Animation Context - Week 5

Expert in the Room

For the 'Expert in the Room exercise, I was randomly selected to research 'Gestalt', then present my findings to the rest of the class, and then the following week produce a piece of artwork or animation related to my word. I found the research hard to exactly find, as there are many different ways this word can be interpreted, but once I found a decent explanation, the rest of the information became easy to come by. Here is what I found;

‘Gestalt’, was originally German, which translated to literally mean form or shape, but since then has been widely known as a theory regarding human perception, and therefore is a theory focused around Psychology (The study of the behaviour and mind). The idea is otherwise known as ‘Holism’, which is the idea that natural systems and their properties should be viewed as wholes, not as collections of parts. This Theory was first introduced by Max Wertheimer around the year of 1890.

The Gestalt theory can be categorised into 5 ‘Gestalt laws of perception’, they are as follows:

• Proximity - Proximity occurs when elements are placed close together. When this happens, the observer tends to perceive the individual elements as a group. The individual elements can all vary in tone, value, Colour, Shape, Size or any other physical attributes and still create the same illusion.

•  Similarity - Similarity has a similar premise to Proximity. This law suggests that elements have similar properties and utilise the visual elements in the same way, the mind is more likely to perceive them as a group.

•  Continuity - Continuity occurs when you vision is driven to move through one object and continue onto another.

• Figure and Ground - This law suggests how the mind separates certain forms from the space surrounding them. These are typically created using clever use of negative and positive space. If done correctly, the negative space could also be shifted to visualise a new image.

• Closure - The law of closure states that when observing objects and shapes, the mind can visualise them as being whole when they are not complete. This occurs because the mind has a tendency to see complete figures or forms even if a picture is incomplete, and attempts to fill in the gaps.

After being satisfied with the information that I have gathered, I then compiled all my information into a stylised powerpoint to present it, the results of which can be seen below.

After having feedback on how the all the presentations went, I can see a lot of ways in which I could improve my next presentation. The main areas for improvement is how much information is put onto the slides, as I put way too much information on each individual slide, and when it came to reading out each of them, I more or less just read them word for word, meaning that I could have just sent the presentation to everyone, and they would have received the same information, making me presenting it, pointless. The way around this is to put very simple bullet points on each slide, which I will refer to, but expand on each point myself. I also feel like I needed to interact with my audience a bit more, even if it was just giving more eye contact to the people I was presenting to. Although I was terrified for this exercise, I feel like what I have learned from it will come in very valuable for any future presentations. Although I feel my presentation wasn't a success, I have learnt a lot of valuable advice, and am also anticipating taking me research of this topic further in the next task. I think I will create a 2D or possibly stop motion animation demonstrating how gestalt can be used to create visual illusions for my next task.