Points of Praxis

My Blog Reflects on Visual Rhetorical Theory and Disability Rhetoric and their Connections to Classical and Contemporary Rhetorical Theory

Rudolph Arnheim, Visual Thinking

"visual perception is visual thinking."  Vision is selective.  Need and opportunities to select a target.

"Most noteworthy is the awesome complexity of the cognitive processes that must be performed in order to make adequate perception possible."

"To see an object in space means to see it in context."  "the sense of vision establishes the size, shape, location, color, brightness, and movement of an object.  To see the object means to tell its own properties from those imposed upon it by its setting and by the observer."

"If a visual item is extricated from its context it becomes a different object.  Similarly, complex situations arise in other areas of perception whenever "two and two" are put together, that is, when several items are seen as a unitary pattern."

Understand what it is by resemblance and contrasts.  (Reminiscent of Burke here.)  Resemblance and contrast never so simple as theories of association would make them seem.  "Perception shifts from similarity to distinction."

"To lift something out of its context means to neglect an important aspect of its nature."

"perception cannot be confined to what the eyes record of the outer world.  A perceptual act is never isolated:  it is only the most recent phase of a stream of innumerable similar acts, performed in the past and surviving in memory."  Part of dialogism.

influence of memory is powerful. "Distinguishing characteristics will also be preserved and exaggerated when they arouse reactions of awe, wonder, contempt, amusement, admiration."

2 important points for the psychology of recognition: 1. "what is recognized in daily life is not necessarily accepted in pictorial representation."  2. One must distinguish b/t a "percept that can be merely understoodseen as such."  Difference here b/t understanding what is shown and what is seen in reality.  Based on memory.

Memory contributes to mental imagery.

"many processes [...] are now known to occur below the threshold of awareness." "Sensory experience [...] is not necessarily conscious. Most certainly it is not consciously remembered."

Mental images not complete replicas.

posted by: rgregory at 22:31 | link | comments |

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