This picture described the Greek mythology that Hercules fight with the Hydra. It is made by Antonio Pollaiuolo. As can be seen in this picture there are two layers, first one is a man fighting with a monster. The other layer is a vague background that displays blue sky and a huge area of ground with rivers and farms. From this background, we can naturally know the figure and monster in the picture are much bigger than the normal one if we take the background as a reference, we will think it probably could be a mythology story about gods. In this assignment, this picture will be investigated by chapter 1 “Visual Queries”, chapter 5 “Getting the Information: Visual Space and Time” and chapter 7 “Visual and Verbal Narrative”.
1 Chapter 1 Visual Queries
1.1 The apparatus and process of seeing
According to the reader, “visual thinking is a process that has the allocation of attention as its very essence, it consists of a series of acts of attention, driving eye movements and tuning our pattern-finding circuits” (P. 3). There are a great many tiny ones processing information from central regions where we direct our gaze and only a few very large ones processing information at the edge of the visual field, which means we always focus on the center of an image as well as our visual fields and neglect the information at the edge of field. That is why we need rapid and frequent eye movement to find other information to build a complete image.
In this picture, our eyes and brains naturally focus on the figure not only because it is in the center of the picture but also because it is the most bright and clear part of the picture. We begin to scan the body of the figure from the center point such as from the stomach to limbs. Therefore, we neglect the monster beside him as well as the backgrounds. The monster seems to be merged into the background and become a part of the background which is vague in our visual fields (Figure 1). In this way, the character in the center is highlighted both in our visual fields and brains that helps us to enhance his great image in our minds.
Figure 1. The figure is in the center of the picture and also our visual field
After that, the attentions go on to the other parts around the figure which are also edges of the picture. Because when we interact with an information display, we are usually trying to solve some kind of cognitive problem (P. 4). In this picture, we want to know what the painter wants to tell us through his painting. In other words, we need to build a story by ourselves according to the detailed information we gained from the whole picture through the eye movement. The more information we get, the easier the story we can make. As we first saw the man in the center, then we saw the stick on his hand, and a monster’s neck in the other hand. At last, we saw the backgrounds such as sky and ground. Finally we know it is a story about a huge man fighting with a monster. If we look carefully, we can see two cut-off heads of the monster on the ground which shows the fight has lasted for a while.
1.2 The act of perception
According to the reader, “the act of perception is determined by two kinds of processes: bottom-up, driven by the visual information in the pattern of light falling on the retina, and top-down, driven by the demands of attention, which in turn are determined by the needs of the tasks “(P. 8).
From the bottom-up aspect, when the readers look at the picture, they first saw a man waving a stick, and then they noticed a monster is underling attack, finally they know it described a mythology because the figures are much bigger than the trees and rivers on the backgrounds. The background here is very important for readers to realise that the man in the picture is a god rather than a normal person.
From the top-down aspect, if the readers know this picture is about the mythology of Hercules and the hydra, they will mainly search Hercules and hydra and focus on them when they find them. The background here is not important or necessary for them to get a right understanding, they may even not notice the details of the background.
2 Chapter 5 Getting the Information: Visual Space and Time
2.1 Depth perception and cue theory
- Occlusion and cast shadow
According to the reader, “Most depth cues consist of environmental information that we use to judge distances from our particular viewpoint.” (P.89). There are many depth cues such as size gradients, texture gradients, depth of focus and size relative to known objects. Each of them has unique properties that can support different kinds of visual queries.
In this picture, we can see the man’s arm occludes the monster’s wing, and the monster’s body occludes the ground which is the background of the picture (Figure 2). Although objects occludes another appear closer, we can not simply say that the man in the picture is in the front of the monster, because the cast shadow of the monster is closer than the man’s cast shadow. But this can not deny the fact that the man’s arm is more important than the monster’s wing that occlusion provides both a method and a metaphor for rank-ordering information with the most important partially occluding the less important even the wing of the monster is much bigger than the man’s arm, because occlusion is the strongest depth cue compared to the others such as size constancy.
Figure 2. The occlusion between the man and the monster and the positions of their cast shadow on the ground
- Size gradients and depth of focus
There are two part of river on the ground in this picture, and one is much bigger than another (Figure 3). More distant objects are smaller on the picture plane than similarly sized nearby objects (P. 92). Since the rivers are almost the same psychical size or even they are the same river, we can feel that the smaller one is more distant than the bigger one. In another word, we can say that there is a long distance between the two rivers, which also means the ground showed in the picture, is a huge area if we consider the width of the river and the size of the farms as reference. Additionally, Objects that are farther away or nearer are blurred because the human eye, like a camera lens, focuses objects at a specific distance. From the figure 3, we also saw that the area of the smaller river is blurred while the bigger river area is clear, this also proved that the smaller river is far away.
Figure 3. The different size of the rivers shows the distance between them
- Reference to nearby known objects
Objects of known size provide a reference against which other objects are judged. Perspective cues only give cues to relative size, but we can also judge the absolute size if we have a reference object. Although this effect is knowledge-based and not pure geometry like the rest, it is one of the most important cues to distance. As we have seen in the figure 2, the man is standing on the ground according to his cast shadow is close to the ground. Also we know from the figure 3 that the ground is a huge area of land which has rivers and farms. If we make the man’s body as a known reference object, the rivers and the farm are too much tiny which looks like a normal man stands on a tiny world. But if we make the rivers as a reference, it become a giant man stands on the normal world. Of course, the latter one is more convinced.
3 Chapter 7 Visual and Verbal Narrative
3.1 Linking deictic gestures
Pointing is an important part of communication, especially when it is necessary to link visual and verbal information. When the communication is moved to 2D environment, images that contain deictic gestures can draw people’s attention easily and naturally.
In this picture, we first and most pay our attention to the man in the middle and pay less attention to the monster beside. While since we move our eyes through the man’s body to get more information, our eyes will naturally move on to the monster’s neck because the man’s left hand is grasping it. On the other hand, the man is waving a wood stick which points directly to the monster’s head. This also helps to draw our attention to the monster after we saw the man first, because the man is the most important role in the picture while the monster is the second important one. What’s more, the direction of the man’s gaze also points to the head of the monster that move all our attentions to the monster and help us to make connections between these two roles in the picture. The direction of someone’s gaze, or how he orients his body, can also serve to denote the subject of an utterance. For instance, the gesture of the man’s legs shows that he has the trend to lean to the monster for close combat. There is one interesting thing that the monster’s neck movement can also be seen as a kind of gesture. The neck twisted like the character “s” which guide people’s eye back to the man’s face (Figure 4).
3.2 Mirror neurons and empathic communication
The mirror neurons are called empathy neurons because they may allow us to read the emotions of others through the same pathways that generate our own facial expressions when we are expressing emotions (P. 137). For example, when we saw other’s face in a picture, we may feel the emotions of others via our own facial
In this picture, there is a man starring at a monster. From his facial muscles, we can form a feeling in our minds that when we have the same face muscle movement. We can feel the man is angry because we will have our blows closely knitted just like the man showed in the picture when we ourselves are angry. He gritted his teeth together that shows he used up all his strength to swung the wood stick and grasp the monster’s neck tightly. Even from such emotions on the man’s face, we could feel how fierce and cruel the monster is. Such feeling helps us to experience the power of the giant man and the drastic battle between the man and the monster.
Figure 5. How the man orients his body
On the other hand, the monster also has its facial expression. It opens its mouth, looking rather ferocious or it may be suffering the drastic pain caused by the giant man’s grasp. The man and the monster staring at each other that reminds us the moment when we stared at each other. It must going to have a battle between the two even we only see their faces instead of seeing the arm movements.
Figure 6. The facial expression of the man and the monster
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