Baren Digest                Tuesday, 27 May 2003        Volume 23 : Number 2236


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From: "Shpend Bengu" <shpend#interalb.net>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 08:11:35 +0200 (ora legale Europa occ.)
Subject: [Baren 21596] Art History. 110.000 images 

Archivist's note:  Message did not come through



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From: "Shpend Bengu" <shpend#interalb.net>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 08:14:38 +0200 (ora legale Europa occ.)
Subject: [Baren 21597] about print 

 http://www.artline.com/associations/ifpda/text/whatisprint.html
 
 
   Shpend Bengu
E-mail: shpend#interalb.net



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From: "Shpend Bengu" <shpend#interalb.net>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 08:26:03 +0200 (ora legale Europa occ.)
Subject: [Baren 21598] Sorry for the first message with the same title 

 http://art.okstate.edu/vrl/courses.htm
 
 
 
   Shpend Bengu
-------------------------
E-mail: shpend#interalb.net
 


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From: "Shpend Bengu" <shpend#interalb.net>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 08:34:45 +0200 (ora legale Europa occ.)
Subject: [Baren 21599] Printmakers Council 

 http://www.printmaker.co.uk/pmc/
 
 
   Shpend Bengu
E-mail: shpend#interalb.net


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From: "Shpend Bengu" <shpend#interalb.net>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 08:37:02 +0200 (ora legale Europa occ.)
Subject: [Baren 21600] Another printmakers site 

 http://www.printforum.com/welcome.htm
 
 
   Shpend Bengu
E-mail: shpend#interalb.net
 


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From: "Shpend Bengu" <shpend#interalb.net>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 08:49:38 +0200 (ora legale Europa occ.)
Subject: [Baren 21601] Science Illuminates Art 

>Science Illuminates Art
>
>Dual Nature of Seeing Accounts for Brain's Double Take on Visual
>World
>
>Screaming headlines grab your attention using some of the same
>techniques as great works of art. Both can skillfully manipulate
>the biology of your visual system, playing form against feature,
>contrast against color, and primitive against sublime.
>
>
>
>Computer programs now can generate images by matching the local
>luminance and color of low-resolution features of many small
>images, says Marge Livingstone, whose picture is the basis of
>this photomosaic. As the eye moves over the image, different
>parts of it flip between global and local perspectives. (Photo by
>Clinton M. Lipsey) Monet and other painters exploited the
>parallel visual processing of color and brightness. A sunset
>seems to shimmer, a field of poppies seems to wave, and a river
>seems to flow when there is a disconnect between the color and
>luminance pathways, according to the new book, Vision and Art:
>The Biology of Seeing, by Margaret Livingstone, HMS professor of
>neurobiology.
>
>Art implies a personal, unanalyzable creative power, but
>Livingstone finds plenty to analyze about how various works of
>art--and Impressionist paintings in particular--reflect different
>properties of the visual system.
>
>"Art depends ultimately on our brains," says colleague David
>Hubel, who has worked with Livingstone for 27 years and wrote the
>foreword for her book. "By understanding what goes on in our
>brains when we look at a work of art, we can hope to deepen our
>appreciation of both the art and science." (Hubel shared the 1981
>Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology, in part, for revealing the
>functional organization of the visual system and the importance
>of early visual stimulation as the system develops after birth.)
>Vision Basics It is tempting to imagine that an eyeball projects
>a Renoir from the museum wall onto the retina, disassembles the
>pieces, and sends them to the back of the brain to process color,
>contrast, shape, position, and motion through the cortical
>layers. At each stage neurons become more selective for more
>precise features in the image. Finally, the image reassembles in
>the front of the brain. But the visual system does not work like
>that.
>
>"This misperception is so common that it has a name: the
>homunculus fallacy," Livingstone writes. "The fallacy is the idea
>that when we see something, a small representation of it is
>transmitted to the brain to be looked at by a little man. The
>fact is, of course, that there is not a little man in the brain
>to look at that or any other image. The function of the visual
>system is really to process light patterns into information
>useful to the organism."
>
>Biologically useful information reaches the brain through two
>massively parallel processing systems, Livingstone said. The
>subdivision begins in the retina, with two major classes of
>ganglion cells that send signals to two different areas of the
>thalamus. The two sets of signals travel ultimately to areas of
>the cortex so distinct they are separated by several inches.
>
>The more primitive half of the visual system begins with large
>ganglions having big, bushy, dendritic arbors. This part
>perceives motion, depth, and spatial organization. Known as the
>Where system, it is colorblind but keenly sensitive to small
>differences in brightness. We share the Where system with other
>mammals, but only primates have evolved the more refined What
>system. The What system starts with smaller ganglion cells. It
>sees color well but not contrast. It has vision that is three
>times sharper than the Where system. Both systems cover the
>entire visual field. The Where system sees a person moving toward
>us; the What system tells us it is Aunt Emily. The Where system
>sees the forest; the What system sees the trees. Playful Patterns
>of Light In the case of works by Monet and other Impressionist
>painters, the shimmering comes from colors that appear distinct
>to the dazzled What system but become shades of gray to the
>black-and-white Where system. In Paris, after some haggling with
>a dubious curator, Livingstone measured the brightness of the
>pulsating orange-red sun in Monet's Impression: Sunrise and found
>it to be the same as the gray background. In the more modern
>Broadway Boogie Woogie by Piet Mondrian, the What system sees the
>bright yellow and gray squares against an off-white background,
>but the Where system cannot see them. Consequently, the squares
>seem to move, or jitter, Livingstone said.
>
>Conversely, the different messages conveyed by color and contrast
>also explain why expressive, unrealistic colors of shadows still
>can impart normal depth in paintings such as AndrŽ Derain's
>Portrait of Henri Matisse and Matisse's Femme au Chapeau.
>
>Photomosaic art exploits another aspect of our visual system. In
>1995, Robert Silver, then a student at the MIT Media Lab,
>invented the technique of generating large pictures composed of
>tiny images. The assembled composite mosaic looks dynamic in part
>because our acute center of vision focuses on the small
>individual images while our peripheral vision picks up the global
>view. The Mona Lisa's elusive smile toys with the same difference
>in acuity across the visual system, Livingstone said.
>
>"Instead of concluding that there was something mystical and
>magical about this painting, I filtered images of Mona Lisa's
>face so that you could see what the peripheral and central vision
>could see," Livingstone said. "It turns out that most of the
>smile is in the blurry components best seen by peripheral vision.
>In some sense, she's coy. She smiles until you look directly at
>her, then she stops."
>
>"Our knowledge of visual science is rudimentary," Hubel writes.
>"It goes as far as three or four stages of visual cortex, whereas
>we know that there are at least several dozen further stages in
>the occipital lobes alone, none of which are yet explored. We
>know about some of the early building blocks of vision, much more
>than we did 50 years ago, but we still have no idea of what
>happens in the brain when we recognize a hat, a safety pin, or a
>boat or when we look at a painting that has intense emotional
>content. But we are beginning to understand some elementary
>things fairly well: why yellow plus blue light makes white, why
>equiluminant colors shimmer, why a black object remains black
>whether seen in dim light or on the beach."
>
>In other words, scientists cannot even begin exploring the more
>soul-searching questions raised by art, even if they have made a
>good start in explaining the Where and the What.
>
>--Carol Cruzan Morton
> 
> 
   Shpend Bengu


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End of Baren Digest V23 #2236
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