DIMENSIONS_OF_VISUAL_LITERACY

DIMENSIONS OF VISUAL LITERACY Božena Šupšáková



Dimensions of Visual Literacy Božena Šupšáková

This publication is part of the grant project KEGA 012KU-4/2019 Sup-port of education for children from socialy disadvantaged environment, who are lagging in the results due to insufficient subvention at school or in family. © prof. PaedDr. Božena Šupšáková, PhD. Dimensions of Visual Literacy Reviewers: prof. Dr. Tonka Tacol doc. PaedDr. Bibiána Hlebová, PhD. Mgr. Art. Jana Szabóova, ArtD. Language correction of the English text: Mgr. Katarína Jablonská, PhD. This edition © DEBORA Ljubljana Cover Design © PaedDr. Jozef Zentko, PhD. Technical realisation of the cover © PaedDr. Jozef Zentko, PhD. Cover Photo © doc. Anita Rončević First edition, 2020 Eelectronic version: http://www.arteducation.sk All rights reserved. Publishing or reproduction of this publication, or any of its parts, in any form, without written consent of the author, is forbidden. CIP - Kataložni zapis o publikaciji Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, Ljubljana 7.038.53:316.77-053.2(035) ŠUPŠÁKOVÁ, Božena Dimensions of visual literacy / Božena Šupšáková. - 1st ed. - Ljubljana : Debora, 2020 ISBN 978-961-7063-04-2 COBISS.SI-ID 16473603

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 5 THE THEORETICAL MODEL OF VISUAL LITERACY 9 From a Word to a Picture 10 Visual Literacy as Multilayer Phenomenon 14 Visual Literacy – the Interdisciplinary, Multidisciplinary and Multidimensional 16 Space of Cognition 18 Visual Literacy – the Form of Critical Thinking 21 VISUAL PERCEPTION 22 Visual Perception and the Ability to Recognise Reality 24 Phenomenal Sense and Relational Sense of Perception 26 „An Image in an Eye”, Visual Construction 32 Visual Intelligence – Active and Holistic Ability 35 VISUAL THINKING 36 Visual Thinking Expressed in Non-verbal Concepts 37 Visual Perception and Imagination 40 Visual Thinking and Creative Thinking

VISUAL LANGUAGE 43 Visual Language and Communication 43 The Grammar of Visual Forms 45 The Real Existence of Visual Language? 47 LEARNING THE VISUAL LITERACY 59 Interface between Verbal and Visual Language 59 Dual-coding Theory 60 „Reading” the Pictures with Comprehension 64 The Effect of Visual Superiority, Image – Word Relation 79 VISUAL COMMUNICATION IN CONCEPTS AND CONTEXT 87 REFERENCES 104 REGISTER 128

INTRODUCTION Thoughts and information go round the entire world in visual form and pictures play an important role in economical, cultural and political pro- cesses. In the society, as global and technologically developed as never before, there is a shift from words to visuality; it seems pictures can re- place thousands of words. The catalyst of the shift is new media facili- tating fast and mass propagation of news, opinions and meanings. Mir- zoeff says the modern fascination with visuality and its effects created the „postmodern culture” that is, according to him, postmodern the most „when it is visual” (Mirzoeff, 1999). Of course, there are still slightly prevailing doubts whether the society made also the „visual turn” in addition to the „cultural turn”. Regardless of whether the triumph of the image is welcome or feared of, regardless of whether it is perceived as a modern or postmodern phenomenon, there may be no doubts about its importance. Even more so now, when pictures are a common part of our life, not only being related to reality, but also becoming the reality, its part. Pictures are related to each other more than other things ever before – we can look at them every day, we can commu- nicate through them, we can express our standpoints and emotions, obtain new information, new incoming challenges as well as threats. In our publication, we agree with the opinions of the postmodern inves- tigators claiming the contemporary culture becomes the visual culture, in particular thanks to the new sense of geographic and social mobility. It covers many medial forms, from high fine-art through photography, film, television, advertising, up to visual data and schemes in the field of science, engineering, medicine and law. The cumulative consequences of the impact of visual culture on the patterns of perception are demon- strated by the fact that we can see more and in more efficient way on one hand, yet on the other hand it seems we are losing the ability of a certain type of vision – the deeper, immersed, focused one – that is required and provided by, for example, a piece of art. Using the words of Kesner, „we perceive the objects somehow tenuously” (Kesner, 2000, p. 80). 5

Media many times force their seeing of the world, their own pace, on spectators. By giving precedence to images over words, they lead rather to the dramatization of a story or event than to the creation of terms. Thus new meanings are generated within a group of people or in a society, individuals are able to perceive them on the basis of visual, auditory and text expressions, as well as on the basis of the way they participate in the development of symbolism and communication. It is important how they can process them, emotionally experience them or reasonably respond to them. Thanks to their visual capacity – the ability to perceive the world using vision, or so to speak visual analyser and cognitive processes – they reach a great quantity of information, superficial in many cases, yet they always have the chance to select just some of it and to pay increased at- tention to the selected ones. The publication critically re-assesses and synthesises the hitherto known knowledge of the given issue and enriches it by new original cognition in the field of visual culture. Since we shift from verbal to visual perception and images form our everyday experience leading us to the development of new forms of perception, sensitivity, thinking and understanding of the world, we accentuate the necessity of visual literacy. In this regard, the publication brings the overview of several theories dealing with the problem in theory. It monothematically focuses on the visual literacy as the ability of an individual to develop meanings from everything he/she can see, to find the sense in everything he/she can perceive. The author defines the visual literacy as the form of critical thinking that increases the intellectual capacity and enables one to interpret the contents of visual images, to investigate the social impact of the visual pictures, to possess the ability of internal visualisation, to discuss about their meanings with the target group, to visually communicate, read and interpret the visual images, to create opinions of accuracy, validity and abundance of pic- tures. She states that one of the positive aspects is that several theoreti- cians are inclined to the opinion that art, philosophy, linguistics, psycho- logy belongs also amongst the fundamental disciplines of visual literacy. Objects attain meaning by the way we use them, think of them and what are the emotions we have with regards to them, thus how they are in- terpreted by us. The author agrees with the opinion of M. Sturken and L. Cartwright that „just like people give meaning to objects, also the ob- 6

jects we create, we can see and that serve for communication or joy, have the ability to give meaning to ourselves and the dynamic interactions wit- hin our social networks” (Sturken, Cartwright, 2009, p. 13). The author brings the new view of the visual literacy as the ability to interpret the visual messages and to create them. The meanings are created in mutual interaction between individuals wit- hin a certain culture and between persons and artefacts, pictures, texts and technologies. From the point of the given issue, the mutual relations and terms, the publication is compiled as a monolith; it deals with a wide range of issues regarding the visual literacy in cultural environment. It in- vestigates how pictures attain meanings and how they are interpreted. In the individual chapters she develops the theoretical model of visual literacy – visual perception, visual thinking, visual language and visual communication, learning, or the development of visual abilities – as the fundamental concepts of visual literacy. Author 7



THE THEORETICAL MODEL OF VISUAL LITERACY The world has never been so saturated with pictures in the hitherto human history as now. The visual culture, which covers this phenomenon, is not a new aspect of the social world. The visual imaginations established in the human culture extend through a long history of the development of society – from first cave murals through medieval paints and sculpture – up to the new forms of imagination in photography, film, advertising, video, computer games, and the most recently also in Internet social net- works. Pettersson notes in this regard that: „The concept 21st century lite- racy is the set of abilities and skills where aural, visual and digital literacy overlap. These include the ability to understand the power of images and sounds, to recognize and use that power, to manipulate and transform digital media, to distribute them, and to easily adapt them to new forms” (Pettersson, 2019, p. 33). Visuality and human existence are the interconnected vessels. Malcom Barnard claims that: „All that is visual has become an important experi- ence in human life. We are still more under the influence of visual mate- rials and we still more dependend upon them” (Barnard, 2001, p. 4). Also Nicolas Mirzoeff is of a similar opinion when stating that „we can speak of the central importance of visual feelings in everyday life” (Mirzoeff, 1999, p. 7). Several authors are of the same opinion, that in modern, and especially in post-modern society, a certain visual shift happened. Based on this shift, M. Sturken and L. Cartwrigh note „our culture is a visual culture to a great extent. Throughout the last two centuries, the western culture has been dominated by visual media instead of spoken and written mediations of information. We live in a culture that is more and more infiltrated by visual images with various targets and intented effects” (Sturken, Cart- wright, 2001, p. 10). 9

From a Word to a Picture Pictures form our everyday experience and lead to the development of the new forms of perception, sensitivity, thinking and understanding of the world. We shift from the verbal perception of reality to the visual per- ception of reality. In this regard, it is important to define and also spe- cify three typological criteria of an image: function, localisation and tech- nique. Of course, the image fulfils in particular the artistic, information, documentary and advertising function. Technical implementation in the context of perceiving an image as an artefact relates to painting, graphics and sculpture. Also to photography, film and television images, to the modern digital images and multimedia. Their common feature is the mani- fold reproductions, where the difference between the original and the copy is wiped out in many cases (this especially relates to digital images). Of course, the localisation of an image relates to a place, a public space, such as the gallery, street, arcade, cultural event, television broadcast or the virtual space of the Internet – its new platforms such as Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and other. Today, we may speak of three historical eras, with the characteristic fea- ture of the prevailing culture: the oral, verbal and visual era. The oral era relates to the spoken expression, the human communications take place by means of spoken word in it. In this era, the communication space is strictly limited, since the transfer and exchange of information take place „vis-à-vis” – face to face. Second era is related to the discovery of script, and especially book printing, which means all information, human expe- rience and observed phenomena may be spread out to even greater group of recipients, to deliver them from generation to generation. Script and press dynamise the propagation of information and increase the mass character of culture. In the third, visual era, the important role in the in- terpersonal communication is played by a picture. It is the propagator of messages, news and experience, yet mostly emotions, artistic and aesthe- tic value. An image is something that can be handled by senses, that may be decoded, but it also has an impact on subconsciousness. It may be read as a text, analytically and in parts, but it may influence the recipient also synthetically in the form of an unbroken idea. 10

The dominance of the pictorial world in the 21st century forms the be- ginning of the new visual civilisation. Today, we already know that pho- tography, film and television are just the first stage of the visual era. The modern phenomena of digitalisation and mass communication related to the development of information and communication technologies and In- ternet, dramatically saturate the pictures and pictorial messages to public space and thus also to our everyday life. Posters, billboards and various visual posts attack us everyday with their pictorial messages, trying to influence us on our way to the work or school as well as in fun or re- lax time. The presence of visual impulses is perceived also in the public space, for example in shopping malls. In such an environment, their role is to influence our purchasing habits. The information lettering in pictori- al form – iconograms – orientate us on the streets, at the stations of mass transport, at the airports, in shopping malls, in tourism regions. Today, Internet and social networks are mainly the source of information media- ted in the form of pictures in multimedia form. We can not only watch but also create video messages and films1 on the biggest worldwide Internet portal YouTube, we send MMS via smartphones, and we take photos and record videos using the intelligent mobile phones. Another example of digitisation and mass communication is the web page Pinterest allowing its users to create thematic sets of pictures or photos free of charge. Another very popular application and social network is In- stagram. Its purpose is to share photographs and videos from mobile de- vices, which places it among new visual galleries the content of which is perceived mainly through pictorial messages. Of course, the contemporary visual expression may be disputable as long as its functionality is con- cerned. Many times we witness the origin of the world of „hyperreality” or virtual reality where experience, real pictures or products are replaced with the virtual ones. The immersion into the new „world” is not investigated to such an extent that we would be able to assess the impact of „hyper-reality” onto the emotional and rational world of a human being. 1 With 2.2 billion active users, Facebook is still the most popular global social net- work. YouTube comes second, with 1.9 billion users. Third most popular network is the messaging application WhatsApp (1.6 billion users), next ones are Facebook Messenger, messaging application by Facebook (1.3 billion), WeChat, Chinese so- cial media (1.0 billion) and Instagram (1.0 billion). https://www.statista.com/sta- tistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/. 11

Due to the rapid technological development and globalisation, the new millennium we live in brings new demands on our skills. In principle, we face the challenge to manage four key literacies: information, communi- cation, multicultural and visual literacy (Scheme 1). Multicultural literacy Interaction Linguistic Humanisation Auditory Symbols Ethical Sensory Critical thinking Perception Communication Technology Visual literacy literacy Seeing/perception Speech: spoken and written Cooperation Problem solving Trade Design Finances Engineering Health Information literacy Action/activity Scheme 1: Four key literacies: communication, information, multicultural and visual literacy. Relationship among the literacies 12

The communication literacy is the ability to communicate in an active manner using a reasonable form to present information. This is the set of competencies through which we learn, understand, comprehend, and apply all non-verbal and verbal characters and symbols of the correspon- ding culture that serve for communication. The information literacy relates to the ability to functionally see and ef- ficiently work with information, to be able to search, select and further communicate them. It is based on the use of information and communica- tion technologies and their availability. As long as one cannot use the in- formation technologies, he/she cannot achieve information literacy. The information literacy requires substantially more than just the ability to use internet browsers like Google for information digging. This is the ability to recognize when and what information is needed, the ability to efficient- ly and purposefully look for the necessary information, to localise infor- mation and information sources, to master the methods, techniques and strategies for information searching. Also to critically evaluate, assess the information, to compare it and on the basis of this select and obtain it (ex- cerpt, dig, select) from information sources. The multicultural literacy is the ability to navigate in a different cultural environment. To be multiculturaly literate means to be tolerant, to respect manifold cultures, to have a pro-social behaviour without prejudices and barriers towards people coming from various cultures and to accept the differences in the broadest sense. It also means to explicitly reject intole- rance, racism and xenophobia. The term of visual literacy appears in scientific and technical literature ap- proximately from the half of the 20th century. Within the course of the pe- riod, the visual literacy is defined in both narrow and broad sense; howe- ver its definition often changes. R. Pettersson says that „visual literacy is the learnt capacity to exactly interpret visual messages and to create such messages. The interpretation and capacity to create could be charac- terised similarly as reading and writing of hard copy texts” (Pettersson, 1993, p. 62). 13

Visual Literacy as Multilayer Phenomenon To have the visual capacity2 that is determined neurophysically, by age, learning, profession also means to be visually literate. K. Raney (1999) describes the visual literacy as the multilayer phenomena, as the percep- tion sensitivity, at the level of everyday perception of environment (life) and relationships of every individual. Thus we may speak of the cultural space of a new type, in which the lifestyle is created, not only in the field of the creation in the category of perception, the classification schemes or aesthetic judgements. Also the ability to be tolerant and recognize the cul- tural demonstrations of other social groups and sub-cultures, for exam- ple the culture of children, elderly people or ethnic groups is important. Furthermore, it includes also the ability of critical thinking and related cognition of the means of expression in visual mediation, the recognition of intention with which the picture is created, in the context of history and present time. Last but not least, it is necessary to speak also of the ability to recognize how the picture acts in a certain context, who and why placed it to that context, what group of recipients it should address and why. Also the aesthetic openness is important, in the sense of openness to the emotional and empathic relations and processes, in the ability of visual expression, in the ability to creatively generate any visually per- ceived picture and object in the broadest sense of word – from an oil painting up to aweb page, from top design up to the common flat furnis- hing. „The visual literacy relates to a great portion of attained abilities, like the ability to understand (read) and use (write) pictures, as well as think and learn” (Avgerinou, 2001a, p. 26). It is unambiguously implied by the study of foreign expert literature J. Clark-Baca (1990), J. A. Hortin (1994, pp. 5-29), etc. that there was hitherto no agreement about the unified definition of the term of visual literacy that would be accepted by the majority of renowned theoreti- cians – researchers. In general, there is just the agreement about the main 2 The newer definitions are inclined to the term ability (not skill or competence). The ability is explained as the ability (a) to read/decode/interpret the visual mes- sages; (b) to write/encode/create the visual messages. Third ability is the ability to visually think. Even though it may seem all this is comprised in the majority of definitions, the ability to think visually was included and explicitly expressed only in newer definitions. 14

aspects expressing it: visual perception, visual thinking, visual language, visual communication and the attainment of new visual abilities by lear- ning. The main reason of the instability of the definition of visual literacy is of course that the groups of theoreticians – philosophers, aesthetes, art scientists, linguists, psychologists, physiologists and neurophysiologists, sociologists – view this term from various points of view and disciplines. The term of visual literacy emerges also with the increasing influence of other fields, such as cultural anthropology and cultural theory and semio- tics, dealing with non-language systems of communication. The opinions of the individual groups form a kind of mosaics about the theory of visual literacy. However, the result is the non-homogeneous view preventing the formulation of a unified holistic definition. In other words, these the- oretical views provide us with sufficient quota of knowledge about the concept, even though it is not sufficiently arranged in a single structure and it explains the related phenomena in an insufficient way. Thus they do not provide answer to all questions. However, what is positive is that several theoreticians are inclined to the opinion that art, philosophy, lin- guistics, psychology also belong amongst the basic disciplines of visual literacy. We agree with R. A. Bradenom (1996, pp. 9-83), J. A. Hortinom, J. Clark-Bacom and others in their opinion that it is necessary to accept visual thinking, visual perception, visual communication and the attain- ment of visual abilities by learning as the fundamental concepts of visual literacy (Scheme 2). At the same time, it is necessary to state that no rele- vant detailed theory of visual literacy has been elaborated yet. One of the reasons may be the fact that the majority of researchers is focused rather on the practical applications and learning of visual literacy. According to them, the theory of visual literacy should stimulate generally valid stra- tegies, therefore they suggest approaching it from three different angles: 1. From theoretical point of view, covering the philosophical, psycholo- gical and physiological aspects of learning. 2. From the point of view of the development and cultivation of visual language, including the approaches focused on the recipient, with the aim to help the individuals become visually literate by means of visual stimuli. 15

3. From the point of view of education, to establish the starting points em- bracing the approaches focused on the presentation and improvement of the communication process through visual stimuli (Griffin, 1984, pp. 70-82). Visual language VISUAL Visual LITERACY thinking Visual perception Visual Learning communication visual literacy Scheme 2: The theoretical model of visual literacy Visual Literacy – the Interdisciplinary, Multidisciplinary and Multidimensional Space of Cognition Visual literacy covers the impacts and factors of many theoretical dis- ciplines and areas of science and research. Many researchers from vari- ous fields of study explain their opinions and interpretations, they write 16

extensively about visual literacy from their point of view. However, we may see in their statements and arguments that they stress out different competencies of the literacy, those they consider to be the priority in their scientific field. It is different with exact sciences. Mathematics, physics or chemistry does not include ambiguous symbols and formulas; this im- plies their communication language is univocal. Of course, the verbal language of an expert must be also clear in the technical description. But when taking prose as an example, being the verbal formation that is open to many interpretations, thus semantically equivocal, then also images are often equivocal. Their authors try to get visual language closer to reality. Visualisations are iconic and they often resemble the object tey represent. Images speak to us in the same way as our experience does, in an emoti- onal and holistic way. The content of an image is often more important than the form itself, the product itself. The majority of people are persua- ded the images realistically reflect reality. Yet just a few of them realise that „what they think of, what they can see on the pictures, depends upon what they expect they would see and also that they would learn some- thing from that” (Singer, 2010, pp. 39-52). To understand images, their meanings, to feel them in all forms and expressions, means to possess the ability to understand both language and the form of communication. Let us illustrate this on an example: When viewing a picture, we cannot read the letters and numbers, yet we are able to identify the shape, form, size, line, composition, rhythm, movement and action. We are able to encode and decode the visual messages and thus we are able to read and write, to express ourselves using visual language. The visual pictures have the power to connect our senses. What we need today is the alphabetisation and literacy of the new age. With regards to the predominance of pictures over text information we may call the ability the visual literacy. Similarly to the traditional literacies, the visual literacy is culturally spe- cific even though there are universal symbols or visual patterns having a global character. Images, as well as pictures and other visuals, are cultu- ral products shared by the individuals and according to Singer, „the indivi- duals sense them individually too” (Singer, 2010, pp. 39-452. Linguistic and cultural differences may have an impact on the efficiency of visual perception. This is the reason why we should create verbal and visual messages in a way that would suit every group of perceivers. If there is 17

no discourse and pictures are not sufficiently analysed, interpreted, they probably would not be correctly explained and understood. In the contemporary world, heavily saturated with pictures and media, our view of what literacy means must be extended, or even re-defined. To read pictures is more than to read and write text, this is the „reading of the world of pictures.” The Kaiser Family Foundation Study (2010) implies that young people devote still greater attention to the pictures in the new media (Internet and social networks). While in 2009 it was six hours and twenty-one minutes a day in average, it was seven hours and thirty-eight minutes a day in 2013. The numerical data say there has been a significant shift in those 4 years and young people pay greater attention to pictorial information, they devote more of their time to it, by one hour and seventeen minutes. We may state that the use of new media has been intensified in the recent 10 years, and thus the time capacity devoted to media by young people has been increased too, save one exception – the interest in reading has decreased, yet it still considered being the basic, non-excludable literacy. To say it more clearly, reading texts gets to the background and the first place is attained by reading, or perception of pictures in electronic media. According to one of the surveys in the USA (The survey from the USA), 5-years old children from middle class fami- lies spend one thousand hours a year reading (2.74 hours a day), however children from low-income groups of inhabitants read just one hundred hours a year (0.27 hours a day), which is ten times less. This implies that the social status and family environment have significant influence on the development of literacy in general and thus also in the perception of visual literacy. Every negative tendency in the reading ability has its con- sequences, even more so when we know that reading with comprehension supports creativity, develops imagination, the ability to create pictures. Visual Literacy – the Form of Critical Thinking All we can see around us is an image. Thanks to our vision we can per- ceive up to 90 percent of information about the world. Surveys prove that the non-text (pictorial) information is read 90-thousand times faster than the text one. When looking at a certain object, we can see it at first and 18

on the basis of this we can describe it. When we are able to describe it, then we can analyse it and subsequently interpret it. In the final stage, we can create meanings on the basis of this perception (Scheme 3). In other words, we cannot remember everything we see, but visual literacy gives us the ability to create (construe) the meanings from pictures. This is not exactly an intellectual ability, but it is an important form of critical thinking supporting our intellectual capacity and integrating the potential of our senses. Especially now, in the digital age, it is inevitable to inte- grate dual form of information: picture and text, even though ultimately everything is a picture, since also text, when perceived by vision, is a part of visual literacy. This predetermines a certain level of digital literacy that Pettersson defines asmul „the ability, knowledge, and practical skills needed to find, organize, read, and then interpret and understand how to use images, sound and text elements in digital environments. Examples of digital environments are software application packages for computers, laptops and smart-phones” (Pettersson, 2019, p. 39). VISUAL LITERACY To look To see To describe To analyse To interpret Scheme 3: Visual literacy: To look – To see – To describe – To analyse – To interpret Visual literacy is not a skill in the common sense of the word that would be used by a human as a tool. It is the form of critical thinking increasing our intellectual capacity and allowing us to: • Interpret the contents of the images. • Investigate the social impact of the images. • Possess the ability of internal visualisation. 19

• Discuss about their meanings with a target group (to characterise who they are meant for). • Visually communicate. • Read and interpret images. • Create opinions about the accuracy, validity and richness of images. Visual literacy is the ability to create meanings from everything we can see, to find sense in everything we can perceive. Visually literate person can read and write using the visual language since he/she knows the pro- cess of emission and reception of messages by means of images. A person with an average education can read information in pictorial expression and picture form, he/she is able to navigate in the multimedia world. Un- derstanding the multimedia world presupposes a certain level of new lite- racy that Pettersson describes as „multimedia literacy, new media litera- cy, or screen literacy, are terms that have been associated with literacy to emphasize that literacy extends beyond reading and writing the alphabe- tic code and should include a variety of audio-visual forms of representa- tion” (Pettersson, 2019, p. 41. However, the problem is the contemporary concept of education supports rather the development of reading literacy (the understanding of the meaning of letters and numbers) and computer (information) literacy, but neglects sensual literacy, dealing mainly with convertibility of received and handed out information through all sensual channels. In order to be visually literate, we need to constantly develop and improve our abilities, to train our visual capacity, to learn how to in- terpret the meanings of pictures and also how to create the meanings from the presented information in the form of pictures. Visual literacy helps us to develop also the verbal (written and spoken) speech. We share the opinion of Avgerinou (2003, pp. 29-41), that the abilities of visual literacy can be: (a) learnt, (b) taught, (c) developed and improved. Visual literacy we are dealing with is the alphabetisation and literacy of the new age. This should be our priority in the entire society, including the ancho- rage of the given issue in the state curricular documents, with the aim to develop and cultivate the visual literacy since childhood. 20

VISUAL PERCEPTION The term of visuality is a very simple word at first glance; it appears in relation to the mediation of information by means of visual perception. Visuality, visual perception, perception by vision or the internal vision are logically connected to the terms vision, picture, the stimuli we can see. We understand it as an active reception and display of information in a three-dimensional world (perception and reception), while this in- formation comprises all the important attributes: shape, colour, line and movement. The visual perception relates to iconography which studies the technique of the comprehensibility of a picture. It relates also to sy- naesthesia, the process in which one type of activity is transformed to another one. More accurately, thanks to association it evokes the effect in another sensory organ. In other words, this is the „fusion” of sensory impressions, imagination accompanied by perceptions from other senso- ry areas. However, in fact, this is a very complex mental process, inclu- ding perception and reception. To display information supposes to have a visual image of it, but also the ability to create images. Imagination is the precondition for creative activity and fantasy is the ability to create the pictures, images and ideas usable in the practical activity of a person. Fantasy represents the creation of completely new, original pictures on the basis of the interconnection of images or various previously obtained fragments. Visuality is thus the set of procedures enabling the shaping of information in such a way it would be perceivable by vision. To have visual ability means to have the ability to perceive the world using vision, thus using the visual analyser and cognitive processes. Visuality is not only the mat- ter of senses, the cognitive processes, but also of the motivation proces- ses, affected by social and cultural environment. 21

Visual Perception and the Ability to Recognise Reality From amongst all living creatures on Earth, the man is a genius in a sense, thanks to vision and language, independently upon his/her IQ. The ge- nius of vision and the genius of language are congenital and securely „connected” to brain; in addition, it is genetically influenced in any indi- vidual. Unlike language, vision is a sensory organ we have in common with animals. Naturally, vision of the individual animal species signifi- cantly differs and in many cases it would be a mistake to think the vision of other animal species resembles the human vision. In the field of re- search, we know several examples: the Australian neurobiologist Adrian Horridge (2015) speaks of semi-vision in the case of insects. But vision or semi-vision in other animal species is just the phenomenon in itself. Goldfish have colour vision – it is the fish species that has four colour receptors – on contrary to us, human. This fish species can constantly search for green objects, independently upon the change in spatial light in aquarium. Another example from insect group is flies and their visual movement: they know in the real time when and where to land (on the particular surface) and how to adapt their trajectory of movement in order to prevent the landing of another fly on the same place. Mantis uses its telescopic vision to localise a fly in the space and to subsequently grasp it in its tarsal-fibrillar lobe when the fly is within the correct reach, by a rapid movement of its front extremities. The baby Mantis has ten-colour receptors and is able to determine the reach to its prey thanks to one eye, while paralysing the prey with a single accurate and rapid hit of its tenta- cle. Monkeys – Macaques can see the „structure of movement” and they can construe three-dimensional shape of a moving object using a single eye. The story about our vision genius is valid in every case also for the vision genius of animals: vision is a structure. For ages, the visual intelligence (the ability to recognize optical differen- ces and similarities of objects) has fascinated scientists and research teams that study how vision can „decurse” the infinite spectrum of colours, shapes and movements we can see around us. They study also how vision can project three-dimensional world when viewing the films through spe- 22

cial glasses. Vision reveals also many other physical, neurobiological or psychological secrets, including perception, but also the secrets of virtual world. As an illustration, we can borrow the example from D. Hoffman (1998, 2006), his simple drawing, sketch, depicting such a trifle as the constructive forces of our visual intelligence, we can see a kind of „wa- ving” in the picture at first glance (Figure 1). Figure 1: Sketch „Waves” (Hoffman, 1998, p. 3) This two-dimensional drawing (2D) seems to be the object that is not planar, on contrary, it waves in space. We may get persuaded about that when looking at the picture closer and when really trying to see this wa- ving as flat. The logic says waving cannot be both flat and non-flat, so either the hand or the eye (or eyes) must be „mistaken”. Everyone whom the author showed the picture decided to believe his/her hand so reached the conclusion the hand „is right” and the picture is flat. However, in such a case, the visual system makes a certain delusion since it creates an arti- ficial waving in space despite having sufficient proof such a construction would not exist in reality. It insists on this mistake, ignoring our better judgement according to which the image must be flat in accordance with all regularities. 23

Waving consists of three parts: the convex part in the centre, the circular wave around the convex part and another circular wave at the external cir- cumference. Our visual system does not produce just waving, but it can also segment it to parts. However, is it possible that the dashed lines – and not our visual system – are the real cause? And if they weren‘t there, would we see some other parts? We can simply verify this is not really so when we turn the picture and look at it „upside down”. We can see the overturned waving with new parts: the dashed lines now lead on the back of the waves and not between the individual waves, as it was in the previous case. When turning the picture „upside down”, we can „project” the original parts again. If we turn the picture slowly, we can observe we literally shift from one parting to another one. The cause is not the dashed lines, since the parts we can see in the overturned waving not always re- spect the original lines. This example documents that our visual system created the image wantonly and we are now able to make sure our visual system literally „produces” the constructions chronologically, not wan- tonly. The visual system may not be pardoned simply by saying it has no options to select from: visual system either has them, but ignores them, or absolutely rejects them. There is no point in pardoning the visual sys- tem because waving takes place in the visual system according to certain principles, and only if we know them we can suppose, and at the same time express, when its construction would be compatible with reality and when not. This is the reality that is characteristic for visual intelligence and its natural feature is to create, to produce, to construe on the basis of principles. Everything we can see around us, with no exceptions, is our product: colour, shape, movement, light and shadow, visual objects and the entire visual scenes. The given example of „waving” is a simple illus- tration of visual intelligence, as well as of its creative genius. Phenomenal Sense and Relational Sense of Perception We used the wording „what we can see” above in the text. It must be no- ted that this wording is usually used in the meaning „the way the objects appear to us”, „the way the things appear visually to us”, „the way we 24

can visually perceive the things”. Philosophers refer to these wordings as a phenomenal sense, thus we can see the length and the parts of „waving” in phenomenal sense. In our common lives, we usually use the phrase „what can be seen by us” also in the meaning „what we mutually interact with while looking”. According to D. Hoffman, this is the relational sense. In order to be able to see in the relational sense, the thing must exist. There is an example again: Let‘s imagine we are the only one object in existance. In such case, we would not see anything else in a relational sense since there would be nothing that could react with us. But we could see things in phenomenal sense, since we would probably possess visual experience. So when we say our visual intelligence constructs, creates what we see, it means the term „to see” is understood in the phenomenal sense: the visual intelli- gence creates its visual experience. When looking for example at a book, we can say that all we can see, all our visual experience is our creation: the book binding, its thickness, shape, colour, the white colour of its pa- ges, the black colour and arched shapes of letters. This is similar to the case of Figure 1. However, when we look at our, or any other book, more closely, we can see something more, what lies in relations, what reacts to us. If this is really so, then we have an object on the creation of which we participate, even when we enter text into computer. The relation between what we can see phenomenally and what can be seen relationally is in this par- ticular case similar to the relation between icons (the graphic symbols on the screen representing the particular program) and the „invisible” software in the computer memory. Saying it in simpler way: when using a graphic program or text processor (for example Word) in our computer, we can get to the direct and immediate interaction with megabits of the complex software with millions of cybernetic strings assembled of zeroes and ones. What now lasts seconds, took several months of mutual effort for the talented programmers to create. Fortunately, the given software (the ones and zeroes) is „written” in such a way it would be accessible for a common user through graphic interface (monitor, screen). We need not to learn how to program and investigate, we don‘t have to go into the complicated interior of software, and a click of a mouse is all we need to start and control the software. 25

The programmers provide variegated icons (graphic symbols of the pro- grams) and clever graphic tools in order to make the visual navigation easier when working with computer. Thanks to them we can be experts in the use of any computer program even without knowing how to write and create such a program – yet in fact, we don‘t need to know anything at all about programs and we don‘t need to believe them. But every time we click the icon or draw a line, paint a picture, make a collage, there is an interaction between us and the complex of hidden words of software (and hardware). The relation between the icons and software is systematic, yet wanton, icons may appear in various forms and colours as they many times appear in various colour programs, while fulfilling always the same function. Similarly, also our visual experience serves as the user-friendly interface of the icon with the objects we can see relationaly (independen- tly upon the character of the things themselves). Finally, also all the things we use every day, such as books, chairs, cars as well as trees and stars, thing we have a visual experience with, are always just icons, characters and symbols. A simple picture starts the fantastic visual assembly, we cannot act in any other way, just to create visual fantasies as was illustrated on the example of „waving” (Figure 1). Despite our better judgement, a simple picture shall cause us to create waving, exactly as the large moving object shall cause the baby animal to project its „mum” under it. So together with animals, gifted with vision, we share the genius of assembly, creation and construction, and thus we also have the chance to be mistaken in our judgement. Questions justly emerge: When is it possible to believe what we see? If waving, as well as other pictures, is just a false construction, creation, what other delusions may be seen? And if our „genius” of crea- tion, assembly, construction can deceive us, why can‘t we just do without it and why we can‘t see the world simply as it is? „An Image in an Eye”, Visual Construction Any product is the creation of vision. Anything we can see, what can be perceived by vision, is the product, construction of an eye. This is not just a raw fact, but a dictate of logic. This idea was expressed by Ptolemaios 26

in his work Optics in the 2nd century A.D. already. Later, the scholar named Alhazen (965 – 1039), a well known Arabic physicist, astrono- mer, mathematician and doctor, describes the perception of the majority of visual properties as something that causes the process of unaware logic judgement, since shape or size or transparency of an object or other si- milar properties of visible objects can be perceived extremely fast in the majority of cases, but not instantly. The extent to which we can perceive them is the result of the logical consideration and distinguishing. German doctor and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821 – 1894), professor of physiology in Königsbergu, Bonne and Heidelbergu and in 1071 a profesor of physics in Berlin describes vision as the process of unconscious conclusion (unbewusster Schluss). Mental activities, which lead us to the knowledge that there are particular objects of a certain character on a certain place in front of us, are not conscious activities, but the unconscious ones. Helmholtz makes the effort to describe the visual „judgements” as unaware and he puts them to contrast with the conscious judgements that are characteristic for science and everyday life. Howe- ver, the term „judgement” still incorporates the denotation of conscious activity. For this reason, Hermann von Helmholtz prefers the term „to construe” than the term „to draw a conclusion” for the description of a creative process of visual intelligence. British neurophysiologist David Marr (1946 – 1981), who studied neuro- physiology at the Cambridge University in England, describes visual con- structions as an analogy to information processes of a computer: vision is like the process producing the description useful for a viewer from the picture of the external world and it is not loaded with irrelevant informa- tion. He considers vision and perception to be an active process produ- cing useful descriptions; therefore he describes it in detail. Even the way this active process creates, construes the perceived shapes, structures, movements and the entire objects. According to him, the active process of vision – an inclination to construction – is the key to the success of great personalities of fine (visual) art. From a certain point of view, painting a canvas is nothing else but a light touch of pigments on the canvas. The spectator, meaning the perceiver, who is willing to cooperate, can see and also recognize morethan that: the countryside with steep mountains and blue waters, still life with green grapes and black fly, a woman with long 27

brown hair and enigmatic smile, a saint scattered with arrows staring at the sky. The genius of the artist places the colour pigments in such a way that the genius of the spectator could interpret them, or in the case of cubists, so that the genius of the spectator could encounter an opposite in any effort to interpret it. In this regards, we must state the central motif of the book named Art and Illusion, in which the fine art theoretician Ernst Hans Gombrich (1985) says that spectators interpret a painting in an una- ware, automatic process of a construction, called by him the „projection”, but also in the process of conscious and more „processed” construction, which he calls the „judgement „or „knowledge”. Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) knew this power of construction already and he used it to „speed up the spirit of imaginativeness“ in the artist, as it is written in his book The Treatise on Painting: „You should have a look at some walls, spotty due to moistness, or the stones having the uneven colours. If you are go- ing to make a kind of a background, then those are the places where you can find similarity with divine sceneries that decorate mountains, ruins, rocks, forests, wast plains, hills and valleys in their manifold variety; and then you can once again see fights there and special figures doing cruel deeds, faces with their expressions, also the clothes, the infinite quantity of things you can reduce to their complete and correct forms. The same takes place on these walls as in the case of the sound of bells; you can discover every named word you can imagine in their tolls” (Ibid). Another, maybe the most enthralling fact concerning vision, is that a child is a visual genius before he/she learns how to walk. Prior to reaching first year of age, he/she can see, construe three-dimensional visual world and he/she is able to consciously move in it for hours, he/she construes ob- jects in it and grasps them, bites them and recognises them. Psychologist Phillip Kellman (2015) congenially titles this story by saying a newborn faces the challenge: „the space: first barrier”. Approximately at the age of one month, a child winks when something moves in front of his/her eyes, potentially bumping him/her. At the age of three months, he/she uses visual movement for the construction of the outlines of objects. Be- ing four months old, he/she uses movement and stereo vision to construct three-dimensional object shapes. Within the course of a year, a child learns how to control his/her vision and afterwards he/she learns the names of the objects, activities and relations created by him/her. When he/she is 28

eighteen years old, he/she knows around sixty thousand words: this fact indicates that he/she must have learnt in average one word every minute during the previous seventeen years. In fact, a child doesn‘t learn how to see. Even though his/her parents do not teach him/her how to transform the visual world to the objects and activities; it seems every child learns how to construe the visual length, shape, colours, objects and activities in exactly the same way as any ot- her healthy developing individual. Without being instracted by anyone, a child would recall the visual world; all children do this in the same way. This piece of knowledge is remarkable because by doing this, a child overcomes the basic problem of vision. An image in the eye may be interpreted in countless different ways. Un- der the title „an image in the eye”, we mean an image at the eye retina, i.e. such image that is projected to the tissue in the rear part of the eye, sensitive to light. For example, every child construes, thus creates his/her visual world in three dimensions: height, width and length. In fact, the picture is two-dimensional – it has height and width. This implies that a child can create countless amounts of three-dimensional worlds, while each of them is compatible with the picture in the sense: when looking at this three-dimensional picture from a right angle, we will get the same view. The given process is understood and explained in this way at least since 1692, when William Molyneux (1656 – 1698), Irish scientist, phi- losopher and politician published first version of the English text about optics Dioptrica Nova, in which he states the distance itself cannot be per- ceived because it is a line (or the length) which appears to our eye from its end towards us and thus it must be a single point which is invisible. This piece of knowledge is further developed by George Berkeley (1685 – 1753), one of the three best known British empiricists, in his work New Theory of Vision, where he says: „Everyone agrees, I think, that distance itself can’t be seen, because the distance, as a line pointing from its end towards our eye, is reflected thanks to our eye as a single point. This point always remains the same, whether the distance is longer or shorter. Berkeley does not deny that we can see the length at the moment we open our eyes” (2015). However, he warns that the length we can see is just one of the many lengths we might see in the given picture in the eye. The ambiguity, equivocation, expressed in this way is does not apply only to 29

the length (distance), but to all the aspects of our visual construction, in- cluding movement, light and colours. He does not deny the abundance of picture cognition, including the abundance of kinetic pictures. This fact is clearly demonstrated by an American psychologist James Gibson (1904 – 1979), according to whom, despite the abundant cognition of pictures, there still remains the basic problem of vision: there are still countless visual worlds children could create (out of them). How a child could assort the countless possible visual worlds so that he/ she would reach more or less the same response as any other child when perceiving reality? This is impossible unless the child approaches the same task on the basis of his/her own (inherited) rules teaching him/her to create and construe visual words. If a child is born with certain rules, unknown to us, which help him/her to create the visual world, then he/she can learn to create, construe the words. If the rules are universal in such a sense that all healthy developing children get the same standards, then these rules may „blind” them with many possibilities and opportunities. For example, if we have two children next to each other, each of them coming from the opposite corner of the Earth, and we show them the same picture, it may happen that both children will see the same visual scene. We take it as an issue that is simply determined. Much valued piece of knowledge is that both children share the same inherited rules which guide their thinking when creating the visual constructions. The congeni- tal rules are called the rules of universal vision. The argument for the rules of universal vision is parallel with the known argument for the rules of universal grammar enabling to achieve the uni- versal language on one hand and to apply it in practice on the other hand. Noam Avram Chomsky, the American scientist, linguist, professor of phi- losophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says that language learnt by every human is a rich and complex construction, predetermined by fragmentary characters, accessible even to a child (Piattelli-Palmarini, 1980). Despite this fact, the individuals in linguistic community prin- cipally grow and cultivate the same language code. This fact may be explained only on the basis of the assumption that the individuals use maximally restrictive principles regulating the construction of grammar. According to Chomsky, these principles are genetically determined part of the cognitive structure of a child. It would not be possible to learn lan- 30

guage without them. Finally, this is stated also by psycholinguist Steven Pinker (2015), who argues that complex language is universal because children in fact rediscover it, generation after generation. Not because someone teaches them, not for their overall perception, not because it is useful for them, but because they cannot act differently. The principle of universality applies also to vision, since children really rediscover it, generation after generation – not because someone teaches them, not for their overall perception, not because it is useful for them, but because they cannot act differently. Without the congenital rules of the universal vision, a child would not be able to recall the previously seen reality. With the congenital rules of the universal vision, we can create the visual worlds of extraordinary accuracy, beauty and practical value. The rules of the universal grammar enable a child to attain specific rules of gram- mar of one or several particular languages. The specific rules work when a child who learnt the language, would understand the functioning and the construction of a sentence in the language and can express himself/herself through sentences. The similar rules of the universal vision enable a child to attain the specific rules for the construction of visual scenes. These specific rules work when a child who learnt to see can see the pictures or dramatic scenes and understand them. These rules are called the rules of visual perception processing. The congenital rules of the universal vision are the part of the ontogenesis of a child and thanks to the visual experience, which may differ depen- ding on the character of the (sub)culture he/she lives in, they gradually facilitate the attainment of the rules that can process the visual perception. On the contrary, the rules of visual perception processing shall enable a sensitive child or adult to create specific visual pictures, even while per- ceiving. The visual picture or scene is not created by individuals at once, but gradually. D. Hoffman (2011, pp. 7-15), L. Kesner (1997), R. Taylor (1992) and others state that this is a process with several phases. In a typi- cal case, the construction in one phase depends on the result of construc- tions made in the previous phases, while its beginning is the result of these phases. For example, the visual perception of a book or any other physical object in our vicinity, which we can see as three-dimensional, is the result of our two-dimensional construction of movements, lines and their connections. The manifold character of the rules of visual perception 31

processing is related to the manifold character of these phases. The rules of visual perception processing and their many interactions play a signi- ficant role in the case of visual intelligence. They work so efficiently and rapidly that we do not realize them in our common life. If we are able to identify them, we shall get improved in the processing of visual percep- tions and also in visual intelligence. Visual Intelligence – Active and Holistic Ability Vision, visual perception is so fast, reliable, informative and even ex- hausting under normal circumstances that we think that the activity re- quires almost no attention. And this is a mistake since vision, since fast reaction is the intelligence ability and such an important ability that it employs almost half of our cerebral cortex. In addition, visual intelli- gence retrospectively affects our mental and emotional intelligence, and in many cases, it is even its predecesor, a kind of driving force. According to the researches, vision is not just the matter of passive perception, in principle it is a process with active participation of the percipient. What we can see is always the construction of our visual intelligence. Just like scientists intelligently formulate theories useful for life, based on the ex- perimental verification, similarly our vision system intelligently creates useful visual worlds that are based on the pictures created in the eye. The substantial difference is just in the fact that the conclusions of scientists are produced on the conscious principle, while in the case of visual intel- ligence it is mostly the unconscious creation. According to D. Hoffman (1998), to understand visual intelligence sup- poses mainly to understand ourselves and to realize who we are. This process includes also the ability to understand much of the visual culture in wchich the following holds true: it is better to see once than hear twice. Everyday life persuades us that video games attract both children and adults, visual effects lure us to go to a cinema or theatre more than any time before, music videos introduce us to the surrealistic world of imagi- nations. Virtual reality, by means of simulation, the impression of reality, can immerse us to the realistic visual world. It offers new possibilities and 32

experience in the field of amusement, as well as in the field of architec- ture, education or medicine. Therefore, we may state that just like litera- ture brings us joy, stimulating our intellectual potential through the effect of the word, or a touching story that lets our emotional intelligence work, we also search for and view with delight the visual media that represent a challenge for our visual intelligence. Visual intelligence is defined as an active and holistic capacity that is at the highest level of sensory/perception hierarchy. It is based on the activation of a short-term and long-term memory. According to some theoreticians, the visual intelligence connects motoric coordination and verbal language, it has its own universal grammar, based on the following principle: point, line, colour and their coordination within a basic com- munication framework. Visual intelligence is thus the active ability. We should state for comparison that while the action of the verbal intelli- gence is investigated in the mode of expression (the active mode) and the mode of reception (the passive mode), it seems that the visual intelligence does not have direct consequences in the passive mode of thinking and learning. Visual intelligence is also a holistic ability. It is verified that verbal intelligence relies upon the ability of linear thinking or thinking „in parts”, in contrast to which we speak of visual thinking when we reach the overall understanding of the unit. Since visual thinking is non-line- ar and thus also chaotic (in the positive sense of the word), it is able to develop continuously. And one more comparison: In the case of visual thinking, there is no equivalent of a full stop at the end of a sentence, which is used in verbal language. In the hierarchy of perception, visual thinking is higher than verbal ability. Visual thinking uses all the senses and it specifically interconnects them with spoken language and motoric coordination. It has the universal grammar which precedes both written and spoken word. 33



VISUAL THINKING Visual thinking and visual intelligence are very important terms from the point of view of the study of the given topic. Intelligence relying upon „vision” is a general ability, while visual thinking is a more specific pro- cess. In principle, we know many words which help us to describe the level of understanding or belief, but only a few relevant visual references, characters and symbols which would be interconnected with the given words and which would be understandable for all recipients without ex- ception. The picture of lighting a bulb is a well know example of the effect M. Gardner (1982) called „Aha!” thinking, sudden comprehension of the problem. The great thinkers, whose „Aha!” changed the history, science, art or any other field, often state that visual thinking is the im- pulse of their sudden enlightenment or discovery. H. Kim stresses out that in such a case the majority of language is visual, that it induces the „I see now!” effect. He also notes that the word „idea” is in fact derived from the Greek word „idein” meaning „to see” and that many words connect vision with thinking, which helps us to get the sight, overview, to see into the problem,...” (Kim, 1980, p. 1). Visual thinking takes place in three basic modes: • Perception (the pictures we see). • Imagination (the pictures we imagine, connect and/or internally. transform in our mind regardless of the instant perception). • Projection (the pictures we mediate externally – the pictures we sketch, draw, paint or sculpt). Visual thinking includes also various cognitive processes and operations which take place within and among these modes of thinking. According to Colangelo and Davis (1997), they include (but they are not limited to) the following processes: • Searching for patterns: discovering the patterns or their basic motifs, their combination, filling the gaps, categorisation and supplementa- tion of patterns. 35

• Rotation: inversion drawing, mental manipulation and ortographic imagination (the idea what the object looks like from various angles of view). • Visual justification: the spatial analogies and visual induction. • Understanding of dynamic structures: displaying of a three-dimen- sional space. • Visual synthesis: a combination of several pictures. In the creative synthesis, the generated entities are different and larger than the sum of the individual components. The visual thinking does not rely just upon „vision-aided thinking”. The analyses of visual spatial projections suggest they may be divided into three homogeneous groups representing various categories of abilities: the structural spatial perception, mental rotation and spatial visualisation. Visual Thinking Expressed in Non-verbal Concepts The natural tendency to visual thinking from early childhood is suggested by many scientists, musicians and artists. Gertrude Stein observed Pab- lo Picasso, who „...wrote through painting, when other children wrote their letters a, b, c... Drawing has always been his only way of speaking” (Gardner, 1993, p. 140). It is interesting that Picasso handles numbers as if they were visual pat- terns and not the symbols representing quantities: he can see the pigeon as the arrangement of zeros, its wings as twos and the basic line as the sum of these numbers. He personifies numbers and is fascinated with his own fantastic abilities of perception. Visual thinking is not a reserved (or distinguishing) capacity of artists. It is similarly important in many other fields: Surgeons visually think while operating, chemists while construing molecular models, mathematicians while thinking about abstract relations between space and time, engineers when designing electric circuits, structures and mechanisms, managers when contemplating about how to organise and plan work, architects 36

when considering how to combine functionality with beauty, mechanists in the situation when it is necessary to transform the „drawn” plans to concrete things. The famous mathematician, Roger Penrose argues the importance of visual thinking by saying that visual thinking is dominating also for the most talented mathematicians the world knows. He claims that his own mathematical thinking is non-verbal and that „almost all mathematical thinking happens visually and in non-verbal concepts, even though the ideas are quite often accompanied with meaningless and use- less verbal commentary, such as „we shall place this here and that there...” (Penrose, 1990, p. 424). We should also state the words of other talented mathematicians or physics, for example Albert Einstein, who considered imagination the dominant form of thinking: „The words of natural lan- guage in written or spoken form seem to play no role in my mechanism of thinking. The mental entities, which are apparently the elements of thinking, are certain characters and more or less clear pictures that can be „freely” reproduced and combined. Of course, there is a kind of intercon- nection between the elements and relative logical terms. It is also appa- rent that the desire to finally achieve logically interconnected terms is the emotional base of this psychologigaly rather unclear game. It seems that it is the basic property of productive thinking. The conventional words or other characters must be laboriously searched for in the second phase, af- ter the completion of the above mentioned association game that can then be freely reproduced”, Albert Einstein adds (Kim, 1993, p. 49). Visual Perception and Imagination The expression of thoughts, experience and emotions closely relates to the visual language, as well as to visual imagination and visual percep- tion. Pablo Picasso often said to Gertruda Stein that when he eats a toma- to, he looks at it in the same way as anyone else. But when he draws it, he sees it differently” (Gardner, 1993). In this phase, it is important to differentiate between the visual perception and imagination. Simply said, perception, sensory perception is the pro- cess of obtaining and processing impulses, information from both exter- nal and internal environment of an individual, while his/her activity is fo- 37

cused on determining the sensory quality of the perception. Imagination is thus the ability to imagine the absent things and to combine the ima- ginations. Both processes include the assimilation of the external world and the internal stimuli into the visual unit or schemes. One may draw what he/she can see, maybe a tree, in such case he/she relies upon percep- tion. Or he/she can draw from memory, without looking at what he/she can see. In such case, he/she relies upon imagination. Though it would be easier to say that perception is passive and imagination active, let us try to sketch the process of reading and writing for comparison, as both of them rely upon decoding and encoding information. It was found out that when reading, there is a great difference between the decoding (pas- sive/receiving) and encoding (active/expressive) of the language, even though visual information passes through vision, the process is based on the „information” already stored in the brain of the reader (Scheme 4). A simple process of decoding is described in the publication by F. Smith (1978), who claims that this is the information that won’t be available to the reader „after switching the light off”. However, an experienced reader can encode the previously stored data or information, to receive them, process them and even foresee the future development, for example the end of the story, even in the dark. Communication in visual world Sender Message – code Piece of art Message – code (artist) Recipient Decoding (film, photo, video) Decoding 38

Communication Sender Message – code Communication Message – code Recipient Decoding channel Decoding Sender and recipient mutually communicate Scheme 4: Decoding and encoding To visually perceive an image also means to participate in its creation, to discover, imagine the absent objects and to combine the imaginations, to create pictures. This is the creative process that is also the „bridge” to the new worlds. Many of our ideas are transformed to pictures and as such they are probably encoded in our mind. According to Kim, „imagi- nation relates to the development of ideas through sensual mechanisms, either in reality or in thinking. The guiding approach should produce the series of pictures of various formats, pictorial, auditory or palpable ones. However, the most efficient means is the visual image that can also repre- sent many objects or relations. Let us mention an example: The operating system of a computer is a rich reservoir of icons or pictorial symbols displayed on colour screen thanks to various graphic techniques” (Kim, 1993, 2000, p. 38). From the point of view of efficiency, in many situations, imagination may be more convenient than verbal thinking. Theoretically, linguistics and imagery are congeneric in their competencies, but according to Kin, ima- gination is more significant for practice. Its advantages relate to paralle- lism, acceleration and multidimensionality. The strongest aspect of ima- gination is parallelism, let’s say in a case when we synchronously per- ceive movements and gestures of a crowd of people on the canvas, while the linguistic events take place subsequently, and then we cannot follow the discussion of all people at once. We can speak of acceleration when 39

we can better understand the visual picture, object or sound than the ori- ginal reference picture. The argument expressed in a spoken language can be understood sooner if it is mediated more slowly. When it is delivered too quickly, we shall lose the point, the essence of what was delivered. Visual Thinking and Creative Thinking The presence of perception and imagination in addition to the „internal vi- sion”, which we all possess, and the ambiguous character of what we can see, may lead us to a hypothesis that visual language is somehow messy, chaotic, that it lacks the rules of syntax, semantics and graphophonics, which generally support the spoken and written forms of communication. However, the surveys prove there are certain rules in the visual communi- cation, and it is really necessary to arrange the abilities of visual thinking. One of the best available compiled views, is the theory of gestaltism or phenomenology3.1 The holistic psychology or gestaltism emphasises the fact that behaviour and experience must be studied as organised units and they cannot be un- derstood by separating their individual parts. Gestaltists suggest several rules of structuring that describe perception as the result of organisati- onal processes of brain and relations between the individual elements for- ming an idea. They claim that the perceived structure originates due to the influence of these elements on the processes of interpretation within the nervous system. They consider the following to be the most substantial principles: • The law of proximity, which means that the visual elements that are close to each other shall fuse and they can be easily perceived as a whole. • The law of similarity, which means that the visual elements resem- 3 The theory of gestalt is based on the term of structure, which is understood as the consistent unit of relations between the stimulus and the response. This school suggests understanding the phenomena in unity, without separation of elements from the unit they are incorporated in and which have no meaning outside of it. At first, the theory of gestalt was applied on perception, later it was extended on the entire psychology and penetrated also to other fields: sociology, anthropology, linguistics, etc. 40

bling each other, either in size, shape or colour, are often perceived as a single element. • In the sense of the law of closure, the visual elements in mutual proxi- mity which suggest the outline of any shape, even if incomplete and separated with gaps, shall be visually perceived as a closed shape. • In the case of the law of balance, every visual field leads to perfection and accuracy – completeness – just like every physical activity is focused on the achievement of physical balance or the achievement of the balance of antagonistic forces (Myers, 1989, p. 23). Visual thinking leads to the most creative discoveries or compositions the mankind knows. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart claimed that he stored the mental pictures in his mind and translated them into the language of music only much later. The segments of melodies emerged in his hearing and he simply accepted or refused them according to the piece of music he was creating at that time. Kekulé’s well-known interpretation of the discovery of the structure of carbon ring depicted as a snake biting its tail is often quoted as the proof of the power of visual thinking and creative thinking, in other words of creative discoveries. Wordsworth and Co- leridge were known for their visual imagination long before their poet- ry was published. Worsworth´s statement „the flash on the inward eye” (I wandered lonely as a cloud) is certainly one of the most poetic descrip- tion of visual imagination and its creative results. Imagination is an important precondition of creative thinking since the prevailing part of our ideas and inspirations has the form of pictures. Some prose writers claim the plot lines of their stories are developed in front of their eyes and they record them on paper only afterwards. We know the comparison of the efficiency of creative and visual thinking of two well-known and talented mathematicians – Henri Poincaré and Al- bert Einstein. Even though they were both born into relatively privileged families, Poincaré excelled since his early childhood, while Einstein struggled for his entire school and university carrier, which he desperate- ly called „a comedy” (Miller, 1998, p. 51). It is known that the „early period and phase of life of the two great sci- entists could hardly differ more than in the case of Poincaré and Einstein. 41

There are dramatic differences between their school carriers, personal lifes and periods when they reach success in the field of research. In 1905, both of them have the same data and mathematical tools for the formu- lation of the theory of relativity. Only Einstein succeeds. The differences show in the visual way of thinking of Einstein in comparison to the non- visual thinking of Poincaré. Einstein claimed that visual images – and not words or language – serve as the significant attributes of his creative ideas. Einstein’s son says about his father: „...he had the character of an artist rather than of a scientist... The supreme value of a good theory or a well done work was not that they were correct or accurate, but that they were beautiful” (In Edwards, 1986, p. 280). The importance of the „cognitive conflict” is clearly visible in Einstein’s personal records about problem solving: „The idea that I was dealing with two fundamentally different cases was unbearable for me” (Rothenberg, 1983, p. 110). Einstein called this idea „the happiest one” in his life. Ro- thenberg characterises the Janusian thinking as an „active concurrent per- ception of two or more antagonistic or antithetical concepts, ideas. As if both of them existed next to each other and/or were equally true” (Ibid). 42

VISUAL LANGUAGE Language is one of the most important carriers of culture, the symbols and meanings of which can be differentiated and interpreted by humans. Noam Avram Chomsky builds on a thesis that human mind is „equipped” with unknown, „universal grammar” and it gradually reveals it through the study of particular languages. According to him, we have a congenital intuition for the formal structure of language, independent upon its me- aning. As an example, he provides the idea we should contemplate: „Co- lourless green ideas sleep furiously” (In Piattelli-Palmarini, 1980). From the semantic point of view, this is a nonsensical sentence in Slovak (or in English), when letting it be the metamorphic expression, but its grammar and form are adequate. Visual Language and Communication In general, the opinion that words are the carriers of ideas and feelings prevails. Even though the majority of people with sufficient intellect are able to express their ideas and feelings using words on a required level, it is clear that this capacity would further improve and become better by learning. It is known that successful novelists and poets have an extraor- dinarily well-developed capacity to express their feelings and ideas using words. In general, it holds true that if one is depressed or angry, he/she is able to speak of it or to record his/her feelings in writing and to give them a better „form”. In analogy, also the picture is an expression of itself. We can visually „grasp the internal life of mind and thanks to the alternative visual language we can give it a material form. In short, to facilitate the in- ternal processes and ideas would become visible” (Edwards, 1986, p. 66). In his publications, György Kepes (1969) loves to use the term „the lan- guage of vision”, in order to describe the principles of clear communica- tion by means of visual form. He is of the opinion that the visual form itself is a language the majority of people cannot understand. The giant of fine art, Wassily Kandinsky believes in the power of visual language in 43

communication as well as when it comes to the expression of experience or emotions. According to him, the process is based on two basic attri- butes – colour and form, while he stresses out that the „form may exist independently…” (Kandinsky, 2000, p. 28). The term „universals”41is not used as often in the case of visual language. M. Cann (2001) suggests there are certain universal structures supporting visual thinking. He firstly investigated the existence of the universal ele- ments using „analogical pictures”, then by investigating the grammar of the visual form. The term „analogical pictures” describes the pictures rep- resenting an emotion or idea in a metaphorical form. The term „abstract” is used for the description of non-figurative imaging. The experience with analogical pictures prove that no two drawings are similar, there is just an apparent similarity in their structure that expresses a single concept. We can see this also when we ask children to express their experience through a drawing (graphically). At first glance it may seem that their pictures are similar, they express a single concept, and thus they have the same universal structure, for example „anger” is ex- pressed by a sharp, heavy, energetic vertical or askew line, „joy” usually by round, thin, soft vertical line, „peace” usually by long, soft horizontal line or wave, „loneliness” is usually pictured as a point or isolated short line. Thus the question emerges: What is their point, when assessing them from the linguistic point of view and parallelly from the point of view of a picture as a visual object. If analogical pictures are represented by the basic visual language, would everyone or at least the members of the same cultures understand this language? If they would, it would be ano- ther proof there may be a fixed structure of visual form that is important for art and that is comprised in human brain maybe similarly as it was formulated by Noam Chomsky for the structure intended for verbal lan- guage. B. Edwards states that „analogical pictures suggest the possible existence of such a structure” (Edwards, 1986, p. 76). 4 The universals are the general terms, abstract properties (for example the redness) or relations (for example love). The universals may not be determined by means of the categories of space and time. 44

So when a visual equivalent of Chomsky’s „universals of language” exists, then its cognition would be exceptionally important for visual thin- king or for figural creation. However, it seems the universals exist also in art and art has an ability that is closer to encoding of visual stimuli and not to simple decoding or copying. Were we able to identify the essence of the ability to receive art, we would be able to measure them as well. The existence of universal visual forms was finally proved and documented by the historians of art who studied the origin of religion, mythology, culture and traditions in ancient art. It is quite extraordinary that the do- minant motifs, offered as the proof of the existence of visual forms, con- sist in gestalts52which we can commonly find also in children’s visual artistic expression (Šupšáková, 2013, Šupšáková, Tacol, 2018). There is also the similarity with the art of W. Kandinsky: „In fact, the art started with abstraction... Abstraction closely relates to the production of sym- bols” (Kandinsky, 2000, p. 28). The Grammar of Visual Forms Since we still admire Kandinsky’s pictures, we identify ourselves with the expression of beauty, through which the author connects us with higher world. The Kandinsky’s message of non-objectivity is the message of eter- nity. This thesis suggests that the ability to think visually, which can be seen in fine art, is a strong and general capacity that is hard to measure nowadays. Just like Noam Chomsky suggests the existence of the universal structures in language, the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky claims there is the „compliance with rules”and the „universal grammar” of the visual structures. The compliance with rules, stated by Kandinsky, may be com- pared to the so called hidden similarity formulated by Jacob Bronowski in these words: „The discoveries in art and science are constantly investi- gated, they are rather the „explosion” of hidden similarity. The artist – the discoverer – presents two aspects of nature in them and combines them into one unit. This is the creation during which an original idea is generated, but it is the same with original science or original art” (Kim, 1980, p. 26). 5 Gestalt – the term used for the unification of the concept of the union with the ideas of form, shape and form. 45

What is the nature of similarity in fine art? Wassily Kandinsy uses the term „elementary figurative forms”, thus he outlines the vocabulary of elementary figurative forms and offers the following explanation: „The vocabulary of a living language is constant, even though it is the subject to constant changes: words cease and die, new ones are created, foreign words are taken in. In spite of that, the grammar in art still seems to be too dangerous to many people” (Kandinsky, 2000, p. 84). Just like linguists work on the characteristics of the grammar of different languages with the aim to explain the language itself, approximately in the same way the visual intelligence could be described, evident in great pieces of art. Authors must rely upon the description of various structures and approaches instead of trying to identify their common or universal elements. Is it possible to isolate the universal elements from the quantity of the forms of figural art at all? What would the picture „The Campbell Soup” have in common with „The Birth of Venus” by Cabanel? Is it pos- sible that the smile in da Vinci’s painting „Mona Lisa” is somehow simi- lar to the unbelievable faces of „The Women” by de Kooning? If there is the universal grammar of the visual forms supporting many different „languages” in artistic forms, is it possible to identify and eva- luate this grammar? The theoreticians of fine art, whose eye is used to recognize the visual elements and the overall image in artistic forms, may for example claim that the countryside scenery by Constable brings about a pleasant feeling of calmness and relaxation, while the Fauvistic cows by Franz Marc in red and yellow version create the feeling of chaos. Such anxiety, or even mockery we can encounter in the galleries of modern art all around the world almost every day, is accepted in several cultures and it is not considered to be the proof of insufficient intelligence. As we have already suggested, it is quite normal to be naive in several cultures when it comes to cognition and relation to fine art. The comments of the type „a child could have painted that – only a child would paint cows in yellow or red...” can be commonly heard in the galleries of modern art. But when a reader says the poetry of Paul Verlain is of poor quality since the reader cannot understand French, then such response in general would be con- sidered the lack of intelligence and it would suggest the level o thinking, opinions, and views of the human. 46

„Rapid leaps ahead” are characteristic for fine art, as well as for science, mathematics or physics. The deflection of Impressionists from Realism is a great and very momentous change in the artistic form. From the period of Impressionism, the notable artistic movements were formed: Fauvism, Ex- pressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Orphism, Dada, Surrealism, Constructi- vism, Abstract Expressionism, Kinetic Art, Pop-art, Op-art, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Land-art, Video-art, Street-art, etc. Is it possible there is  the basic grammar of figural form in the „heart” of all these move- ments? It seems that one of the greatest problems of some movements in fine art is the exclusion of realistic or iconic image of physical, sensory, intellectual, kinesthetic or emotional experience or objects in environ- ment. In this regards, we just have to agree with the statement of Kepes that „visually, the majority of us is still focused on objects and not rela- tions. We are the prisoners of an ancient orientation incorporated into the language we inherited” (Kepes, 1969, p. 9). The Real Existence of Visual Language? Simply put, verbal language and visual language really exist, with their specific functions (Table 1). It is proven that as it is possible to intercon- nect the alphabet letters in many ways and create the meaningful words, it is also possible to interconnect the visual forms in many ways and thanks to the visual language to create the particular relations and express the feelings in an area or space. The visual pictures are thus the result of in- teraction among point, line and area. They are elevated to individual sub- jects, perceived as the basic elements of being, the fundamental principles of the world. The grammar of visual forms is created through them, in which the shape, colour, space and structure (Scheme 5) have their place alongside the defining elements in the visual form of language – the point and the line. Verbal Language Visual Language Vowels Line, spot, matter Consonants Shape, light, colour, material 47

Syllables The merging of line and spot into a shape, meaningful assignment of colour to the Words spot, of surface to the matter Sentences The fine-art expression of objects and liv- ing creatures Narrative fine-art images, closed visual units Table 1: Verbal language and visual language (Gero, Š. In Šupšáková, Vizuálna kultúra a umenie v škole: nové myšlienky a prístupy, 2004, p. 41) It is holistic verIbtaolfsteunppnoeretds I nteoeldern it Visual language exists Ituisninvoetrsal by Ilet amrnaiyngbe improved Scheme 5: Visual language 48