How do we actually look at pictures, and how does that affect what we see in them? I started thinking about this again when I read about the Kuuk Thaayorre, an Aboriginal society in northern Australia. Lera Boroditsky (mentioned previously on A&P) reports on The Edge that their language and culture describe space and spatial relationships not in body-relative terms, but in absolute, land-fixed terms (I wonder if this is true for many Aboriginal langiages). When given a sequence of picture cards (showing a banana being eaten, or other obvious process) to arrange in time order,
Instead of arranging time from left to right, they arranged it from east to west. That is, when they were seated facing south, the cards went left to right. When they faced north, the cards went from right to left. When they faced east, the cards came toward the body and so on. This was true even though we never told any of our subjects which direction they faced. The Kuuk Thaayorre not only knew that already (usually much better than I did), but they also spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time.
It struck me this might be relevant to speculations about the narrative tendencies of a panoramic format, where the question arose of whether one reads left-to-right or vice-versa, which would affect the direction of any implicit narrative. The answer seems to depend on the way you read a book in your language. But I hadn’t thought it would depend on which wall of a gallery the picture was hung, as it would for the Kuuk Thaayorre.
That led me to search for eye-tracking studies of picture viewing. I didn’t get too far, but I did come across an article on the difference between artists and non-artists. Which yellow tracks below represents the path of an artist’s gaze? [Warning: answer in the next paragraph]
I think most artists will guess it’s not the one on the left. It seems reasonable to me that the artist is interested in detail and technique everywhere, and in the relations of all parts to whole. The explanation in the article is roughly the same thing said inversely: non-artists are more focused on salient features like people and faces. But the more interesting ideas are in the comments, such as
This seems similar to studies of eye-movement in the sightreading of music. Those who are particularly good at sightreading are constantly looking over the entire page, whereas novices look mostly at the exact spot they are playing.
and
By the looks of it the non-artist is seeing the scene as if it was real, sizing up the doorway and figure on the first, checking the distance from the horizon on the second.
Whereas the artist appears to be looking at the flat image only as a two dimensional space.
Aside: while deep into the results of a Google search on eye-tracking, I encountered a story not of viewing, but of creating a picture using that technology. The Hawaiian artist Peggy Chun, progressively incapacitated by ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), used various methods to continue painting, eventually making use of eye-tracking and finally of a direct brain interface to make pictures.
So I’ve learned just a little about how we look at pictures. But as to how that affects our experience of them, I’m not much the wiser. I can imagine that one’s sensitivity to narrative elements might depend on whether one’s default ordering matched the composition of the picture. Perhaps viewers from different cultures might extract differing stories from the same work for this reason.
Steve,
It is fascinating to learn that Australian aborigines sort ‘in absolute, land-fixed terms’. Some of this sort of evaluation must be conserved. Troels orients himself in two-dimensional space in similar ways whereas I am only certain of coordinates when I am in familiar space unless I see the sun.
This statement is very interesting too: ‘Whereas the artist appears to be looking at the flat image only as a two dimensional space. I intend to train myself to look at my paintings as ‘if the scene was real’.
Birgit,
I’m usually well-oriented in terms of knowing where north is. But I’m even better oriented with respect to the surroundings, whether urban or wild. I recently discovered that a road I’d thought of as running north-south was actually closer to northwest-southeast. But I have no trouble wandering mapless in those mountains.
Yes, the 2-D vs 3-D way of looking at a picture is very interesting. It seems that a realistic painter would want to be looking 3-D-ishly. But as a photographer with an eye to abstraction, I’m trying to see the photograph as a flat collection of tonal patches, which might potentially have alternate effects than simply evoking the 3-D scene it was made from.
Deborah Barlow, in a post at Slow Muse, mentions an interesting observation regarding Aboriginal perception of pictures:
I wonder if the anecdote applies only to the painters or others familiar with the subject of a painting, who can mentally re-orient it in their known world. Would others perhaps have some discomfort or misperception if unsure of the absolute orientation?
In other follow-up, it appears that an absolute frame of reference for spatial language is–not surprisingly–probably widespread among Australian Aboriginal groups. One well-studied example is Guugu Yimithirr, mentioned in a book with the intriguing title Language, culture, and society. Another relevant book that looks fascinating is The Human Semantic Potential: Spatial Language and Constrained Connectionism.
Steve,
I would like to think that the differences discussed by Deborah Barlow are cultural. The mentioning that aborigines have a
makes me think of our children’s desire to touch. I too like to touch but am inhibited by the watchful eyes of the museum guards.
Thus, I don’t buy
I propose that touching is beaten out of us and therefore, by necessity, we have to rely on seeing.
The linguistic references look interesting. I might even understand some of what is written unlike a talk by Chomsky that I attended in the midseventies.
Birgit,
I don’t think there’s a disagreement, as long as “differences between the Aboriginal and the Western way of perceiving” are understood as being learned from the culture, not inherent. That’s how I read it, anyway.
The relation of visual perception and touch is considered quite important in the Pepe Karmel book on cubism (see this recent post for a quote). The dominant, empiricist model of learning to perceive visual objects involved associating them with the concrete objects that can be felt and manipulated. After the Impressionists’ efforts to learn from the optics of visual perception, the Cubists were interested in re-introducing touch, making objects (and space itself) palpable. Braque wished to re-establish “a tactile or palpable feeling. It’s very nice to make people see something, but if you can make them touch it, that’s better still!”
I find Chomsky very hard to read, and I usually disagree with him.
Steve,
Something else came to mind about our increasingly visual perception. My physical therapist told me to balance on one foot with my eyes closed to train my proprioceptors. Supposedly, proprioception diminishes as one get older. Makes sense. Most of us don’t do much running over irregular territories. Instead, we sit on our office chairs, car seats, sofas. Not much challenge for our joint receptors.
Steve:
Some quick takes:
I assume that the study using the optical scanning method addressed a limited question – artist/non-artist. The same methodology could be used to follow that same artist as heshe observed a variety of images. Does the scanning sequence change and, if so, why?
Can the aboriginal person maintain the absolute orientation in a windowless room? When pictures are arranged in a North/South orientation, is the direction true or just an approximation of magnetic or polar North/South?
You sampled the bag of Karmels more than did I. I can’t remember to what extent he got into the Cubist subjects: guitars, glasses, stickers and the like – things to be picked up and handled. And then stuff that we might be inclined to call “memes” these days, that get under the skin and take up residence there. “Ma Jolie”, if I got the title right, was, I believe, the name of a popular song. I can imagine Braque saying: “You know, Picasso, a thousand things happen to me while I’m painting a picture. How can I get that down?
Jay,
I’m not sure what other scanning studies were done. I’d ask Stine Vogt for her thesis, but I’ve already too much to read. Her basic premise involved interference between a “decoding” mode of perception, which we usually engage in without thinking, and a “veridical” mode in which we try to reduce the amount of unconscious interpretation, as an artist trying to see “real” colors in a scene might do.
I’m still chewing of the Karmel, but in general he is not reading so closely as TJ Clark. As for memes, I can’t believe nobody has mentioned the obvious association of guitar with the female body. Particularly for Picasso, who was very concerned with the figure (and women). “Ma jolie” is/was a common pet name for “my girlfriend,” but its use in the refrain of a popular song certainly fit with a portrait of his lover playing guitar.
Steve:
Give me a Clark bar any day. You mean that Pepe doesn’t comment on the guitar theme? The guitar is oft mentioned, but how often in a tactile frame of reference?
I’ve been sketching lines in circles recently (draw the circle, fill the space) — and this discussion of orientation and directionality reminded of the “tip” in a how-to book that got me going on these little drawings. The author recommended drawing in 1/4 of the circle, then turning the page 90 degrees, drawing in that 1/4 circle, and so on around and around. I’ve been finding it interesting since it forces me to give up the idea of directionality — which was fairly inhibiting when faced with a frame defined as not having sides and, therefore, neither having nor suggesting orientation.