How a Brain Sees: Constructing Reality

2021 ◽  
pp. 86-121
Author(s):  
Stephen Grossberg
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Image Features ◽  
Color Spreading ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Artistic Styles ◽  
Neon Color Spreading ◽  
Boundary Completion

The distinction between seeing and knowing, and why our brains even bother to see, are discussed using vivid perceptual examples, including image features without visible qualia that can nonetheless be consciously recognized, The work of Helmholtz and Kanizsa exemplify these issues, including examples of the paradoxical facts that “all boundaries are invisible”, and that brighter objects look closer. Why we do not see the big holes in, and occluders of, our retinas that block light from reaching our photoreceptors is explained, leading to the realization that essentially all percepts are visual illusions. Why they often look real is also explained. The computationally complementary properties of boundary completion and surface filling-in are introduced and their unifying explanatory power is illustrated, including that “all conscious qualia are surface percepts”. Neon color spreading provides a vivid example, as do self-luminous, glary, and glossy percepts. How brains embody general-purpose self-organizing architectures for solving modal problems, more general than AI algorithms, but less general than digital computers, is described. New concepts and mechanisms of such architectures are explained, including hierarchical resolution of uncertainty. Examples from the visual arts and technology are described to illustrate them, including paintings of Baer, Banksy, Bleckner, da Vinci, Gene Davis, Hawthorne, Hensche, Matisse, Monet, Olitski, Seurat, and Stella. Paintings by different artists and artistic schools instinctively emphasize some brain processes over others. These choices exemplify their artistic styles. The role of perspective, T-junctions, and end gaps are used to explain how 2D pictures can induce percepts of 3D scenes.

How a Brain Sees: Neural Mechanisms

2021 ◽  
pp. 122-183
Author(s):  
Stephen Grossberg
Keyword(s):  
Illusory Contour ◽  
Local Contrast ◽  
Simple Complex ◽  
3D Vision ◽  
Color Spreading ◽  
Surface Filling ◽  
Contour Strength ◽  
Neon Color Spreading ◽  
Glass Patterns ◽  
Boundary Completion

Multiple paradoxical visual percepts are explained using boundary completion and surface filling-in properties, including discounting the illuminant; brightness constancy, contrast, and assimilation; the Craik-O’Brien-Cornsweet Effect; and Glass patterns. Boundaries act as both generators and barriers to filling-in using specific cooperative and competitive interactions. Oriented local contrast detectors, like cortical simple cells, create uncertainties that are resolved using networks of simple, complex, and hypercomplex cells, leading to unexpected insights such as why Roman typeface letter fonts use serifs. Further uncertainties are resolved by interactions with bipole grouping cells. These simple-complex-hypercomplex-bipole networks form a double filter and grouping network that provides unified explanations of texture segregation, hyperacuity, and illusory contour strength. Discounting the illuminant suppresses illumination contaminants so that feature contours can hierarchically induce surface filling-in. These three hierarchical resolutions of uncertainty explain neon color spreading. Why groupings do not penetrate occluding objects is explained, as are percepts of DaVinci stereopsis, the Koffka-Benussi and Kanizsa-Minguzzi rings, and pictures of graffiti artists and Mooney faces. The property of analog coherence is achieved by laminar neocortical circuits. Variations of a shared canonical laminar circuit have explained data about vision, speech, and cognition. The FACADE theory of 3D vision and figure-ground separation explains much more data than a Bayesian model can. The same cortical process that assures consistency of boundary and surface percepts, despite their complementary laws, also explains how figure-ground separation is triggered. It is also explained how cortical areas V2 and V4 regulate seeing and recognition without forcing all occluders to look transparent.

Issues in art librarianship in Canadian universities

1994 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-20
Author(s):  
Loren Lerner
Keyword(s):  
Image Processing ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Computer Technology ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
University Libraries ◽  
Canadian Universities ◽  
Electronic Networks ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Historical Investigation

Advances in visual arts research are significant, easing the gathering process and expanding the horizons of historical investigation. As visual arts scholarship changes, the vocabulary of art is evolving to describe new concepts, perspectives and concerns. Computer technology has made the location, description and retrieval of art information easier. The computer’s capacity to interrelate text and visual data through image processing has led to new types of reference and research tools. Communication amongst art researchers through electronic networks will transform academic discourse. All of these changes impact on the concept of the art library and the role of art librarians and visual curators in university libraries.

A Theory of Illusory Lightness and Transparency in Monocular and Binocular Images: The Role of Contour Junctions

Perception ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barton L Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Illumination Change ◽  
Discontinuous Change ◽  
Illusory Contours ◽  
Contrast Polarity ◽  
Color Spreading ◽  
Transparent Surface ◽  
Neon Color Spreading ◽  
Lower Contrast

A theory of illusory transparency and lightness is described for monocular and binocular images containing X-, T- and I-contour junctions. This theory asserts that the geometric and luminance relationships of contour junctions induce illusory transparency and lightness percepts by causing a phenomenal scission of a homogenous luminance into multiple contributions. Specifically, it is argued that a discontinuous change in contrast along aligned contours that preserve contrast polarity induces a scission of the lower contrast region into a near-transparent surface or an illumination change, and a more distant surface that continues behind this near layer. This scission is assumed to cause changes in perceived lightness and/or surface opacity. Discontinuous changes in contrast along contours also are assumed to induce end-cut illusory contours that run roughly perpendicular to the inducing orientation of the contour, both monocularly and binocularly. Binocular illusory contours are shown to be caused by the presence of unmatchable contour terminators. It is argued that the presented theory can provide a unified account of a variety of monocular and binocular illusions that induce uniform transformations in perceived lightness, including neon-color spreading, the Munker – White illusion, Benary's illusion, and illusory monocular and binocular transparency.

scholarly journals Introduction of computer graphics in training students of a direction "applied and decorative arts"

KANT ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-263
Author(s):  
Andrey Korobanov ◽  
Aleksandra Chertkova
Keyword(s):  
Computer Graphics ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Decorative Arts ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Computer Technologies ◽  
Successful Work ◽  
Artistic Styles ◽  
Applied Arts

The article discusses the issue of introducing computer graphics into the curriculum of students in the "Decorative and Applied Arts" direction and the role of computer technologies in the curriculum of art direction students. The author conducts an experimental research on the problem, during which the program developed for this discipline was tested. The aim of the study is to develop students' skills and abilities necessary for successful work in the field of visual arts in the realities of modern times. An analysis of the results of the experiment has been given, various aspects of its implementation have been disassembled, and the features of teaching computer graphics to students of artistic styles have been described.

Science and Dialectics in the Philosophies of Deleuze, Bachelard and DeLanda

Paragraph ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Williams
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Gaston Bachelard ◽  
Contemporary Science

This article charts differences between Gilles Deleuze's and Gaston Bachelard's philosophies of science in order to reflect on different readings of the role of science in Deleuze's philosophy, in particular in relation to Manuel DeLanda's interpretation of Deleuze's work. The questions considered are: Why do Gilles Deleuze and Gaston Bachelard develop radically different philosophical dialectics in relation to science? What is the significance of this difference for current approaches to Deleuze and science, most notably as developed by Manuel DeLanda? It is argued that, despite its great explanatory power, DeLanda's association of Deleuze with a particular set of contemporary scientific theories does not allow for the ontological openness and for the metaphysical sources of Deleuze's work. The argument turns on whether terms such as ‘intensity’ can be given predominantly scientific definitions or whether metaphysical definitions are more consistent with a sceptical relation of philosophy to contemporary science.

Language Ideology and Second Language Learning

2008 ◽  
Vol 155 ◽  
pp. 95-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresa McGarry
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Ideology ◽  
Second Language Learning ◽  
Classroom Practices ◽  
Explanatory Power

AbstractThe increasing recognition of the concept language ideology and the corresponding increasing use of the term have not yet been matched by applications in the field of second language acquisition. However, applications of the concept in analysis of actual classroom practices have shown it to have considerable explanatory power. Greater consideration of language ideology in SLA is necessary not only to achieve greater understanding of the role of ideology in various areas but also to show connections between these areas that may yield important generalizations and to impel the application of the concept in areas where it has been neglected by highlighting its uneven treatment.

Developing Craft in the Ballet Class

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-157
Author(s):  
Susie Crow
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Embodied Learning ◽  
Sports Science ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Theoretical Investigations ◽  
Attitudes And Perceptions

The ballet class is a complex pedagogical phenomenon in which an embodied tradition is transmitted in practice from one generation to the next, shaping not just the dancing but the attitudes and perceptions of dancers throughout their careers. This paper emerges from observations and experience of recent and current ballet class practice, and theoretical investigations into embodied learning in the arts. It outlines the influential role of large hegemonic institutions in shaping how ballet is currently taught and learned; and the effect of this on the class's evolving relation to ballet's repertoire of old and emerging dances as artworks. It notes the increasing importation into ballet pedagogy of thinking rooted in sports science, engendering the notion of the dancer as athlete; and of historic attitudes which downplay the agency of the dancer. I propose an alternative model for understanding the nature of learning in the ballet class, relating it to what Donald Schön calls ‘deviant traditions of education for practice’ in other performing and visual arts ( Schön 1987 p16). I look at the dancer's absorption via the class of ballet's danse d’école, its core technique of academic dance content. I suggest how this process might more constructively be understood through the lens of craft learning and the development of craftsmanship via apprenticeship, the dancer learning alongside the teacher as experienced artist practitioner who models behaviours that foster creativity.

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