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PERCEPTION The sense of sight operates selectively. Perception is not a passive recording of all that is in front of the eyes but is a continuous judgement of scale and colour relationships (Ittens, 1988), and the of making catagories of forms to classify images and shapes in the world. ( Arnheim 1970 ) THINKING IN IMAGES AND WORDS Thought processes are diffused and interconnected and are cognitive at a sensual level. The mind thinks at its deepest level in sense material and the two hemispheres of the brain have evolved to deal with different kinds of thought; to gather the mass of memory data: fleeting images or parts of images and sounds; into communicable language. The neocortex which envelopes most of the earlier brain amounts to about 85 per cent of the human brain mass. The brain is divided into two hemispheres and a thick bundle of nerve fibres enable these two halves to communicate with each other. In most people the ability to organise and produce speech is predominantly located in the left side. Appreciating spatial perceptions depends more on the right hemisphere, although there is a left hemisphere contribution. (Davidmann 1999) IMAGING IN THE MIND What we have in our minds in a waking state and what we imagine in dreams is very much of the same nature (Hiller 2000) . Dream images might be with or without spoken words, other sounds or colours. But in the waking state there is always, in the foreground, the buzz of immediate perception, feeling, mood and fleeting memory (Edelman and Tononi 2000). GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY The perception of a shape requires the grasping of the essential structural features, to produce a 'whole' or ' Gestalt '. The theory of the 'gestalt' was proposed by Christian von Ehrenfels in 1890. He poined out that a melody is still recognisable when played in diferent keys and argued that the whole is not simply the sum of its parts but a total structure . Max Wertheimer, continued von Ehrenfels' idea into research. In his 'Theory of Form', 1923, nicknamed 'the dot essay', because it was illustrated with abstract patterns of dots and lines, he concluded that the perceiving eye tends to bring together elements that look alike (similarity groupings) and will complete an incomplete form (Behrens 2000). MEANING AND EXPRESSION Abstract Art has shown that the qualities of line and shape, proportion and colour convey meaning directly without the use of words. Wassily Kandinsky in 'Point and Line to Plane' showed how drawn lines and marks can be expressive without any association with a representational image. Throughout history and especially in ancient cultures visual language has been used to encoded meaning: :The Bronze Age Badger Stone on Ilkly Moor is covered in circles, lines, hollow cups, winged figures, a spread hand, an ancient swastika, an embryo, a shooting star? ...It's a story telling rock, a message from a world before (written) words. (Derek Hyatt 1995) Vision gives us inexhaustibly rich information about the objects and events of the outside world. The language we use to record this phenomena is, because of the simplicity of line, shape and colour, infinitely adabtable to the needs of communication. REFERENCES:
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