Dear pupils:
Is this some kind of difficult stuff?: not that much!... If you consider that you have been "working" with it your whole life so far, you will perhaps realise that it cannot be that complex. Actually, "gestalt" is the stuff that your entire visual world is made of.
As David Hogue told us in this video a few hours ago: "Gestalt Principles and Laws describe how we perceive the world around us as meaningful and complete objects, with a clear distinction between foreground (figures) and background. We perceive whole objects, not a series of independent parts". Quite a summary!...
We must admit, though, that we have neither time, nor much capacity (not yet) to either grasp -which, by the way, is a synonym for "perceive" or "understand"- or develop the vast amount of information and knowledge that this issue implies.
Anyway, I propose to you to watch some more videos, dealing all of them with this very topic: the way that we perceive and organise our visual "inputs" (things that we see, if you rather want to put it simple); the kind of laws that rule this obvious, immediate, deceptively simple, but utterly complex process: the human visual perception.
- ´Gestalt Psychology and Why It's Essential for Good Design´
- ´Gestalt Laws of Perception´
- ´Gestalt principles | Processing the Environment´
- ´Perceiving is Believing´
- ´Seeing the world as it isn't | Daniel Simons´
- ´Julian Beever (We don´t always perceive what it REALLY IS)´
- ´Julian Beever ´Live´
Some other day, you will have a proper written summary of all this. I hope you will enjoy it.
