Guiding and Priming the Viewer

As the artist you are the primary viewer.  Creative acts depend upon a dynamic associative  memory.   A  dynamic associative memory is also essential to the viewer.  Dynamic associative memory depends upon the emotional, bodily condition of the artist or viewer says neuroscientist  Antonio Damasio.   We do not  sustain attention well when we are distracted by other mental efforts, mental discomforts, or physical discomfort.  To attract the viewer make them comfortable.   Familiarity relaxes us; unfamiliarity unsettles us. The perception of coherence relaxes us.  A unifying design attracts us because, coherence attracts us and puts us at ease.  We become  more creative, more freely associative.  Coherence uses repetition, a recognizable pattern.   Coherence triggers attention through an initial sense of familiarity. Order is familiar and comfortable.  Chaos is not.  an organizing  coherence helps the artist to guide and prime the viewer.

an example of varying order and coherence from Andy Warhol:

an example of order with a chain of variations from Gustav Klimt:

Also,  if the artist lets the viewer feel powerful, capable, swelled with good memories, and physically comfortable their ability and willingness to sustain attention and hypothesize about  meanings  will improve.  They will be receptive to probing for meaning  and allow their intuitive guesses to flow.   This is Bernoulli’s law; artists and beholders probe for meaning ( intention ) if there is the promise(expectation) of  subjective(personal) value  in the process.    Intention and emotion are joined. Artists know this and guide the viewer  with this knowledge.  If too much effort is demanded at discovering intention then, the emotional reward is removed.  Different artists and beholders  sustain their enthusiasm and attention  depending upon differing  sets of  experience, memory.  This difference depends on their familiarity with the language of the painting, sculpture,  literature,  music, or cuisine.   There is a problem with familiarity. Too much familiarity and the work is boring. If the work is too recognizable, too ordered, too balanced, too regular in rhythm and pattern then, it falls below the threshold of our attention.  The more relaxed we are the more freely we associate;  we become more creative.

an example  of  a familiar location, Grand Central Station, with an obvious central design but with an introduction of unfamiliarity(disordering) in the blurring of the imagery.

Too many surprises and the mental effort required to find a pattern  withers and ceases.  If the work is too intricate, has too many patterns or variations in pattern then, the work will feel confused, impenetrable and will agitate or alienate the viewer. There is no guiding an agitated viewer. They have been primed with hostility and impatience or, boredom. Either way, the painting loses the beholder.  But, viewers’  vocabularies vary.  Some are familiar with more complex patterns and how to follow them than others.   A professional musician will enjoy rapidly changing complex tempos that frustrate someone lacking their experience, their vocabulary.  The audiences for complex patterns, for more various surprises grows smaller with demands on their experience.  But, their rewards, their pleasure in probing and pursuing  a trail through more unfamiliar territory  is amplified because of their experience.

Consider this example from Ernst Gombrich’s  Sense of Order.

example 4.

The image graduates from order to disorder. The graduation attracts our attention becuase of its evolution between order and chaos.  Notice with one image we start at the top and with the other we start at the bottom.  We start with order and move toward  disorder.

example 5.

Daniel Kahneman’s new book “Thinking Fast and Slow” has been a source for much of this blog. Here is his chart which demonstrates what conditions put us at cognitive ease. The condition at which we are most relaxed and enjoyed maximal free association.

example 6 my last example of  patterns with a marriage of chaos and order cohering through universal design.