The Rest of The Story ~ Ways of Seeing
In the book Ways of Seeing by John Berger I was introduced to a different way of looking at art through the seven individual essays, both written and pictorial. The book explores the way we see, the way humans have seen and the way in which seeing has been manipulated through art and the media.
Basically the book is saying that in our European based culture women are objects, men are subjects. Men survey, women are surveyed. Since women are always on display in our society, they adjust their behavior in order to please and fit in with our male dominated society. Berger writes about the relationship between art and the presumed observer/audience. In the beginning he talks about how the modern invention of the camera changed the way we view art. In fact he alludes to the fact that the camera has destroyed the true way of seeing.
I kept looking for chapters that showed anything but the nude female and it took until the later part of chapter six to find any. I’m not quite sure why the book was mainly comprised of naked females but it seems like the men who wrote the essay were very fond of them. Like the ads of today, the female subjects of the oil paintings were objectified and reduced to mere commodities that could be bought and sold at random. Even in Chapter 7 when the topic was all about publicity images, how we advertise items and what they are actually selling, they had to throw in images of naked women and women with suggestive poses.
An AhHa moment for me was in Chapter four pages 76-81. I looked at the portraits and wondered what their life must have been like and what kind of people they must have been. In Chapter One when the author talks about the two portraits, Governors and the Governesses of an Alms House, he says “As in so many other pictures by Hals, the penetrating characterizations almost seduce us into believing that we know the personality traits ad even the habits of the men and women portrayed” (page 14). Throughout the book I kept thinking about that statement.
This reading is relevant to our course only in the sense that it addresses the fact that any design we create with illustration and images could, and would, be taken in many different ways. Other than that I think the book was directed more to a fine art student.
Gestalt Project
The word Gestalt means a unified or meaningful whole. A configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that it cannot be described merely as a sum of its parts Gestalt is a general description for the concepts that make unity and variety possible in design.
It is a German word that roughly translates as “whole” or “form.” Gestalt theory is involved with visual perception and the psychology of art among other things. It applied in gestalt psychology it means “unified whole” or ” configuration.” The essential point of gestalt is that in perception the whole is different from the sum of its parts.
A physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts.
Libby’s example of an optical ullision
I think this works because you can see an apple core outlined by a mans face on the left and a childs face on the right.
This is an example of figure ground you can see the spatula in between the letters
Cultural Differences in Advertising
One of the most difficult challenges for marketing internationally is communicating to people of diverse cultures. Cultural differences may exist not only between nations but also within a nation itself. Because of the varying value systems, attitudes, perceptions and communication of individuals and groups this makes it difficult to reach every market. Before starting any project research needs to be done to make sure your design is not offensive to the market in which it’s intended.
In the article “The Gender Ads Project” the Author takes a look at so many different ads and what they were supposedly intended to do and actually how they came across to the “other side.” This website http://www.genderads.com/Gender_Ads.com.html offers a huge range of topics that are controversial, yet excepted, depending on your value system. Just click on the “dolls” link and look at some of the ads, you will be amazed what someone has decided is in good taste.
This ad (http://www.genderads.com/Dolls.html#29 ) has a man in bed with a doll, he seems to be very happy and the title reads “ For those obsessed with fashion”
What do these ads mean? What are their impact on our minds, bodies, relationships, and society? These are all question we need to ask ourselves before starting any design project.
Color means different things to different cultures. In China green is viewed as a very bad color. If a man was said to be wearing a “green” hat that means he is having and affair. In Ireland green is viewed very positively. It is their national color and the color of shamrocks, which are good luck. In the country of Malaysia Green leaves laid in the back of your car window means you are in trouble and assistance is Needed. In the Middle East (Muslims) green is the color of life, and paradise; heaven is described as a lush green garden. In the United States green represents ecology and conservation. It is a very positive thing to be “green”
PEACE SYMBOL or a BROKEN UPSIDE-DOWN CROSS:
One of the most widely known symbols in the world, in Britain it is recognized as standing for nuclear disarmament —and in particular as the logo of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). In the United States and much of the rest of the world it is known more broadly as the peace symbol however, the peace symbol meant different things at different times.
Some call it Nero’s cross, linking it to the notorious Roman emperor who persecuted Christians. Centuries later, it was recognized as an old Norse Rune. After WW2 (1939-1945), it was found on the tombstones of some of Hitler’s SS troops and labeled ‘The Dead Man Rune.’
Revived in the sixties by hippies and others who protested nuclear weapons, Western culture, and Christian values, it became a worldwide symbol of a new age of global peace and earth-centered unity.
Sources:
http://www.docspopuli.org/articles/PeaceSymbolArticle.html
http://www.crossroad.to/Books/symbols1.html
http://www.ltcconline.net/lukas/gender/pages/controversy.htm
http://www.genderads.com/Gender_Ads.com.html
Design Research Project
As a class assignment we were assigned certain design element terms. We were to research those terms and come up with examples to show our understanding. Our group consisted of Jen Rogers, Misty Light, Carissa Cluchta, and myself. Our design research topics were: Proximity, Similarity, Continuation, and Closure.
To view the full pdf click the link Design Research Project
Accessibility In Print
Our assignment this week was to listen to a podcast entitled Web Accessibility for Everyone. Jeannie Yandel interviewed Wendy Chishom, co-author of Universal Design, and a computer programmer and developer.
In the interview Wendy tells a story about when she was in college and was asked by one of your professors to tutor a blind student in a statistics class. Her first thought was “how in the world am I going to do that”. Then she had to start thinking creatively and came up with several ideas like using legos to teach the concepts. It was during this time that Wendy started thinking about disabilities and how we could overcome the obstacles that prevented them from having the same accessibility than those without disabilities have. I liked one of her quotes; “its not the wheel chair that makes the building inaccessible it’s the stairs”
Wendy and others wrote new universal accessibility guidelines for web developers. In 1999 the WWW adopted those guidelines as an international standard for web design.
Some problems still exist. The Metro bus line, CNN, YouTube as well as others are still not fully functional for people with disabilities. There was one idea I really liked; Wendy mentions that people with disabilities need to be involved in the beginning stages of development. That is such a smart move, who else would know exactly what was needed. I however do not think this is the answer to world peace!
According to National Center on Disability and Access to Education website most of the work in accessibility has been done in the area of visual disabilities. However, according to the US Census 14.3 million Americans age 15 and over have mental disabilities; Alzheimer’s, senility, dementia and learning disabilities. Accessibilities for users with cognitive disabilities can be far greater challenge than for those with other types of disabilities. There still needs to be a lot of work in this area.
Several websites that I found talked about these issues and what they were doing to be proactive. Adobe’s site listed all the considerations they have put into each program to minimize issues with certain disabilities. Another website is Graphic Artists Guild. They have made available for Graphic Artist who are designing materials twelve downloadable symbols to advertise accessibility to employees, customers, audiences, and anyone else who needs access to anything you are designing. The guild makes it easier to create something without having to look all over for symbols.
As designers we need to stay up to date on all the changes and try to impanelment as many into our designs as possible
http://www.graphicartistsguild.org/resources/disability-access-symbols/
http://www.ncdae.org/tools/cognitive/
http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/
Laws of Seeing
The phrase “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts” is often used when explaining Gestalt theory. In the book “Laws of Seeing” Wolfgang Metzger depicts this in the image of the desk on page 24, figure 35 that shows that things lying open seem to be part of a bigger picture.
Wolfgang Metzger’s main argument, drawn from Gestalt theory, is that the objects we perceive in our day-to-day lives are not the objects themselves but perceptual pieces of objects constructed by our brain according to natural rules. Gestalt psychology is a movement in experimental psychology that began just prior to World War I. It made important contributions to the study of visual perception. In the book “Laws of Seeing” by Metzger he goes beyond that with the theory that in our visual experience with objects and how objects that are constructed by our brain according to natural rules give us the bigger picture.
The Gestalt approach emphasizes that we perceive objects as well-organized patterns rather than separate component parts. According to this approach, when we open our eyes we do not see little pieces in disorder. Instead, we notice larger areas with defined shapes and patterns. The “whole” that we see is something that is more structured and cohesive than a group of separate particles. Wolfgang Metzer expounds upon that in each chapter of the book. The book demonstrates the influence of sensory physiology and our understanding of why we see the way we do. Metzger’s discusses topics as ambiguous figures, hidden forms, camouflage, shadows and depth, proximity, and three-dimensional representations.
The photographs and illustrations were an intracal part of the book for me. If I didn’t have the visuals I would have had no idea what he was talking about. I am so visual that I could see his theories by the examples.
This book was really hard to wrap my head around but one of the topics that fascinated me was a Metzger’s example of animals, birds specifically, that followed the Gestalt laws. “In experiments with various species of birds, for example jays, the validity of individual Gestalt laws has been directly demonstrated, specifically the laws of similarity (color and size), of proximity, and of good continuation. Higher animals (apes, chicken, parrots), like humans, manifest the phenomena of brightness and color constancy under varying illumination of size constancy with changing distance, and of shape constancy with varying location” (Chapter 12 pp. 185-186).
There is nature all around us and I think, as artists, we need to look at it in many different ways. I get a lot of inspiration from nature. In my back yard I have a bird feeder and after reading this chapter I went out and looked at all the different kinds of birds that landed on it. I don’t know all the names of the different species of birds but I could see different laws in all of them. For example the law of organization was very apparent in the Finch
Metzger’s discussion of such topics as ambiguous figures, hidden forms, camouflage, shadows and depth, and three-dimensional representations in paintings is also written about in John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” They both discuss how a painting can be viewed differently by shadows and depth.
During the readings of Laws of Seeing, Ways of Seeing, and Seeing Black and White I have had to really stretch my brain to see the psychology behind the art we see. It is a new way of analyzing how we see and perceive the things around us. I am ready to read a brainless novel now!
Gestalt Experiment
“The whole is greater than the sum of the parts” is often used when explaining Gestalt theory. In this Gestalt experiment I was to test three individuals to see if they can see the sum of all the parts.
The Gestalt Experiment involved two parts. In the first part the test subjects were to look at five pictures of just every day objects or activities. The next screen shot, after the five images, was of a bunch of black organic shapes spaced pretty far apart. There were 20 steps available by clicking on the arrows that brought those shapes closer together to form, what I had hoped they would see as a horse and rider. They were to call out what they saw when they saw an image.
The second part consisted of five animal pictures then the same screen shot with 20 individual steps to bring the image in closer. The idea was that the animal pictures would trigger something in their brain so they would be able to see the image of the horse and rider.
The first person I tested was my 21 yr. old son. He is really creative and I thought he had seen Gestalt images before. He looked thru the first set of images, then went thru the 20 steps and had no idea what he was seeing. He didn’t even want to guess which I thought was pretty interesting. In the second set of the animal images when he got to the organic shapes it took him until step 19 and then he saw the horse and rider.
The second victim was my 15 yr. old son. After going thru the first set of images and then looking at the shapes it took him until step 15 to clearly see the bicycle. He went to the second part and after clicking thru 20 steps he still only saw the bicycle. Funny how your brain tells you something and then that is all you can see.
The third person was my husband, who is very creative, was the winner. He guessed it in the first scenario. He guessed a cat in step 5 then he saw a horse and rider in step 7. I was pretty impressed
This was so much fun I actually did three others, a 15 yr. old male and a 21 yr. old male and female.
In the case of the 15 yr. old, after the first set of images he guessed a dog on step 7, a bird on step 10, then a kid on step 14. After step 20 he said he didn’t know what the image was. After the second set of animal images was displayed and we went to the shapes he guessed and animal in step 4. After then after step 20 he guessed a horse with a rider on it.
The 21 yr olds were pretty funny. The male didn’t come up with anything in either scenario. But the girl saw a snowman then a giraffe in the first set of images. In the second set all she could see was “that damn snowman”! At the very end after we were all done the male said he thought he saw a bicycle.
What I thought was interesting with this whole process was that nobody, with the exception of my husband, could see the animal until the second set of images were displayed.
