Find Your Way Back » Home » Creativity (Page 2)

  • Posted on January 04, 2011

The visual brain; a cognitive process


In order to make sense of the world, the brain gathers and processes information it receives from the five senses. Visual perception is a critical part of this process and should not be considered as simply a passive recording of visible material.

Visual perception starts with a raw visual material received by the eye, then transferred to and analyzed by the visual brain and then it greatly depends on the range of imagery available through memory and organised by a total lifetime’s experience into a system of visual concepts. The mind manipulates these concepts merging sensual perception and stored experience. Visual perception does not objectively accord with the world as-it-is, as the world as-it-is is more than pure objective fact, it includes consciousness.

As far as the visual system is concerned, perception is purposeful and selective. The selectivity of our visual perception is greatly dependent upon our distinct ‘attention’ and ‘visual search’. The former involves a kind of focalisation on important aspects of the visual field and the periphery of the visual field, whereas the latter includes the process of linking several fixations on the same visual scene to allow more detailed exploration.

> More  interesting read on Visual Perception

  • Posted on September 22, 2010

Culture and the artful brain.

Is art or design is universal ?  Do culture play a role in visualizing, in fathoming art  or design?

Do  everyone perceive: a link-without-blue-color and no-underline as a clickable link ? Specially in one internet age,  it’s quiet obvious that, perceiving a communication design from this corner of the world to other corner of the world is all same. But, is it true ? What is netizen’s culture in the ‘Global village’ ?

I am not denying the enormous role played by culture. Obviously culture plays a tremendous role, otherwise you wouldn’t have different artistic styles – but it doesn’t follow that art is completely idiosyncratic and arbitrary either or that there are no universal laws.

Let me put it somewhat differently. Let’s assume that 90% of the variance you see in art is driven by cultural diversity or – more cynically – by just the auctioneer’s hammer, and only 10% by universal laws that are common to all brains. The culturally driven 90% is what most people already study – it’s called art history.

I found this interesting read by BBC about The Artful Brain.

  • Posted on August 19, 2010

Wonderful Indian Freakonomics

Creativity in everyday India is humble. It has a purpose, and remains invisible. When a multinational bank decided to give Bombay Dyeing bedsheets to the homeless families that I volunteered with one Christmas, I was curious to see how people who slept in bus stops would use it. A few days later, I saw a toddler run around in a dress made out of a pillow cover.

In 2004 in Varanasi, an estimated 600,000 condoms were being utilised daily, the majority of which were distributed free of cost by the government. Family planning departments were busy congratulating themselves over the growing demand for condoms till it was discovered that Banarasi weavers were using it to lubricate the loom’s shuttle. The condom’s lubricant didn’t stain the silk threads yet increased the pace of production.

Recycling is a typically Indian tradition. Not every innovation bears the nobility of recycling, though.

>> Read more about wonderful Indian Freakonomics