Art and Visual Perception – Chapter 1 Summary

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Through our senses we are capable of observing certain characteristics of a subject like its position, size and orientation. We don’t perceive objects as isolated and unique matters. We establish objects qualities in relation to something else – in context to the environment around it or our past experiences. Visual Experience is dynamic. What we see is not just the arrangements of objects, colours and shapes – we see interactions of directed tensions. These are not created in the observers head to satisfy the observer’s reasoning. These are a characteristic in any percept as size, shape, location or colour. Since these tensions have a magnitude and a direction, they can be considered as physical forces. By placing a disk in a box, one can study its space. When the disk is placed in certain places one can classify its nature according to where it is – at rest, forces act on it or unclear and wavering. The center and four corners are like magnets, the center being stronger than the other four. This makes the center a balanced position for a disk since all the forces balance each other out. It is unpleasant for the eye when it cannot determine to whether the disk is balanced or looks like it is unbalanced. These forces are called perceptual forces since they are not present on the canvas i.e. the paint or medium on the canvas is not actually acted upon by a force. Nonetheless, the image of the subject in our head is acted upon by forces. Hence, these forces are real. They are distributed psychological forces on our head. If there are two disks in a square, they interact with each other. If they are close to each other they seem to repel each other and if they are away from each they seem to be attracted by each other. The interaction between them also depends on their size, the squares size and where tey are located in the square. Two disks are considered as a
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