I like this issue Cheerskep brings up. Some years ago Robert Solso wrote a fascinating book, Cognition and the Visual Arts. Solso gives detailed explanations of how we receive sense data and how it is processed and how that process results in what we see. Seeing is a constructive activity, not a passive one.
We can measure what our area of focus really is by performing the simple excercise of stretching out one arm and extending the thumb. Now see what the thumb blocks from sight. What is blocked is your area of focus. Quite small. But we insist that we see far more than that. What we are doing of course is moving our eyes from point to point, cognitively stitching together an ever shifting field of vision, constructing it from memory, instant to instant. Again, what we see is what we have constructed and the construction itself is a complex "massively parallel" (another damned computer term) involving billions of neurons and multiple centers of cognition. If you have seen how people choose sites for making films you know that they first make dozens and dozens of little snapshots and then place them edge to edge to attain a panoramic view (see Hockney's photo projects too). That approximates how we see...just a bunch of little snapshots blended together by constructive memory and edited by emotions, aspirations, all the fictions of consciousness. We receive sensory data but we don't know it until we cognitively process it...and then it's too late to know what it was because we've already changed it. WC --- On Sun, 10/5/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: Perceptual Cropping was Marks on Canvas > To: [email protected] > Date: Sunday, October 5, 2008, 10:18 AM > I suspect I have this wrong, but I think one of the postings > suggested that > in our everyday activities we "perceptually crop" > our sight -- that is, our > visual-perceiving faculty (where by 'visual > perceiving' I mean solely the > recording-as-sense-data what is "coming through" > our eyes) does not feed through for > processing everything hitting the eyes at any given moment. > I take it > "perceptual cropping" amounts to cropping our > "field of vision". What's in that > field, but outside the "frame" just doesn't > "get through". > > This seems comparable to "aural cropping" I'm > familiar with -- the "blocking > out" of, say, inane babble at the next table in a > restaurant: we "hear" it, > but we don't, let's say, "register" it in > any detail in our consciousness. (I > skip here the question of whether or not the likes of a > hypnotist could make us > retrieve the conversation from some memory level below > consciousness.) > > This aural cropping -- a bit like the difference between > "hearing" and > "listening" -- is something I have experienced. > But I have not experienced visual > cropping in a similar sense of having some inner judging > mechanism "frame" a > selected part of the total field of vision. > > I certainly recognize the rigidity, the fixedness, of my > focal point. But for > me this is not an adjustable frame. My "focal > point" is, of course, not a > "point" -- it has some breadth. When I'm > reading, I'm not limited to, say, one > letter or even one word at any instant. But it's not > more than the three or > four words in the center of my field of vision at any > instant. A phrase four > lines up and over to the left may be in my field of vision > but I don't register > in useable detail. > > How I "frame" things into attention visually is > by moving my focal point. But > I cannot adjust the "dimensions" of that frame. > Where I may be going wrong is > in failing to gasp that those who talk of perceptual > cropping simply mean the > conscious, deliberate consideration of the field of vision, > and how it COULD > be pre-cropped, like a photographer "framing" his > shot. > > > > > > ************** > New MapQuest Local shows what's happening at your > destination. > Dining, Movies, Events, News & more. Try it out! > > (http://local.mapquest.com/?ncid=emlcntnew00000001)
