Ecological Perception Research, Visual Communication, and Aesthetics [Paperback]

This book tries to apply James J. Gibson's ecological approach to picture perception to questions of visual communication and aesthetics; it provides examples from architecture, industrial design and the arts, to testify the feasibility of this application. Additional theoretical analyses, partly based on cross-cultural and clinical research, help supplement Gibson's basic conjecture, that picture perception is essentially based on invariants of optical structure, rather than interpretation.1. Introduction: The ecological optics of information surfaces.- I: Pictures, plans, drawings, and displays  surrogate information and means for communication.- 2. Picture perception as indirect perception.- 3. The communicative potential of pictures: eleven theses.- 4. On two distinct and quintessential kinds of pictorial representation.- 5. Meaning, presence and absence in pictures.- 6. Decomposing optical stimulus information by pictures.- 7. Communicating design ideas: a pictorial essay.- 8. Functional versus dysfunctional aspects of information surfaces.- II: Ecological aesthetics.- 9. The semiotics and aesthetics of surfaces and surface layouts.- 10. Ecological perception and aesthetics: pictures are affordance-free.- 11. The aesthetic experience as perceiving the general affordance of explorability.- 12. Epilogue: Availability and affordances of information from information surfaces.- Author index.- List of contributors.A book that provides new aspects to Gibson's approach to picture perception.Springer Book ArchivesDE