Perception and Meaning - Coursework Example

Perception and Meaning s Submitted by s: 7th May 7th May Introduction This essay is to shown how to be aware ofprinciple of perception included gestalt theory, color theory, semiotics, social & cultural anthropology and cultural context, as well as structuring all the information that are related to them. The characteristic of the ring show my religion and meaning behind it. By focusing these theoretical areas of investigation on the design and use of goods of my chosen object, to find out how human receive information with their feelings, as well as attribute meanings to things and use design to communicate to others (Arnheim, 1974). The percept that has been chosen for this topic is a ring which is shown in figure 1. It is one of my favorite’s ring which was given from a family member 2 years ago. To investigate to this specific percept, is to deconstruct it and look at the actual meaning and to understand it from the appearance and message of it. The books will help investigate the principles of perception to help with the essay are: Principles of Visual perception, The Intelligent eye, Universal Principles of Design. These help to understand Gestalt theory, Color theory principle, semiotics, signs and meanings from psychology etc. Main Body ‘The human mind uncontrollably creates meaning from stimuli’ (Carolyn M. Bloomer) states in her book: Principles of Visual Perception that when we open our eyes, our mind constantly projects meaning into things. Senses are physiological capacities of the living things on earth to provide data for perception (Freeman, 2003). Human have five traditionally recognize to sense things, these are sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. These are the most usual things to stimuli mind in every day. Colors are component parts of light, the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to which your eyes respond. Carolyn M. Bloomer states in her book: principles of visual perception that we perceive different light frequencies to see colors through the electromagnetic spectrum. Different light frequencies are different colors. The light frequencies are exist in a continuum but ordinarily seven spectral zones are identified separately by name: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. (Carolyn Bloomer 1976:108) The color on my percept are yellow gold, black, white and silver. This percept indicates color with hue, similar to yellow. The stones on my percent are black and white. Value refers to lightness or darkness of the color as it corresponds to a scale of grays ranging between white and black. (Carolyn M. Bloomer 1976:110) Various generations have subscribed to the saying that the power of the perceiver accord the meaning to an object from the outlook. This is a fact that is contained in the common saying that the beauty is always in the eye of the beholder. This means that the concept of beauty is not a universal application instead it is relative to the person that is perceiving the beauty. The view of the look of an object will depend entirely on the person that is seeing the object making perception an aspect that is subject to the person that is doing the active perceiving. What appeals to one person may not appeal to the other. In other words, what is deemed to be beautiful in one person may be ugly to the other? The idea is simple enough and it resonates within the majority of the people such that the correlation of the beauty and the perceiver has come to be one of the most uttered phrases among the people. therefore, if the beauty which is supposed to be a universal or at least a majority decision is so controversial what about the perception that a person has over an object such as a piece of art. What are the major reasoning sequences that the people use to apportion the meaning to piece of art? what are the connotations fronted by the variations in color during the design of a piece of work and what are the most common processes used in the cognition and assignment of meaning when looking into a piece of art? This paper will seek to shed light into the entire concept of perception in relation to the assignment of meaning. Perception Most of the people have conceded that they would identify a good piece of art in the media or an art gallery immediately after seeing it. This means that the artistic notion and the qualification of a pieces of art as good or bad or average depends on the person. The same person that believe that he can pinpoint a quality piece of art from a distance and at the first instant may have issues when it comes to making a succinct description of the piece. This may seem as a contradiction since the common practice may dictate that one ought to have the power to define the elements or the aspects of a piece of art that make it outstanding. However, the lack of the power to make succinct determinations of the selling points of an art piece may be explained using the theory of perception. Therefore, art is a matter of perception just like beauty. However, if art was evaluated on a pure basis of the perception it would cease to be art. However, art is pervasive since it goes beyond the mere act of appreciation. As a matter of methodology, the perception of art can be placed under the umbrella category of cognitive science. The discipline of cognitive science is an investigation in the modes through which organism attain, represent, manipulate the stimuli from their environment to apportion meaning to the occurrences or phenomena around them that will affect their elicited behavior (Cornsweet, 1970). Pieces of art are stimuli that are deigned intentionally to induce an effect of perceptions such as the aesthetic appraisals and other types of appreciation judgments. The understanding and interpretation of the artwork is the result of the interpreted questions on the ways that the consumers attain represent and use the information that is found in the structure of a piece of world in order to make determinations of the formal, compositional and aesthetic content (Gordon, 1989). The research conducted on the perception of art can be best used to arrive at the solutions of conventionally difficult problems with the conceptualization and adjudicate between the competing theories concerning art. Gestalt theory of perception The theory is centered on the reality that whenever the part in a piece of art are included in making an object, the focus on the parts wanes and the main focus of the perceiver is based on the actual object. For instance, in the case of a tree, the perception of the people does not center on the components of the tree as they are. On the other hand, the perception of the tree is taken as a whole whereby the people looking at the tree describe it according to the way it looks in its entirety as opposed to viewing the tree in according to the distinguishing elements such as the flowers. For instance, take a crooked tree with good flowers and other component parts. The perceiver will see the crookedness of the tree and the flowers will be the secondary aspects in the perception. This means that the view of the perceiver concerning the tree has assumed an entirety approach. The person may judge the tree on the entirety and forget the component parts since they are just but mere secondary components. This perception on the object as postulated by gestalt is applicable in the initial perception of a piece of art. Looking at the ring, there are various aspect of the gestalt perception that come out. The initial perception that one makes from the ring is that it is a well decorated piece of art (Armstrong, 1991). The person will identify it as a ring in the first instance and will not proceed to the other definitions of the ring until when he is prompted. The view of the ring may be clouded by the subjective claims of how appealing it is or not to the person. However, the focus on the components that make the ring and other additions is only attained when the person is prompted. The person looks into the design of the ring such as the decorations and the actual component parts. When secondary elements of the ring are prompted, the assertion of the meaning of the ring is easily attained. For instance, the sign of the cross on the ring will be interpreted to represent Christianity religion (Gregory, 1970). It is also most likely that the ring will be associated with the Catholicism due to the presence of the symbols or any other denomination in the Christian faith that has a high inclination to the use of the symbols. The stone used in the decoration of the ring may be used to apportion the class of the bearer of the ring. The more the decorations and their correspondent value in the market will affect the eventual view of the ring and presumably the perking order of the bearer. However, while a person looks at the piece of art in its entirety, the view that is sustained is that it is just another ring. This means that the parts that make a piece of art or any other material will affect the perception of the people towards that piece. However, the focus of the mind on the component parts has to be induced since the perception of an object takes place in its entirety. Reification This is an aspect used in the perception in which the object in question is perceived to contain more information that is not congruent to what is actually present. The initial perception of the ring is not indicative that the device is a ring more so when it is viewed from the top. This means that the perception of the ring is not based on the actual features of a ring but rather on the association of the features perceived with the stored information (Beery, 1997). The matching of the actual with the previous encounters with similar pieces does not actually lead to the creation of a perfect match. This means that the process of the perception of what the ring is in the real sense is dependent on the association of the ring with the closest match. The perceiver then ends up making conclusions on what should be there and he makes the conclusion that the object in question is actually a ring (Bloomer, 1976). This means that there is no mandatory requirement that the artist does not have to present the actual outline of an object for the audience to make the correct inference (Grossberg, 1987). On the flipside, the mere presentation of a part of the object such as the frontal part of the ring is sufficient to make the inference on what the object is through the process of reification. Multi stability This is an argument about the perception that seeks to instill the ideal that the mind always seeks to avoid instances of uncertainty. This principle of gestalt posits that the mind often seeks to move from one interpretation to the other in an unstable manner. This is often the case when it is possible for the perceiver to make more than one interpretation (Batchelor, 2008). The German psychologists that made the theory used the vase face model. In both cases, the perceiver was seen to make the determination that the image in question was either a vase or two faces looking at each other. Therefore, the meaning assigned to an object that may have two interpretations is dependent on the ability of the perceiver to make a stable determination of what the object is from the initial moment (Martinez-Conde, 2006). Invariance This assertion in the gestalt theory seeks to make the assertion that the human mind is capable of identifying the points in design that indicate the similarities and differences. Therefore, the perception process of the human being seeks to ensure that there is an understanding of the actual visual processes. The objects are recognized independent of the rotation or scale (Mausfeld and Heyer, 2003). The fact that human being encounter the project at different scales does not affect their ability to recognize them irrespective of the differences in appearance. Visual perception theory The human beings are equipped with sensory organs that work in order to receive the information on the elements that occur in the environment. The different sensory organs are unique and they perceive different stimuli. The stimuli are converted into sights, sounds, smells tastes and experiences. However, there are divisions on the extent at which to which the process of perception depends directly on the information that is present in the stimuli. Some of the professionals argue that the process of the perception is not direct but it is dependent on the expectations of the perceiver and the previous experiences (Mortimer, 1983). The knowledge that the perceiver has on the stimulus may also affect the entire process of perception. Bottom up theory of perception This is a theory to perception that states that the process of perception begins with the stimuli. The processing is undertaken in the moment that the person sees the image. This means that the center for the procession of information is in the mind of the person since the process starts from the moment that the image is seen through the retina to the moment when the vision is relayed to the visual cortex in the brain. Each process in the carriage leads to the development of more complex analysis of the visual stimuli (Batchelor, 2008). Top down processing This is the theory that seeks to use the contextual information in the pattern of the recognition. This means that the situation in which the art is used is important in the effective determination of the informational needs. This means that the creation of an understanding of complex material is feasible when a person is looking at the entire aspect and not a mere section of a piece of art (Birren, 1976). Therefore, the process of the development of the right has to consider the environment in which the art is actually made. Pictorial realism The nature of the pictorial realism is an open question. The focus of this paper is not on the theory of the pictorial realism as it is indicated in the piece of work on the contrary it is a focus on the ways through which the cues that are encoded in the formal structure of the pieces of art are used to carry and perceive the information that is capable of conveying the content. The case of the ring is a naturalism approach (Haber and Hershenson, 1973). The cues used above are diagnostic of the perceptual categories that are used to define the realism in the design of the ring. There are three claims that are definitive of the artistic works. The first view is that the artists learn the cues that are sufficient for the production of artistic work in the context using a directed and systematic approach to perceptual experimentation. The experimentation means that the artistic connotations are defined by the trial and error method on the views that the people will have concerning the product of the artwork. From the experimentation they can make the organized whole as it is defined in gestalt theory of perception. The organized whole in terms of the art is defined and it has to be made within the bounds of the tradition (Rock, 1984). For the ring above, the tradition of making a ring for a single finger is maintained. There is no abstraction on the design that may lead to the externalist view of the art work. The above aspect is maintained such that the people have an easy time when it comes to the classification of the ring into a certain category of art (Johansson, 1973). The decorations and other design element are left to the artist who has the liberty to experiment with the ring to manipulate the perception of the perceiver. In case of naturalism that affects the visual perception, the artists have a lot of freedom on the choices that they have to make regarding the way they render the subject matter (Schwartz, 1999). The artists render their subject matter relative to the desired perception and aesthetic appeal that make up the components of their work (Sekuler and Blake, 1994). This is the case even in the instances when the desiderata is poised on the informative nature of the visual object such as the ring. The other consideration made when designing the pieces of art is that the art does not exist in vacuum. Artistic work is influenced by the interplay of the desired effect on the audience or target market for the art work. Therefore, the art is often influenced by the artistic conventions of the community and not the individual perceptions of the artist per se. Perception and meaning in art is not unique. On the flipside, it is normal and is affected by the normal cognitive behaviors that will affect the perception of art. References Armstrong, T. (1991), Colour perception. 1st ed. Diss, Norfolk, Eng.: Tarquin Publications. Arnheim, R. (1974). Art and visual perception. 1st ed. 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