When we think about visual states or visual systems our ability to communicate and reason with a heightened visual literacy should not be limited by the "artifact of language." Our starting point remains "a process of doing" rather than the artifact of linguistic structure. Visual intuition starts neither from language nor art historical iconography.

"Vision starts with human performance,that is, doing things."

When we communicate about vision as a human activity our communication is based on the allocation of a person's sensorimotor and cognitive resources. The communication on visual states remains a matter of how to represent the supply and allocation of resources within a visual system. Too often the discussion of visual systems is based on the imitation of optical experience. To advance a Performative Visual System (PVS)which is based on human performance requires an integrated "sensory processing" theory based upon: an environment (habitat), a notational schematic representational system (visual language, diagrammatic), and a tasking policy based on a subject's allocation of resources in terms of the distribution of input (excitation) values.

Performance here applies in the cases of the expert, the disabled, and the novice users. Performance is wide open:

leads us to consider navigation in terms of visual reasoning and visual decision-making. Such a visual orientation will be introduced to look beyond computer monitor (screen) based episodes in favor of a view of human behavior in terms of real world situations. Human performance behavior contributes to visual inquiries according to the human capability to perform tasks. The objective in enhancing our understanding of how humans work is essential when considering:

The study of visual phenomena does not necessarily start with spatial plots nor pictorial (painterly) analogies.

Performance has two basic orientations:

The pictorial approach to vision ignores the sensorimotor components of vision especially:

A performative theory of vision is a problem of the allocation of resources, sensorimotor resources as well as cognitive resources. Visual literacy can be based upon:

The organization of a visual system (without the artifact of language) includes the removal of many of the spatial and artistic associations prevalent in spoken language and visual terminology/concepts, for example, space, place, image.

There are at least two schools of thought on vision. One deals with "storytelling-description" and another dealing with "performance-observation."

*Dynamic Behavior

*Interactive (Stimulated excitation "Doping" as in Semi-Conduction)

Human performance provides an example of "vision" without great reliance on spatial reference.

Instead of considering vision in spatial terms, "human performance" allows us to consider vision in terms of:

The mobile cases of walking, running, and aiming are superimposed upon architectural environments and naturalistic habitats. This configuration requires decision-making or the mobile alignment or modification of the allocation of sensorimotor resources.

The development of visual literacy based upon human performance requires one other striking component:

a field theory, that is, an environment/architecture organization which will outline types of environments on various spatial and temporal classifications.

These environments pose as distinctive hierarchies of habitats/mobility which are linked to the exploration or experimentation of human performance and human vision.

The essence of a Performative Visual orientation is Imaging, the Imaging of sensory process and intangible behavior in a task realization:

"SENSORY RESOURCES TRACES COGNITION"

The capture of human behavior during task realization is based on the steps which prepare and contribute to doing the task, besides the production (the output) of a human task realization.

All the "available ideas" (paradigms) have not given us the means to address human performance in terms of excitation, tasking, and allocation (the supply of sensory resources) available to a human being. Most technology tends to look at the problem of human performance in terms of tracking. The problem of human performance requires a policy based on tasking. A tasking policy starts and ends with input values or the transitions which build up as one starts to do something. A tasking policy allows us to isolate:

So when I say today "Sensory resources traces Cognition" I am positing a view of tasking sensory resources to:

Consequently, the exchange of motor activity and human excitation is "imaged." Imaging of intangible aspects of human behavior results in a visualization technique based on "physical playback" without resorting to numerical tables, pictorial or spatial graphs. This sensorial/sensing approach results in the imaging/visualization ofintangible aspects of human behavior according to continuous sensory behavior supported by non-visual sensorial stimuli in an interface where visual & non-visual are played back and interacted with on the fly, by a performer.

One example of a sensory resource tracing cognition is the tuning of a radio dial. In this case, gross motor activity and sensory resources appear as a problem of intersensory behaviors, a matrix of sensory resources:

"Physical playback" occurs during the engagement of gross motor resources in a tasked activity. Physical playback is generated based upon:

To open our research into sensory behavior low level gross motor is used. The gross motor activity of several performers' behavior is used to speculate on cognitive function according to sensorimotor behavior. This approach is used to address aiming and decision-making. Consequently, my methodological approach to sensorimotor behavioral includes the consideration of the following human performance problems:

The capture of human performance in streams of behavior, during the realization of a task, poses another challenge. We are being asked to consider:

"What aspect of human performance contributes to an articulated behavior which is "intangible" or requires amplification?"

The separation of "labor and thought" undermines an awareness of how sensorial resources support reasoning.

When I say, "Sensory resources trace Cognition." I understand performance as "streams of behavior."

The partitioning (isolation and amplificiation) of these streams allows us to see that -- beneath performative behaviors-- there are sensory stimuli which "control and guide" each performative gesture. Consequently, a question emerges:

"How does memory contribute to the control in an articulatory action?"

The problems hinted at above only open the topic of "Sensory Processing" which is fully considered within "Casting A Shadow," a New Media Sensing Project. Thanks to the writings of Simone Weil on Work, Brian Ferneyhough on multi-tasking, and Frank Gilbreth's motion studies... lead me closer to bringing"work and cognition" into closer parity.

The above text details guidelines for the non-site-specific modules within "Casting A Shadow" which is being realized as a motion sensing dance-flute production with the composer Eric Lyon, the choreographers Shirley Ririe and Phyllis Douglas, and the painter Spelman Evans Downer. The protagonist of this production is a series of ideas which form a paradigm based on:

The texts"On Imaging Sensorimotor Behavior" and "On Environment" further establish how real world analogies are used to support a sensory processing paradigm.

Navajo classification of insects provides us with a computationally useful mode of parameterization of physical qualities without relying upon spatial coordinates.

The classification of insects by the Navajos relies on environmental observation: the visibility of things!:

This abbreviated summary of Navajo insect classification helps us to consider:

• Associative (Parameterization): Sorting, Grouping, and Generation of meaning visible phenomena without reliance on spatial coordinates.
  
  
• The Navajo classification of insect traits derives from scene descriptions (environments) rather than an analytic assembly of points, lines, and angles.

Accordingly, the environmental aspects of "sensory processing" are integrated background scene descriptions.

Casting A Shadow

"Then came the film and burst this prison -world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling, with the close-up, space expands, with slow motion, movement is extended. The enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render more precise what in any case was visible, though unclear: it reveals entirely new structural formation of the subject. So, too, slow motion not only presents familiar qualities of movement but reveals in them entirely unknown ones "which, far from looking like retarded rapid movements, give the effect of singularly gliding, floating, supernatural motions."Walter Benjamin

A climate like the desert in the "Four Corners" region of the American Southwest accentuates aspects of human behavior. Extreme environmental conditions provide a habitat which help to display human performance in terms of respiration, stamina, and sensory functions. It is through an approximation of sensorial sensations, physical playback, and aleatory sound references that the movements (outdoors, indoors, or under a protective overhanging that forms) of manual labor can be explored.

...every time we reason about movement and also about time for which movement serves as representation. By an illusion deeply rooted in our mind, and because we cannot keep from considering analysis as unequivalent to intuition, we begin by distinguishing, for the whole length of the movement, a certain number of possible halts or points which, willy-nilly, we make parts of the movement. Faced with our inability to recompose movement with these points we intercalate other points, in the belief that we are thus keeping closer to what mobility there is in movement. Henri Bergson

The tasking of performance behavior requires a notational system which can:

• Conduct Behavior
• Implement Generative multi-step tasking structures which can be shaped
• Pass on further situational instructions to a human subject as part of the shaping of a task

Visual states rely upon a selection of dynamic behavior associated with mobility, navigation, and optical flow. I will consider these visual states, as visual objects encased in an architecture.

Architecture functions as a habitat for sensory resources. The implementation of a notational scheme will direct a "plan of action" (a tasking policy) according to a diagram of architectural alignment (obstructed space, pathway, unoccupied space) or a performer's readiness (task-instructions).

The notational scheme stands between:

Because of differences between performers and their respective performance modality, the design of the notational scheme has two responsibilities:

A visual iconic and diagrammatic notational scheme is being considered to carry out these two responsibilities. A diagrammatic notational system is used to shape and modify tasking of the performer's behavior. A schematic representation of performer behavior has been selected since it allows for a convenient means to compare or classify the variety in "performance modality" between several performers.

VISUALIZATION: THE OPTICALLY EXPERIENCE-ABLE

Probably my teacher gave me the optical experience vs. the optically experience-able to work on the problem of "evidence and judgment" within pictorial representation.

A pictorial image displays strict optical settings. Optical elements include distinguishable traits in: light, contour, solidity, imperfections or blotches, the imprint of illusion, fluxus projection, or other forms of optical flow. Historically, the telescope and the microscope are innovative "assisting tool" which aided the examination of optical realities. These tools maintain "eye-contact" as a priority to behold an object. In a performative visual system, vision is not based on "eye-contact" (a spatialized aiming) but rather a methodical build up of the "engagement" of multiple-sensory resources and their associated control mechanisms.

To appreciate human vision as an engagement:

one must always be aware that a "switching-on" of sensory resources precedes a performative action.

My examination of the role of vision in performance rather than as a pictorial manifestation. In the case of dance there are two contrasting visual elements in a dance:

• There is the "dancer's vision" which contrasts with the audience's/choreographer's appreciation of the picturesque lines as dancers'; movements draw pictures in space.

• There is the display (visualization) of a dancer's vision according to intangible components of human vision/sensorimotor resources.

Visualization of human vision is a translation of non-visual (intangible) behavior activity into animated mappings (vibrotactile, auditory, or visual). The completion of this visualization is based upon how to translate intangible aspects of human performance into the "optically-experienceable."

The visualization of the optically experienceable serves three goals:

These goals rely upon a display without relying upon:

Instead the display reveals to the audience the evolution/readiness of a performer's engagement of sensorimotor resources based on a physical playback. The optically experienceable remains a variety of options which visualize intangible behaviors without worrying about the strictness of optical settings.

Consequently, the imaging of sensory behavior requires something besides cinematic storytelling or site-specific realism. Instead, "imaging" displays the exchange between the physical (natural world) and human sensory/motoric resources. We can close the book on vision as a spatial representation. The visualization of the dancer's resources allows us to consider what contributes, builds, and sustains the dancer's ability/readiness to move in a dance habitat. It is a visualization of energy and time variable behaviors.

Furthermore, the history of spatial-concepts in philosophy and the development of painterly vision would be required only to explain the same ";near-to-far" relations seen by Picasso and my grandfather. It must be unsatisfactory to my teacher if I do not outline the criteria of judgment and evidence in these cases:

"...in the new methods of presentation, by which we mean the way in which a given object is made into a visual image suitable for use in pictorial form..."Henrich Wofflin

But, a visual resource in terms of performance redefines our basis for understanding visual content and what can be done with visual resources. Pictorial representation and rendering clouds the study of performance and vision.

...the results of a more complete cultivation and education of the eye. These are the real artistic principles---on the one hand, clarification of the visible object and simplification of appearances, and , on the other, the desire for ever greater variety of content within the field of vision. Henrich Wofflin

It is through dance that a performative view of vision is considered. Vision in dance displays:

These faculties draw upon physical strength and agility. Vision in dance demonstrates the role of vision in performance (task realization). The literary terms of "symbol" "representation," and "form" collide with the performative model of vision based on dance.

Ready-made "available ideas" appear but when they come to mind these "available ideas" are inadequate. The ready-made concepts of art history stand as images which project like glued gestures, frozen in hieroglyphic forms.

What is required is a fluid environment which projects, displays, and incorporates the performer's reckoning and decision making. This is where computer graphics will find a way to do more than function as a cinematic medium. The future of computer graphics is as a medium suitable for imaging and visualization... according to a mapping of more mobile visual organizations and environments supported by computer accompaniment. This will be discussed in the sections:

This page is hosted by Get your own Free Homepage