich collection of examples of how the world's most creative practitioners in art, music, film, science, literature and other fields have used the revelations of their dream life to inform their work. Dr. Barrett offers insights showing us how to encourage lucid, meaningful dreaming, and how to apply the meanings of our dreams to solving problems--from the everyday to the extraordinary. This is the stuff dreams are made of. In the visual arts, Jasper Johns couldn't find his unique artistic vision until he dreamed it in the form of a large American flag. Salvador Dali and his colleagues built the startling new genre of surrealism out of dreams. Kubla Kahn dreamed the design for his stately pleasure dome; thousands of years later, Lucy Davis, chief architect at a major firm, continues the tradition of dreaming designs into life in her extraordinary buildings. Film is a fertile avenue for dreams: "Twice I have transferred dreams to film exactly as I had dreamed them," confides director Ingmar Bergman, as have Federico Fellini, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, and John Sayles. From Mary Shelley's terrible nightmare, which became Frankenstein, to Stephen King's haunting dream as a little boy, which led to his first bestseller, countless writers have consulted the Committee. Musicians from Beethoven to Billy Joel and Paul McCartney have whistled the Committee's tunes. In science, physiologist Otto Loewi dreamed the medical experiment that earned him the Nobel Prize. In sports, Marion Jones dreamed she'd broken a world record, then brought the dream to life. Gandhi translated his dream of resistance into a movement that changed the world. Since Freud, we take it for granted that our dreams reflect our past. In The Committee of Sleep, Barrett reveals how dreams can also tell us about our future potential--and how to reach it.

For most people visual mental imagery is a common, frequent experience (Galton, 1880; Betts, 1909; Doob, 1972; Marks, 1999; Thomas, 2010 §1). We often recall past events, or imagine possible ones, by forming mental images. Our dreams may also consist largely of mental imagery. Indeed, many philosophers and psychologists have held that, together with immediate perceptual experience, imagery makes up the entirety of consciousness (although clearly not just visual imagery, but also imagery in other sense modes, especially inner speech, auditory or vocal-motor imagery of spoken words). If we are to fully understand consciousness, we will certainly need to understand mental imagery. In this article, current theories of mental imagery are described and evaluated in the light of the fact that imagery is consciously experienced (a fact that is, remarkably, largely neglected in most discussions of the topic).

Philosophers have studied mental imagery for many centuries, experimental psychologists have studied it for well over a hundred years, and more recently it has attracted the attention of cognitive scientists and neuroscientists, but many basic questions still remain unresolved (Thomas, 2010). There is controversy not only over what cognitive and neural mechanisms are responsible for imagery, but also over its function (if any) in cognition. Some regard mental imagery (or some closely related notion, such as "perceptual symbols" or "image schemata") to be the necessary vehicle for all thought[1]; some regard it as important only for certain types of cognitive task (such as judging spatial relationships)[2]; and yet others regard it as a functionally insignificant conscious epiphenomenon of the unconscious cognitive processes that really constitute our thinking.[3]

Like percepts, mental images bear intentionality (J.T.E. Richardson, 1980; Harman, 1998; Thomas, 2010 §1.3). That is to say, they are always images (or percepts) of something or other, of some (real or imaginary) "object."[4] (Some philosophers (e.g., Searle, 1992) regard intentionality and consciousness as very closely related phenomena.) However, unlike percepts, images occur in the absence of their object. You cannot perceive a cat when no cat is present, but you can imagine a cat (or any other perceptible thing) at any time. Furthermore, (mistakes aside) you cannot perceive a cat to be other than where and how it actually is, but, whenever you want to, you can imagine (i.e., form an image of) a cat as anywhere, or in any condition. Images thus seem well suited to function as mental representations, allowing us to think of things as they currently are not, and thus to recall the past, plan for the future, fantasize about the unreal, and speculate about the unknown (cf. Addis et al., 2007; Szpunar et al., 2007). Since ancient times, this has generally been believed to be their cognitive function (Thomas, 2010).

This article focuses on the cognitive function of the image and the role the visual imagination plays in education and the popularization of science. We will look at the possibilities offered in this field created by the modern, moving and programmable digital media. They provide a highly effective, but still not fully utilized tool in popularizing the complex issues of science. The article discusses examples of both the visualizations of didactic character as well as artistic works which relate to the classic problems of mathematics, physics and philosophy in a creative way.

In this article we would like to draw attention to the cognitive potential hidden in an image and in the art which employs it. We will focus on the visualization of basic mathematical objects e.g. irrational numbers. Our starting point will be the easy and intuitive case of the square root of two, as it is observed in the diagonal of a square. Next we will move over to the golden ratio hidden in a regular pentagon. To visualize this irrational number φ we will use a looped, endless animation. Finally, we will have a closer look at the famous number π and we will suggest an attempt to represent it in a clearly visual way.  In the last section of the article we will consider the possibility of representing rational and irrational real numbers by dimensionless points on a straight line.  We will also try to present a straight line on a flat surface which – as we know has length – but has no width. The above issues will enable us to see the extent to which mathematics may be inspirational for art, as well as how art may familiarize us with mathematical issues and explain them.

As a designer, for the traditional dance and Contmporary Dance, had a different experience to share. From the mythological text to the contemporary text, the visulasiation through the role for bringing up a creative production. The colour scheme of dancers dresses in a traditional dance is so rich, where the colour mixing through the lights is more challenging to create a mood and emotion. The isolation of charactees, romantic emotions, war idea, mystical and magical appearance of God's and goddesses is an interest feature to discuss while doing lights for the traditional dance of Indian where as in Indian Contmporary Dance practice shows much more on visualising the text into images some times, and through reading images they create an illusitionistc images on stage.
This paper describes of creativity involved for presentation of such kind of images and emincipated role of light  for creating such images.
This paper talks about visual images on the stage though the lighting and actors or dancers body.

La Religieuse can be included in Diderot’s project of dialogue, comparison and reciprocal enlightenment of the arts of representation. Such a dialogue assigns a predominant role to the visual dimension, as it is closely linked to the imagination process at work in the production and fruition of the works of art. This does set the ground for the comparison of word and image, of tale and pictures, as, through the tormented story of Suzanne Simonin, Diderot’s novel stages the feminine body in its pathetic, desiring, suffering, aesthetic and erotic dimension, and it becomes the description and institution of paintings and scenes, in close theoretical connection with the traced path of the Salons. Particularly, the essay sets out to focus on Suzanne’s gaze, on function of literary detail and pictorial patterns in Diderot’s novel.