Perceiving+Draft

= Chapter 2 • Perceiving = The cognitive tool of perception is critical to both the arts and the sciences. We envisage it as a two-layered process, requiring both observing and imaging. Observing is the first step to understanding anything and is a finely tuned skill based on intent focus on, attention to, and curiosity about information gathered through the five senses. For example, bacteriologists use their sense of smell to observe bacteria, or an ornithologist might identify bird species by sound. Inventors and mechanics cultivate hands-on experience with tools and machines - relying on a sense of “feel” to know how tightly a knob or mechanical part is screwed on. A higher level of observation calls for imaging, or the ability to evoke or bring to mind the impressions/sensations we observe, without the presence of external stimuli. Artists, scientists, mathematicians and engineers all have well-developed imaging skills and find them essential for the work they do.

= **TABLE OF CONTENTS** = Observing • Imaging Observing Experts • Imaging Experts Observing Skills • Imaging Skills Conclusion

= Talkin' about ... perception =





=Observing = The secret of observation lies in time and patience. [35] Observing is making sense of sensation. [44] Advocate explicit observational exercises in classes in every subject. All students need to develop sensory a ﻿ cuity. [47] All knowledge begins in observation. We must be able to perceive our world accurately to be able to discern patterns of action, abstract their principles, make analogies between properties of things, create models of behaviors, and innovate fruitfully. [30]



**Examination **
… simply looking, even patiently, is not sufficient. Part of seeing … is knowing what to look at or for. [36]

**Visualize **
Discovering the sublimity of the mundane is not limited to scientific observers. Much of modern art has focused on rethinking the value of everyday phenomena. “The true creator,” Stravinsky wrote, “may be recognized by his [sic] ability always to find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note.” [41]

Tea Bag by @Claes Oldenburg, 1996. "I often drop the bags I use when drinking tea, and the effect is that of a 'print'.... I always try to establish a corresponding effect outside of art for what I do in art." =

**Description **
… images may be perceived and communicated not just as pictures, but in many other, nonvisual ways… We not only see with the mind’s eye, we hear with the mind’s ear, imagine smells and tastes and body feelings—and any or all of these sensation pictures may be involved in the imagination and communication of images. To put it another way, if we observe with our eyes, we form a visual image. If we observe with our hands, we form a tactile as well as a hand-position, hand-movement image. If we observe with our nose, we form a smell image that may play a major role in scientific or artistic invention. What we can observe, we can imagine; what we imagine, we image. [56-57]

There is, however, one downside to becoming a dexterous imager: the better one’s skill, the more frustrated one may become in trying to present images directly to people. The need to translate through another medium can be painful… We remain in that “primitive” state in which all mental images must still be translated through other mediums, be they words, music, movements, models, paintings, diagrams, films, sculptures, or mathematical treatises. [66-67] =Imaging = Imaging is largely a private and personal shorthand of sights, sounds, and other sensations, ranging from realistic representations of phenomena to idiosyncratic abstractions and sensory associations. [61] Everyone benefits from the development of imaging technique that comes with hands-on experience in arts and crafts, or with simple mental practice. [63] Imaging skills can be learned and improved with exercise. [63] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Imaging draws on experience. [64]

The visual image is only a sign, not nature itself. [42]





Numerous studies have found significant correlations between aptitude for visual imaging and career success in engineering… nonverbal imagery plays a central role in invention in general…Indeed, imaging benefits people in all professions. [51-52]

<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Visual Thinking**


Art does not render the visible, it makes visible (Paul Klee) [46]

<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Imagination**
The mind must be trained to observe just as much as we train the eyes, the ears, the nose, or the hands. [44]

<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Polysensual**
Most imaging is actually polysensual. [59]

The keenest observers make use of every kind of sensory information. In fact, the greatest insights often come to individuals who are able to appreciate the “sublimity of the mundane,” the deeply surprising and meaningful beauty in everyday things. [40]Being deprived of one sense can indeed sharpen our reliance on others, though not on their actual acuity. We learn to use sensory stimuli that we usually ignore, and sometimes such heightened attention results in original insights. [37]

=<span style="color: #008000; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; text-align: center;">Practice Examples: = Although some people have a greater proclivity for visual imaging than others, everyone benefits from practice. So even if you need to draw images or model them at first, working with these problems will train your visualizing ability. The more your practice, the more you will be able to partake of and understand the visual thinking process of countless inventors, mathematicians, physicists, artists, writers, and dancers. [53] You can try more complicated maging problems, such as those proposed by Max Wertheimer in his 1959 book //Productive Thinking.//



<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Example 1:
==Julian Beever is an [|English] [|chalk] [|artist][|[1]] who has been creating [|trompe-l'œil] chalk drawings on [|pavement] surfaces since the mid-1990s. He uses a projection technique called [|anamorphosis] to create the illusion of three dimensions when viewed from the correct angle.==

media type="file" key="Julien Beaver, 3D STREET-ART.flv" width="359" height="369" align="center"

<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Example 2:
<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">… individual imaging preferences have important implications for the way we teach mathematics and other scientific subjects. [62] … if some people do algebra geometrically and others do geometry algebraically; if some people use equations to conceive reality and others use pictures; and if pictures can combine visual with aural, as well as with olfactory and gustatory senses and bodily feelings, then we would do well to complement our usually abstract pedagogy with multi-imaging approaches to knowledge. [63] Teach children music patterns and memory with hand bells.... media type="youtube" key="qXOCg_sgT7c?fs=1" height="385" width="480" align="center"

= <span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Optimus prime examples... = This section may be most useful for teachers within particular disciplines (or perhaps across disciplines) as you can find information about the observers and imagers discussed by Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein in Chapters 3 & 4 of //Sparks of Genius//. In most cases, clicking on a person's name or accompanying image will take you to information about them on Wikipedia. Beneath the accompanying images are links to some of their works, through which deeper discoveries can be made.

=<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">﻿Observing Experts =

<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">﻿ ||
 * ==<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Science & Mathematics ==
 * = [|Archimedes]

||= [|Henry Bates] ||= [|John Cairns] ||= [|Santiago Ramón y Cajal] ||= [|Charles Darwin] || ||= [|Tom Eisner] ||= [|Alfred Fischer] ||= [|Karl von Frisch] ||= [|Primo Levi] || ||= [|Fritz Müller] ||= [|Pythagoras] ||= [|Edward Rickets] ||= [|Nathaniel Shaler] || ||= **[|Gerald Thayer]**
 * = //[|The Works of Archimedes]// ||=  ||=   ||=   ||=   ||
 * = [|Jared Diamond]
 * = [|Konrad Lorenz]
 * = [|Konrad Lorenz]
 * = **[|Elwyn Simons]** ||= **[|Albert Szent-Györgyi]**
 * = **[|Elwyn Simons]** ||= **[|Albert Szent-Györgyi]**

||= **[|John Tyndall]** ||= **[|Geerat Vermeij]** || ||=  ||= [|**Sir Francis Seymour Haden**]
 * =  ||= **[|Alfred Russel Walace]**
 * =  ||= **[|Alfred Russel Walace]**

||=  ||
 * =  ||= //Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection// //Darwinism// ||=   ||=   ||=   ||

||= [|Sir Arthur Conan Doyle] ||= [|Daphne Du Maurier] ||= [|W. Somerset Maugham] ||= [|Marianne Moore] || ||= [|John Dos Passos] ||= [|Herbert Read] ||= [|John Steinbeck] ||= [|Wyndham Lewis] ||
 * ==<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Humanities == ||
 * = [|e. e. cummings]
 * = [|Vladimir Nabokov]
 * = [|Vladimir Nabokov]
 * =  ||=   ||= Louise Morgan ||=   ||=   ||
 * =  ||=   ||= Louise Morgan ||=   ||=   ||

||= [|Marcel Duchamp]
 * ==<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Visual Arts == ||
 * = [|Eugène Delacroix]

||= [|Jasper Johns] ||= [|Paul Klee]

||= [|René Magritte] || ||= [|Georgia O’Keeffe] ||= [|Claes Oldenburg] ||= [|Beverly Pepper] ||= [|Pablo Picasso] || ||= [|Julian Beever]
 * = [|Henri Matisse]
 * = [|Henri Matisse]
 * =  ||= [|Vincent Van Gogh]
 * =  ||= [|Vincent Van Gogh]

||= [|Oskar Schlemmer] ||=  ||

||= [|Merce Cunningham] ||= [|Anna Halprin] ||= [|Doris Humphrey] ||= [|Olivier Messiaen] ||
 * = ==<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Performing Arts == ||
 * = [|Richard Boleslavsky]
 * = Mark Morris ||= Alwin Nikolais ||= Robert Schumann ||= Konstantin Stanislavsky ||= Igor Stravinsky ||
 * ||  || Georg Philipp Telemann ||   ||   ||
 * ||  || Georg Philipp Telemann ||   ||   ||
 * ||  || Georg Philipp Telemann ||   ||   ||

=<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Imaging Experts = Peter Carruthers Peter Debye Richard Feynman Robert Fulton Margaret Geller François Jacob Sofya Kovalevskaya Sophus Lie James Lovelock Peter Mitchell Samuel Morse Henri Poincaré Georg Riemann Ann Roe Elmer Sperry George Gaylord Simpson Charles Steinmetz Nikola Tesla Karl Weierstrass Norbert Wiener || The Brontë Sisters G. K. Chesterton Samuel Coleridge Charles Dickens Margaret Drabble Pierre Hermé Amy Lowell Henry Miller Donald Murray Vladimir Nabokov Johann Pestalozzi Siegfried Sassoon Stephen Spender William Thackery J. R. R. Tolkien Charlie Trotter Tennessee Williams || Max Bill Edvard Munch Georgia O’Keefe Paul Strand || George Antheil David Bar-Illian Ludwig van Beethoven Henry Cowell Martha Graham Stuart Hodes Arthur Honegger Charles Ives Alicia de Larrocha Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Luciano Pavoratti Anna Sokolow ||
 * == <span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Science & Mathematics == || == **<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Humanities ** == ||
 * Sir James Black
 * == <span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Visual Arts == || == <span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Performing Arts  == ||
 * Ansel Adams

= <span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Skill bill... A menu of helpful techniques for skill building = =<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Build your Observing Skills: =
 * Practice observing by being blindfolded. What do you feel? Smell?
 * Close your eyes and attempt to construct what is going on nearby through sound.
 * Select an object, notice its form, it's lines, its colors, its sounds, its tactile characteristics, its smell, perhaps even its taste. Then remove the object and recall one by one as many details as possible. Write about what you perceived or draw it. Go back and observe it again.

<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Activity 1:


.Activity: Step 1-- Look at the image above close up. Who do you see? (Albert Einsten)

Step 2--Now take a few steps back and look at it again, do you see someone else? (Marilyn Monroe!)

<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Activity 2:
For all these reasons we advocate explicit observational exercises in classes in every subject. All students need to develop sensory acuity. [47]



=<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Build your Imaging Skills: = Everyone should be introduced to a wide range of imaging skills and be given the opportunity to master as many of these as possible. Fortunately, imaging skills can be learned and improved by exercise. [63]
 * What do you image while listening to [|Mozart] ? Could you explain what you heard in words, draw a visual representation, or nonverbally communicate the rhythm, meaning, and intent of the piece? What emotions does the piece invoke?
 * Make up excuses to use your inner eye, your inner ear, your inner nose, your inner sense of touch and of body.
 * Think concretely about abstract concepts.
 * Pay attention to visual, aural, proprioceptive, and other sensations daily.
 * Don't just learn, do!

What does the color show you? Could you perceive the season because of the color? Did color arouse other senses? Does the distortion or lack of color add anything to the picture?


=<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 1.1em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">And in conclusion, may I say.... = <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Drawing conclusions -- from both sides of the brain, a summary of sorts. <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> Because the “mind’s sense” that control the “senses of the body” skew and filter what we experience, objective observation is not possible. [43] So observing is a form of thinking, and thinking is a form of observing. In consequence, the purpose in practicing observation is to link sensory experience and mental awareness as closely as possible. [43 – 44] … Szent-Gyorgyi argued, “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” Observing is making sense of sensation. [44] If one of the objects of education is to produce lifelong learners, what better recommendation for practicing the skill of observation [//and imaging//] could one want? [49]