barebones communication

It is really good that I have all these pictures, right . Since they all speak more than a thousands words.

Each.

Well I enjoy it, and if you too participate in the initial stages of the barebones community building, you will as well .

So here is another notebook brief for you. The white bus in Berlin. Shot this August.

I could ask you how this fit will a couple of gestalt factors, but that would be too easy. Obviously both proximity and similarity are at work here, as the two most dominant factors. Nearness and similarity of objects have me perceive this picture as a picture of two groups of people (not six individuals): one group upstairs and another group downstairs.

Let’s however make this notebook brief a bit more interesting by pointing to two levels of closure potent in the image. Do you remember, that I talked about a physical closure and a mental closure in the post on gestalt closure.

Closure is, in a quick word, the human capacity to perceive a bit more than you actually get. The whole is more than the sum of its physically given parts.  This is the gestalt basic.

Now, the picture that you find in this post is a pretty complete one. There are no blank spots or areas. Things that you need to fill in to comprehend them. You should be able to recognize, at first glance, what the picture is all about.

On the other hand, there are still things “missing” in the picture. Let me point to a few:  you don’t see the bodies of the talking heads on the bus, and you don’t see the whole bus. Yet, that is what you perceive; people with intact bodies, and a bus that will certainly drive away if the driver tends to it.  Your are not in doubt about these things.

So for reason that will be clear in future posts, I will introduce two additional layers within the closure concept. These are layers 2 and 3 below.

1) Closure, as the capacity to mentally close figures where visual information is actually lacking (as in the example with the dog in the blog post on closure). This is the gestalt original. 

Then, let me add some layers to this: 

2) Closure, as the capacity to mentally close figures where the visual information is actually hidden or cropped away (as the bodies of the talking heads or the parts of the bus that are not actually there).

3) Closure, as the capacity to mentally elaborate on the context of the actual visual stimuli. You clearly have a notion of what these people are doing on that bus, don’t you? And you have an idea of how they are going to spend the next hours, haven’t you? You even may have an idea of why these guys are in Berlin in the first place? How will you close this open context and continue the story?

It does not really matter how you close it. The important thing is that you have the ability to close it. Any way you want . Remember the last pitstop. I do .

So much for the nostalgische rundfahrt, apart from that tiny, but important thing, that what I just did was to link a gestalt factor to that popular idea of telling a story, as a communication means.  That passport to success, would you believe it? I think they call it storytelling, right? .

I also introduced another gestalt factor: the factor of experience or habit. 

More on this later, so stay tuned to a barebones blog near you.

And, sorry for taking all the notes myself.  I will make up for it .

Both gestalt proximity, and gestalt similarity works well here.

I would suggest, that this image would probably be perceived as two groups of two people each. Not as four separate people in a picture.

What other gestalt “tricks” have been engaged here? Can you figure that out? If any? I am sure you have an answer.

Good luck with it . 

More on barebones notebook. 

Ok then, let’s move on to the next gestalt factor; the factor of similarity.

This one is really easy: things that are similar tends to be grouped together. Not physically grouped, as with proximity, but mentally grouped. They band together.

In the article by Wertheimer already mentioned, he says:  ”Thus we are led to the discovery of a second principle - viz. the tendency of like parts to band together - which we may call The Factor of Similarity“. 

He states that this factor, as with proximity, is both visual and auditory, it works for sounds as well as for form and colour. I can think of many more areas, but let’s leave it at that for the moment.

What does the word similarity mean. You all have answers to that, but let’s go for the official versions by quoting a dictionary. Just to be on the safe side.

Wikipedia says: “Similarity is some degree of symmetry in either analogy and resemblance between two or more concepts or objects. The notion of similarity rests either on exact or approximate repetitions of patterns in the compared items”.

You might have noticed, that I already touched upon similarity in the post on proximity, where I suggested that the two elderly people not only were sitting close to each other, but also had similar traits. Let me expand on that a bit: They both wear straw hats as protection against the sun, they both sit in the same type of chairs; they both wear casual summer clothing; etcetera. Similar could be says about the younger standing at the right hand side.

I could go on, as I am sure you could. Let’s have a look at one of the pictures once more.

Remember what happened, when I suggested that you substitute the standing man for a standing bottle of Bacarci? Well, you don’t break the proximity. You ungroup the couple, so to speak, because the two objects are no longer similar.

And what happens when substituting both men for bottles of Bacardi? You break the illusion of a quite beach scene, and moves the picture into a surreal world. Right?

You don’t have to agree with me in this interpretation, as long as we can agree that the picture takes on a different set of denotations, as well as connotations. See former post.

If you, in your imagination, substitute the two gentlemen with bottles of Bacardi, other things happens as well. The proximity is still intact, but the original similarity is not. Now we have (in the imagined Bacardi picture) two different sets of similarities. All of a sudden the two women band together. As does the bottles of Bacardi. We have suddenly got one group of people, and one group if Bacardis. This is the factor of similarity working. 

I don’t want to linger on this much longer. It’s pretty obvious what happens, and how similarity dismantle proximity, and regroups the content of the picture.

Another shot coming up. What would I have done without them .

The people proximity isn’t that strong in this shot. The two guys are at separate ends of the glass cylinder. Why are they still grouped? Well, for one reason they are both black; they are both looking into the glass cylinder, they both have bended bodies. They are both standing up. There are lots of reasons. I am sure that you can think of some, as well.

So, let’s end it here. This is, after all, a blog, and not a lecture . Let me suggest some areas of use, as with proximity.

Areas of Use: 

Lots of I would say. Here are a few ones on the fly.

Combining striking colour and striking mood; combining product form and overall visual form; combining black coffee with black panther; combining Red Label with Red Fire; combining colour content with business image content, combining text structure with visual content structure; combining music with mood,  combining woman’s body with sand dunes, combining young child with young tree, combining text with context, combining, combining, combining, combining .. this it getting really boring. You come up with some examples - in any context of communication you can possibly think of.

Or do the opposite: chose dissimilarity, and get striking never-heard-of-effects.  As with the Bacardis.

The gestalt factors works both ways: use them straight to group, or use them faked to ungroup. 

Question: 

Do you see the young girl at the far end of the glass cylinder? Do you really? Or do you see a random structure of black dots?

Coming up soon is another gestalt factor; the factor of closure .

All for now. Thanks.