Pervasiveness of Visual Systems in Learning

 

 

 

 

 Mahnaz Shah

PhD Candidate Architectural Association, School of Architecture London, UK

MSAE Massachusetts College of Art, Boston USA.

Email: shah_ma@aaschool.ac.uk

 

 

 

 

Abstract

 

Everything in nature is affected by multiple factors, which in turn are further affected by other factors. Linearity of any system, whether natural or artificial is only an isolated aspect of that system.

 

In an educational environment, to avoid linearity and repetition and for effective learning to take place, an educator encourages multiple investigations in any given subject.

 

The importance of comparison and contrast can best be translated in the digital interface, if a structure is built in the system that encourages the user to do just that. Many people will argue that the search engines and the world wide web encourages comparison.

 

However that is a comparison of information, in which the user moves from one window into another.

 

The experiment proposed in this paper is about multiple levels of information access in the same window, thereby involving an active participation of space, time and movement – which hopefully may lead to visual thinking and a new level of creativity.

 

 

1.    DEFINING THE PROBLEM

Through further exploration of the structure and interface of the digital visual technology, the author hopes to evolve diverse models of graphical and data structures. This in turn leads to a deeper understanding of graphics and graphic information processing.

It is hoped that this study will help in understanding the significance of digital visual technology and its inherent cognitive implications.

 

1.1   Defining the terminology

For the purpose of clarity, the key words visual system and learning are defined in order to focus on the key elements.

 

1.2  Visual System

Jacques Bertin in his excellent analysis [fig.1] on the Semiology of Graphics defined Visual System as a form of visual perception which has at its disposal, “three sensory variables which do not involve time: the variation of marks and the two dimensions of the plane. The sign-systems intended for the eye are, above all, spatial and atemporal.” [1]

The atemporal attribute of visual system, according to Bertin applies only to the two dimensional visual media as he further goes on to state that, “the intervention of real movement…although perceptible by vision, would make us pass from the graphic system (atemporal) into film, whose laws are very different.”[2]

System of perception

 

      ear                     eye
 
 

 

Sensory

Variables

 

 

 

 

 

 

Total

 

 

 

Instantaneous perception
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Fig. 1   Bertin’s chart on the: Perceptual properties of linear and spatial systems.

 

 

Movement whether temporal or metaphorical has played an important role in the history of visual arts. With its presence in digital media it has now become an integral part of the digital visual technology. Therefore in order to define visual system in the digital context, Bertin’s system of perception is slightly altered, by including the third and fourth dimension of space within the two dimensional plane. This gives the digital visual technology a temporal attribute as well as an inherent disappearance of the so called congenital fixity of the image.

 

 

 

1.2.1  Structural Basis of Visual System

Visual system in the theoretical context is a space that can be visualized through a point, a line, a plane, a physical form or a temporal moment. The dynamics of visual system allows innumerable intermediary stages as shown below in fig. 2.

 

Fig. 2: Visual Learning            continuum

1 D                                       2D                                                3D                                           4D

                line drawing                   wire sculpture/relief                    kinetic sculpture                  

                elevations                       perspective drawing                   fractal dimension 

                1-2 fractals                       2 –3 fractals                 hypercube

                orthographic view        axonometric/isometric

 

               

line                                          painting                     sculpture/ models                            film/ video/ performance

                                graphic art/ graphs/charts                                                                 

                                                                                                               

 

 

1.3       ‘Learning’ Defined

Arnheim (1989) defined perception as a cognitive/learning activity and stressed the interdependence of perception and thinking. He believed cognitive activity to encompass; “all mental operations involved in the receiving, storing, and processing of information: sensory perception, memory, thinking and learning.

Screenshots of graphic software applications [fig.3] commonly used in technology enabled classrooms show the use of almost identical interface design.

 

Example include:

 

1.      Software that generate music, e.g., ‘Sound-Edit 16’, 

2.      Software for basic graphic design layout such as, Photoshop, Illustrator and QuarkXpress.

3.      Software that generate animation: Flash, Director.

4.      Software for three-dimensional model making: Form Z, Maya, AutoCad etc.

 

The above mentioned, software, due to their common interface, encourage the eye to scan predominantly in a two dimensional space. This may affect the development of visual perception, thinking and learning habits of the user.

 

According to Dake (2000) a continuous use of web or computers in general may affect the ‘eyescan patterns’ [3] of the individual. A recent neuropsychological study (Zangmeister, Sherman, and Stark [4], 1995) of professional art viewers and artists vs. non-professionals, showed that professionals relied on many more global movements of the eye to determine structure. Professionals also had a significant greater ratio between global and local (small and detailed) eye scans than did non-artists. Yarbus (1967) demonstrated that although eyescans patterns are highly individual, they are also greatly altered by verbal instructions given to a subject. Since individuals are not conscious of the patterns of the eyescans, this finding may have great implications for the manner in which instructions are given.[5]

 

A study in 1995 by Heilman et al. discovered that the global – local dichotomy, may be related to the manner in which the right and left hemispheres respond to spatial frequencies. Their data showed that the right hemisphere tends to direct attention towards visual extrapersonal space (far from the body). This makes right hemisphere processing more concerned with global matters of fuzzy, low spatial frequency. The left hemisphere by contrast directs attention to visual information that takes place close to the body (peripersonal space with detailed and sharp, high spatial frequency [6]. (Humphreys and Bruce 1989) The integration and synchronization of the functions of the two hemispheres has been related to the phenomenon of creative visual thinking [7]. (Elliot, 1986)

 

2.  PROPOSED EXPERIMENT

"After comprehending the outside of the object, the child likes also to investigate its inside; after a perception of the whole, to see it separated into its parts; if he obtained a glimpse of the first, if he has attained the second, he would like from the parts again to create the whole"

Frederick Froebel, 1896

 

2.1  Rationale

The development of a multi-dimensional interface permits the user to investigate multiple information. The generation and study of the interface will be based on, ‘shape grammar applications.’

(Economou, 2000) Shape grammar applications have been developed for analytic and design purposes. Typically in analytic applications, a set of designs is selected, abstracted versions of these designs are extracted to bring forward some aspects of the composition that are of interest to the designer of the shape grammar, spatial relations between parts are selected, shape rules are defined in terms of these spatial relations, an initial shape is selected to start the computation, and shape rules are applied successively to an evolving shape starting with the initial shape. Designs generated by the grammar typically include the original set of designs that was chosen for analysis, and many other hypothetical designs that share the same spatial and functional characteristics with those of the

 


Fig.4


 


Fig.5

 

 

original set. Typically in design applications, a set of spatial relations is selected, shape rules are defined in terms of these spatial relations, an initial shape is selected, and shape rules are applied successively to an evolving shape starting with the initial shape. Spatial relations between shapes may be taken from a predefined set of spatial relations that are of interest to the designer of the grammar, or can be constructed from scratch as instances of generalized types of spatial relations between shapes. These generalized versions may include all possible relations that can be constructed between any two shapes and shapes may be any finite arrangements of points, lines, planes and solids, including the empty shape. [8]

 

 

 

2.2  Experiment

 

In the proposed experiment [fig. 4-6] the interaction of the user with the structure is the key element of the concept. The interaction takes place at three levels.

 

Physical interaction

Intellectual interaction

Cognitive interaction

 

 

 

2.2.1       Physical Interaction

 

Physical interaction between the user and the computer, has the potential to promote intellectual and cognitive development if the computer has an interface designed to address these areas of learning.

 

Unfortunately current computer interfaces disregard intellectual and cognitive implications and focus more on concrete physical interaction. Many scholars are beginning to question the viability of the digital medium in the current age.

 

According to Gilbert Ryle; “We should begin by dismissing a model which in one form or another dominates many speculations about perception. The beloved but spurious question, ‘How can a person get beyond his sensations and apprehension of external realities?’ is often posed as if the situation were like this: There is immured in a windowless cell a prisoner, who has lived there in solitary confinement since birth. All that comes to him from the outside world is flickers of light thrown upon his cell-walls and tappings heard through the stones; yet from these observed flashes and tappings he becomes, or seems to become, apprised of unobserved football-matches, flower-gardens

 

Fig. 6 

 

 


and eclipses of the sun. How then does he learn the ciphers in which his signals are arranged, or even find out that there are such things as ciphers? How can he interpret the messages which he somehow deciphers, given that the vocabularies of those messages are vocabularies of football and astronomy and not those of flickers and tappings?

 

This model is of course the familiar picture of the mind as a ghost in a machine, about the general defects of which nothing more need be said. But certain particular defects do need to be noticed. The use of this sort of model involves the explicit or implicit assumption that, much as the prisoner can see flicker and hear tappings, but cannot, unfortunately see or hear football matches, so we can observe our visual and other sensations, but cannot unfortunately observe robins. [9]

 

It isn’t possible for any visual system, except nature, to give a full sensation of natural objects or sensations. However it is possible for a visual system to train the eye to capture such a spectacle, and to use that training in a manner that helps deduce multiple interpretations.

 

2.2.2       Intellectual Interaction

 

Technology and more specifically computers and desktop publishers have an interface, that allows the user to compute, draw, read, write and evaluate data and images in pretty much the same manner. The idea behind this practice is to allow for maximum familiarity and usage. Commenting on this trend, Ivins notes; “Thus the more closely we can confine our data for reasoning about things to data that come to us through one and the same sense channel the more apt we are to be correct in our reasoning, even though it be much more restricted in its scope. One of the most interesting things in our modern scientific practice has been the invention and perfection of methods by which the scientist can acquire much of their basic data through one and the same sensuous channel of awareness. I understand that in physics, for example the scientists are the happiest when they can get their data with the aid of some dial or some device which can be read by vision. Thus heat, weight, lengths, and many other things that in ordinary life are apprehended through senses other than vision have become for science matter of visual awareness of the positions of mechanical pointers.” [10]

 

Does this not imply that if we can devise a consistent means of translating all aspects of our world into the language of one sense only, we shall then have a distortion that is scientific because consistent and coherent? Blake thought that this had actually occurred in the eighteenth century when he sought liberation ‘from single vision and Newton’s sleep.’ For the dominance of one sense is the formula for hypnosis. And a culture can be locked in the sleep of any one sense. The sleeper awakes when challenged in any other sense.

 

The experiment hopes to break the monotony and regularity of the computer interface, in the hope of awaking the user to think beyond the rigidity of existing digital visual technology.

 

2.2.3       Cognitive Interaction

 

Cognition, generally is believed to mean the accumulation of knowledge. Accumulation of information by books, or through the electronic media seems to be the sole criteria for defining knowledge. Under this criteria the current digital systems seem to be adequately equipped to impart knowledge.

According to Brett: “The idea that knowledge is essentially book learning seems to be a very modern view, probably derived from the mediaeval distinctions between clerk and layman, with additional emphasis provided by the literary character of the rather fantastic humanism of the sixteenth century. The original and natural idea of knowledge is that of ‘cunning’ or the possession of wits. Odysseus is the original type of thinker, a man of many ideas who could overcome the Cyclops and achieve a significant triumph of mind over matter. Knowledge is thus a capacity for overcoming the difficulties of life and achieving success in this world.[11]

 

The proposed experiment in its hope of breaking conformity and linearity of the system hopes to explore knowledge as a self assessed phenomenon.

 

The main purpose of the proposed experiment is to bring in some sort of change in the existing mode of perception of the computer user. By modifying the navigation, the interface, the entire concept of data display and analysis through a revised interface, it is hoped that the user will awake from her/his slumber and be more creative and analytical.

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

By studying visual systems and their immense effect on learning, it is imperative to question the role of existing digital visual technology in learning. As we move into the 21st century, the developed world moves from visualization of information to a visualization of environment [12]. We already think in images, we need to redefine the role and properties of visual images, keeping in mind the role of Brain compatible visual art education.  The purpose of this paper was a brief overview of the pervasiveness of visual systems in learning. An experiment was proposed to explore digital visual technology, in order to study learning in a less monotonous environment.

Moholy- Nagy in The New Vision,  believes; “Art is the senses’ grindstone, sharpening the eyes, the mind and the feelings. Art has an educational and formative ideological function, since not only the conscious but also the subconscious mind absorbs the social atmosphere which can be translated into art. The artist interprets ideas and concepts through his own media. Despite the indirectness of his statement, his work expresses allegiance to the few or many, to arrogance or humility, to the fixed or the visionary. In this sense, he must take sides, must proclaim his stand and no true artist can escape this task. Otherwise his work would be no more than an exercise in skill. What art contains is not basically different from the content of our other utterances but art attains its effect mainly by subconscious organization of its own means. If that were not so, all problems could be solved successfully through intellectual or verbal discourse alone.” [13]

 

 

 

 

References:

 

 

1.        Bertin, Jacques Semiology of Graphics  p.2

2.        Bertin, Jacques Semiology of Graphics  p.6

3.        Dake, D. M ‘Brain Compatible Visual Education Part 2: Some Promising Art/Science Connections Translations: From Theory and Practice A Reference Publication of the National Art Education Association Summer 2000 Vol. 9, No. 3

4.        Zangmeister, W. H., Sherman, K. & Stark, L. (1995) ‘Evidence for a Global Scanpath Strategy in Viewing Abstract Compared with Realistic Images. Neuropsychologia Vol.33, No.8, p.1009-1025

5.        Yarbus, A.L. (1967) Eye Movement and Vision NY, Plenum Press.

6.        Humphreys, G.W. & Bruce, V. (1989) Seeing Static Forms in Visual Cognition: Computational, Experimental and Neuropsychological Perspectives Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Association Pub., p.9-21

7.        Elliot, P. (1986) ‘Right (or left) Brain Cognition, Wrong Metaphor or Creative Behavior. It is Prefrontal Lobe Volition that Makes the Human Difference in Release of Creative Potential., Journal of Creative Behavior, Vol.20, No.3, p.203-214

8.        Economou, A. Shape Grammars in Architectural Design Studio Georgia Institute of Technology 2000 ACSA TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE 75

9.        Ryle, The Concept of Mind p.223-4

10.     Ivins, William.  Print and Visual Communication p. 54

11.     Brett, G. S. Psychology ancient and Modern p.36-7

12.     Dake, D. M ‘Brain Compatible Visual Education Part 2: Some Promising Art/Science Connections Translations: From Theory and Practice A Reference Publication of the National Art Education Association Summer 2000 Vol. 9, No. 3

13.     Moholy-Nagy The New Vision   Wittenborn, (Schultz, Inc. New York 1947) p.45

 

 

 

Notes:

 

The Kindergarten method, or Children's garden method, was invented by Frederick Froebel, a German educator at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The method was based on a system of categories or realms of geometrical forms and a series of geometrical gifts. The system of categories was employed by the teachers to suggest possibilities in the children's play. Froebel identified three categories of form; forms of knowledge (or science), forms of beauty (or art), and forms of life (or nature). Forms of knowledge introduced abstract logical elements and relations found in numbers, ratios, proportion, equivalence, the Pythagorean theorem and so on. Forms of beauty introduced abstract spatial relations exemplified by symmetrical arrangements of blocks, patterns, ornaments, rotational or reflective symmetries and so on. Forms of life introduced relations observed in objects of the real world, such as in arrangements of blocks representing tables, chairs, houses and so on. An emphasis on organization of thought, selection in observation and awareness of the underlying principles involved were the direct lessons that the children were learning through this structured play within the kindergarten..

Source: Athanassios Economou COUNTING, COLORING AND COMPUTING:

LESSONS FROM THE KINDERGARTEN (2000) College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA