Form, Perception, and Unconsciousness

At first I was confused at how the chapter on form would be any different from the chapter on shape. Before now, I suppose I always understood the two words as having the same meaning. The way I made myself understand the difference was to think of a basic shape or object. If you turn it in another direction, it is still the same shape, but depending on your perspective of it, it has changed form.

This also makes me think about facial perception. I remember Oliver Sachs mentioning that sometimes patient’s would have a hard time recognizing family and friends because their facialexpression would change. To the patients, the person would look so different that it was hard for them to believe it was the same person. This fact makes me curious about how reliable our vision is—even those with perfect vision. And how this could affect our ability to correctly identify a criminal or the visual details of a crime? Seeing something or someone from a different angle could cause you to believe you are seeing something entirely different. I feel that we often “see”, not with our visual system, but with our brains (previous knowledge and assumptions through past experiences).

Arnheim describes foreshortening in three different ways—1) The image is not orthogonal (as the Egyptian art), 2) The image does not provide a characteristic view of the whole, 3) any image withparts that are changed in proportion or disappear partly or completely. I found the exampleof the “monstrous horse-man” interesting; however, not because I was confused by my knowledge that it was a horse, and my eyes thinking it was a penguin shaped creature. Before I read what Arnheim had to say about it, I was intrigued by the image because I had to study it before I could tell which direction the horse was facing. (I don’t know, maybe that’s just me?) I suppose after reading Arnheim’s description and studying it longer, I am able to better visualize how that image would appear strange or distorted to someone who was not used to seeing objects represented through different perspectives.

As I have never given much thought to form before, I am interested in applying what I am learning to the filmmaking process. Personally, I find the foreshortened and distorted images visually intriguing. I like not immediately knowing what I am looking at, and the process ofpiecing together details to form the image in my mind, which I am consciously or unconsciously basing it from. “The expression conveyed by any visual form is only as clear-cut as the perceptual features that carry it” (Arnheim, pg. 161). This quote has inspired me to experiment with the camera and to tell my story not solely with the images in my film, but with the way the images are shot. I realize that I rely heavily on the image itself and the voices of characters, and I would enjoy making a film that relies almost entirely on the viewer’s interpretation of the images being presented. I am virtually new to everything in the art world, and even filmmaking was something I accidentally stumbled upon last semester. When I made ashort film as my conference project for an oral history course, I put a lot of thought into the story I wanted to share, but not into the aesthetics of the film—because I really had no idea how to make a film. And so I was really surprised by the reaction it got, and my professors seemed tobe shocked that I had no previous experience. It turns out that I did all these things in my film by accident, but now I am wondering if perhaps it wasn’t accidental, but unconscious? And furthermore I wonder how often these unconscious elements appear in artwork? I think that it is great if one does something purposely, but I wouldn’t describe a piece of art as less meaningful or beautiful if it was created without a clear objective in mind. In fact, there is something more artistic about it if it is closely linked to discovery.

Some old and new examples of art and form (foreshortening, overlapping, depth, etc). As well as a bad example of foreshortening!