Art
& Visual Perception
Fall 2006
Elizabeth
Johnston
Titsworth 6A, x2348, ebj@slc.edu
Course
Description
"Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak." John Berger
Psychologists have long been interested in measuring and explaining the phenomena of visual perception. In this course we will study and reproduce some of the experimental investigations of seeing and the theoretical positions they support. Our journey will begin with the myriad of visual illusions that have intrigued psychologists and physiologists since the late nineteenth century. We will engage in a hands-on exploration of these visual illusions and create our own versions of eye-and-brain tricking images. We will also identify their use in works of visual art from a range of periods. The next stop on our psychological travels will be the apparent motion effects that captured the attention of Gestalt psychologists. We will explore the connections between the distinctive theoretical approach of the Gestaltists and the contemporaneous Bauhaus movement in art, design, and architecture. We will then move on to a consideration of the representation of visual space: in the company of contemporary psychologist Michael Morgan we will ask how the three-dimensional world is represented in "the space between our ears." In this section of the course, we will create three-dimensional stereoscopic and kinetic images and explore their artistic uses. The spatial exploration section will also give us the opportunity to study the artistic development and use of perspective in two-dimensional images. Throughout our visual journey, we will seek connections between perceptual phenomena and what is known about the brain processing of visual information. This is a course for people who enjoy reflecting on why we see things as we do. It should hold particular interest for students of film and the visual arts who are curious about scientific explanations of the phenomena that they explore in their art.
Books available in the bookstore:
Arnheim: Arnheim, Rudolf (1974). Art and Visual Perception. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Livingstone: Livingstone, Margaret S. (2002). Vision and Art:
The Biology of Seeing.
Solso1: Solso, Robert L. (1996). Cognition
and the Visual Arts.
Solso2: Solso, Robert L. (2003). The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Gregory: Gregory, Richard L. (1990). Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Week
1: September 6th: Beginning with Color
Read
Livingstone, Chapter 1; Solso1, Chapter 1; Gregory, Chapter 1; Sacks, O. To See and Not to See (pick
up a photocopy from the box outside my office door)
Week
2: September 13th: Color Anomalies & Variations
Read Livingstone,
Chapters 2 & 3 ; Arnheim, Chapter 7 to p. 346,
Note this change 9/12 Gregory, Chapter 7: Seeing Color.
Sacks, O. The Case of the Colorblind Painter. Photocopy
outside my office door
Week
3: September 20th: Brain Processing of Color and Luminance
Read Livingstone,
Chapters 4, 5 & 6; Solso1, Chapter 2
color
images for Solso's chapter 2
Photoshop
assignment: simultaneous contrast effects
Week
4: September 27th: Gestalt Psychology: Figure, Form, Balance,
Activity
Read Solso1,
Chapters 3 &4; Arnheim, Chapter II: Shape
color
images for Solso's chapters 3 & 4
images
for Arnheim, chapter II
Week 5:
October 4th: Gestalt
Psychology Continued
Read
Arnheim, Chapter III: Form; Solso2,
Chapter 1
van Campen, C. (1997).
Early abstract art and experimental Gestalt psychology. Leonardo, 30,
133-136. Link
to JSTOR article
Behrens, Roy, R. (1998).
Art, Design and Gestalt Theory, Leonardo, 31, 299-303. Link
to JSTOR article
Week
6: October 11th: From 2-D to 3-D: Perspective
Read
Livingstone, Chapter 7; Solso1, Chapters 7 & 8; Arnheim, Chapter V: Space.
color images for Solso's chapters
7 & 8
Week
7: October 18th: From 2-D to 3-D: Shading
Read Livingstone,
Chapter 8; Arnheim, Chapter VI: Light, Gregory, Chapter 9: Realities
of Art.
Week
8: October 25th: From 2-D to 3-D: Stereopsis
Read Livingstone,
Chapter 9; Gregory, Chapter 3, pp. 60-66; Morgan, Chapter 4: Cyclopean Vision
(photocopy).
Sacks, O. (2006). Stereo Sue: Why two eyes are better than one. The New Yorker, June 19, 64-73. (photocopy) and the NPR spot on the story at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5507789
Sebastian
Stoskopff's Les Cinq Sens --- image referred to in Morgan, Chapter 4.
Week
9: November 1st: Motion
Read Livingstone, Chapter 10; Arnheim, Chapter VIII: Movement; Gregory, Chapter 6: Seeing Movement.
Photoshop
assignment due: 3-D on 2-D - depth illusions
Week 10: November 8th: Mixing it up: illusions, color, and faces
Read Livingstone, Chapter 11; Gregory, Chapter 10: Illusions; Solso2, Chapters 5: About Face and 6: Illusions: Sensory, Cognitive & Artistic; Arnheim, Chapter IX: Dynamics, pp. 419-423 (section on Experiments on Directed Tension)
Week 11: 2 meetings this week
November 14th: Field Trip to MOMA - we will leave at 12.30 sharp from Andrews parking lot - please come early. I'll bring bagels and fruit for us to eat in the van.
November 15th: Visual Attention, Imagery & Memory
Read Solso1, Chapters 6 and 9.
color
images for Solso's chapter 6
color
images for Solso's chapter 9
Week
13: November 29th: Why do children draw that way?
Read
Arnheim, Chapter IV: Growth
Week
14: December 6th: Conference Presentations
Week
15: December 13th: Conference Presentations