What did you just see? A sphere, right? Have you ever wondered why you see a sphere when all the image shows is cones and triangles?
How about this figure? Actually, it is just 4 blue circles with one side missing arrange in a certain way but we tend to see a white square instead!
And if I ask what you just see, you will probably tell me you saw a smiley face. Aren’t that just circles assembling in a way that we perceive as a smiley face? And again, our brain perceive differently from reality.
All of these happen because of the Gestalt Theory. It states that human brain tends to group object together. We want to see things as a whole. Our brain prefers unity rather than detail in each visual presentation. Even when those lines and shapes did not show the figure directly, our brain is capable of drawing those connecting lines by itself. This may be one of the reasons why people can perceive things differently. We all have got a diverse in visual ability. Variety of perception depends on each person’s experiences in life. They combine it with what their brain perceive and create unique visual solutions. On the other hand, this phenomenon allows artists and designers to participate in the audience’s perception. They have wider field to play with their ideas and ways to present it just like this poster from School of Visual Art. If you look at it closely, all you will see is tons of words. However, if you just swiftly walk passes it, you would only see a picture of an eye.
Isn’t that amazing?
Pictures taken from:
http://hayleyjones.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/gestalt-research/
http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/10/24/the-timing-of-the-shrew/
So, we see things we want to see?
ReplyDeleteMay be people from Mar see the first picture as square!