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A radically new way of thinking about form and context in literature, politics, and beyondForms offers a powerful new answer to one of the most pressing problems facing literary, critical, and cultural studies today—how to connect form to political, social, and historical context. Caroline Levine argues that forms organize not only works of art but also political life—and our attempts to know both art and politics. Inescapable and frequently troubling, forms shape every aspect of our experience. Yet, forms don't impose their order in any simple way. Multiple shapes, patterns, and arrangements, overlapping and colliding, generate complex and unpredictable social landscapes that challenge and unsettle conventional analytic models in literary and cultural studies.Borrowing the concept of'affordances'from design theory, this book investigates the specific ways that four major forms—wholes, rhythms, hierarchies, and networks—have structured culture, politics, and scholarly knowledge across periods, and it proposes exciting new ways of linking formalism to historicism and literature to politics. Levine rereads both formalist and antiformalist theorists, including Cleanth Brooks, Michel Foucault, Jacques Rancière, Mary Poovey, and Judith Butler, and she offers engaging accounts of a wide range of objects, from medieval convents and modern theme parks to Sophocles's Antigone and the television series The Wire.The result is a radically new way of thinking about form for the next generation and essential reading for scholars and students across the humanities who must wrestle with the problem of form and context.

THE FORM WITHIN is the fascinating story of two hundred years of pioneering brain research, told from the unique perspective of the only brain scientist who has been, and still remains, an active participant in that story throughout the past seventy years: Karl H. Pribram.In THE FORM WITHIN, Dr. Pribram takes us on a compelling journey from the dawn of our collective “recorded perceptions” in cave paintings to our greatest achievements as a species. He explains the important task of mapping the brain; the discovery of our holographic processing of memory and perception; and the detailed research that has created our understanding of self-organizing biological systems.Along the way, Pribram shares the intimate interactions he has had with luminaries of twentieth-century science, including David Bohm, Francis Crick, John Eccles, Dennis Gabor, Hubel and Wiesel, Wolfgang Kohler, Karl Lashley, Aleksandr Romanovitch Luria, Ilya Prigogine, B. F. Skinner, Eugene Sokolov, and many others.But this riveting glimpse into our past is only a part of the story. Pribram also provides us with insightful breakthroughs into a science of the future, and points the way to where our understanding of the brain is headed.

This comprehensive and authoritative text/reference presents a unique, multidisciplinary perspective on Shape Perception in Human and Computer Vision. Rather than focusing purely on the state of the art, the book provides viewpoints from world-class researchers reflecting broadly on the issues that have shaped the field. Drawing upon many years of experience, each contributor discusses the trends followed and the progress made, in addition to identifying the major challenges that still lie ahead. Topics and features: examines each topic from a range of viewpoints, rather than promoting a specific paradigm; discusses topics on contours, shape hierarchies, shape grammars, shape priors, and 3D shape inference; reviews issues relating to surfaces, invariants, parts, multiple views, learning, simplicity, shape constancy and shape illusions; addresses concepts from the historically separate disciplines of computer vision and human vision using the same “language” and methods.

Because the properties of objects are largely determined by their geometric features, shape analysis and classification are essential to almost every applied scientific and technological area. A detailed understanding of the geometrical features of real-world entities (e.g., molecules, organs, materials and components) can provide important clues about their origin and function. When properly and carefully applied, shape analysis offers an exceedingly rich potential to yield useful applications in diverse areas ranging from material sciences to biology and neuroscience.Get Access to the Authors'Own Cutting-Edge Open-Source Software Projects—and Then Actually Contribute to Them Yourself! The authors of Shape Analysis and Classification: Theory and Practice, Second Edition have improved the bestselling first edition by updating the tremendous progress in the field. This exceptionally accessible book presents the most advanced imaging techniques used for analyzing general biological shapes, such as those of cells, tissues, organs, and organisms. It implements numerous corrections and improvements—many of which were suggested by readers of the first edition—to optimize understanding and create what can truly be called an interactive learning experience. New Material in This Second Edition Addresses Graph and complex networks Dimensionality reduction Structural pattern recognition Shape representation using graphs Graphically reformulated, this edition updates equations, figures, and references, as well as slides that will be useful in related courses and general discussion. Like the popular first edition, this text is applicable to many fields and certain to become a favored addition to any library. Visit http://www.vision.ime.usp.br/~cesar/shape/ for Useful Software, Databases, and Videos

Dr. Charles Legéndy's Circuits in the Brain: A Model of Shape Processing in the Primary Visual Cortex is published at a time marked by unprecedented advances in experimental brain research which are, however, not matched by similar advances in theoretical insight. For this reason, the timing is ideal for the appearance of Dr. Legéndy's book, which undertakes to derive certain global features of the brain directly from the neurons. Circuits in the Brain, with its “relational firing” model of shape processing, includes a step-by-step development of a set of multi-neuronal networks for transmitting visual relations, using a strategy believed to be equally applicable to many aspects of brain function other than vision. The book contains a number of testable predictions at the neuronal level, some believed to be accessible to the techniques which have recently become available. With its novel approach and concrete references to anatomy and physiology, the monograph promises to open up entirely new avenues of brain research, and will be particularly useful to graduate students, academics, and researchers studying neuroscience and neurobiology. In addition, since Dr. Legéndy's book succeeds in achieving a clean logical presentation without mathematics, and uses a bare minimum of technical terminology, it may also be enjoyed by non-scientists intrigued by the intellectual challenge of the elegant devices applied inside our brain. The book is uniquely self-contained; with more than 120 annotated illustrations it goes into full detail in describing all functional and theoretical concepts on which it builds.

A new account of how we perceive the 3D shapes of objects and how to design machines that can see shapes the way we do.The uniqueness of shape as a perceptual property lies in the fact that it is both complex and structured. Shapes are perceived veridically—perceived as they really are in the physical world, regardless of the orientation from which they are viewed. The constancy of the shape percept is the sine qua non of shape perception; you are not actually studying shape if constancy cannot be achieved with the stimulus you are using. Shape is the only perceptual attribute of an object that allows unambiguous identification. In this first book devoted exclusively to the perception of shape by humans and machines, Zygmunt Pizlo describes how we perceive shapes and how to design machines that can see shapes as we do. He reviews the long history of the subject, allowing the reader to understand why it has taken so long to understand shape perception, and offers a new theory of shape. Until recently, shape was treated in combination with such other perceptual properties as depth, motion, speed, and color. This resulted in apparently contradictory findings, which made a coherent theoretical treatment of shape impossible. Pizlo argues that once shape is understood to be unique among visual attributes and the perceptual mechanisms underlying shape are seen to be different from other perceptual mechanisms, the research on shape becomes coherent and experimental findings no longer seem to contradict each other. A single theory of shape perception is thus possible, and Pizlo offers a theoretical treatment that explains how a three-dimensional shape percept is produced from a two-dimensional retinal image, assuming only that the image has been organized into two-dimensional shapes. Pizlo focuses on discussion of the main concepts, telling the story of shape without interruption. Appendixes provide the basic mathematical and computational information necessary for a technical understanding of the argument. References point the way to more in-depth reading in geometry and computational vision.

The world is divided into objects: things that are distinct from their backgrounds and that can move or be moved. Objects are food and prey and threats, as well as neutral items, and it is critical to be able to see them. How the form of an object is distinguished is one of the most basic, yet least understood, topics of research in vision perception. The object-defining system needs to operate in the real world, where objects and viewers move, and where the scene is cluttered, rarely offering a clear, unobscured view of any object. How are we able to see and define objects using the complex pattern of light falling on the retina? An object becomes visible if it differs sufficiently from its surroundings in its luminance, color, texture, motion, or depth. Although the processes that use these different cues are quite distinct, research has shown that they share some organizational principles. This book, Seeing Spatial Form, is dedicated to David Martin Regan who has made so many contributions to our understanding of how we see objects. Its chapters bring together ideas from some of the world's leading researchers in form vision to explain what we know about distinguishing form. The book includes a CD-ROM, which contains additional demonstrations and color images that considerably enhance the chapter contents. Seeing Spatial Form will be an invaluable resource for student and professional researchers in vision science, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience.

The best example of filling-in involves the blind spot, a region of the retina devoid of photoreceptors. Remarkably, the region of visual space corresponding to the blind spot is not perceived as a dark region in space, but instead as having the same color and texture as the surrounding background; hence the expression'filling in.'While this type of perceptual completion phenomenon is common in the visual domain, it is argued by the leading scientists who contribute to this book that forms of filling-in also take place in other sensory modalities, including the auditory, somatosensory, and motor systems. In a concluding chapter an integrative approach is taken, which attempts to provide a common framework for completion phenomena occurring on a fast time scale, and cortical reorganization in sensory and motor cortex induced by peripheral damage or skill learning taking place on a slower time scale. It is proposed that systematic changes in the interplay between inhibitory and excitatory inputs permit cortical neurons to become driven by new sources of input, which, in addition to initial perceptual consequences can lead to a long-term structural reorganization of cortex. This book represents a truly interdisciplinary approach to neuroscience, with chapters covering computational modeling, visual psychophysics, functional brain imaging, single-cell physiology, and clinical patient cases. It will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in systems neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, vision science, neuroimaging, perceptual psychology, computational neuroscience, and philosophy of mind.

From a barrage of photons, we readily and effortlessly recognize the faces of our friends, and the familiar objects and scenes around us. However, these tasks cannot be simple for our visual systems--faces are all extremely similar as visual patterns, and objects look quite different when viewed from different viewpoints. How do our visual systems solve these problems? The contributors to this volume seek to answer this question by exploring how analytic and holistic processes contribute to our perception of faces, objects, and scenes. The role of parts and wholes in perception has been studied for a century, beginning with the debate between Structuralists, who championed the role of elements, and Gestalt psychologists, who argued that the whole was different from the sum of its parts. This is the first volume to focus on the current state of the debate on parts versus wholes as it exists in the field of visual perception by bringing together the views of the leading researchers. Too frequently, researchers work in only one domain, so they are unaware of the ways in which holistic and analytic processing are defined in different areas. The contributors to this volume ask what analytic and holistic processes are like; whether they contribute differently to the perception of faces, objects, and scenes; whether different cognitive and neural mechanisms code holistic and analytic information; whether a single, universal system can be sufficient for visual-information processing, and whether our subjective experience of holistic perception might be nothing more than a compelling illusion. The result is a snapshot of the current thinking on how the processing of wholes and parts contributes to our remarkable ability to recognize faces, objects, and scenes, and an illustration of the diverse conceptions of analytic and holistic processing that currently coexist, and the variety of approaches that have been brought to bear on the issues.

A hands-on book design students and designers alike will welcome. Elements of Design is a tribute to an exceptional teacher and a study of the abstract visual relationships that were her lifelong pursuit. Rowena Reed Kiostellow taught industrial design at Pratt Institute for more than fifty years and the designers she trained-and the designers they're training today-have changed the face of American design. This succinct, instructive, invaluable book reconstructs the series of exercises that led Kostellow's students from the manipulation of simple forms to the creation of complex solutions to difficult design problems. It includes her exercises and commentary along with selected student solutions, and concludes with examples of work from former students who became leaders in the field, including such well-known figures as Tucker Viemeister, Ralph Applebaum, Ted Muehling, and many others.

From Fragments to Objects

The visual system must extract from the light that falls on the retina meaningful information about what is where in our environment. At an early stage it analyzes the incoming sensory data along many dimensions of pattern vision, e.g. spatial frequency, orientation, velocity, eye-of-origin. Visual Pattern Analyzers provides a definitive account of current knowledge about this stage of visual processing. Nowhere else can such a comprehensive summarty of the lower level pattern analyzers be found. The book's emphasis is on psychophysical experiments measuring the detection and identification of near-threshold patterns -- and the mathematical models, such as multidimensional signal-detection theory, used to draw inferences from such experimental results -- but neurophysiological evidence is presented and compared critically to the psychophysical evidence. Introductory material on psychophysical methods, signal detection theory, and the mathematics of Fourier analysis is given in order to make the book more accessible to all who are interested in the lower or higher levels of visual perception. This volume will be of great value to researchers and graduate students in the fields of vision and perception. Within the scientific community there is wide interest in the visual system, and the book will be of use to investigators in many fields, including psychophysics, neuroscience, ophthalmology and optics, computer science, and cognitive and experimental psychology.

Examining the current state of the research in perception stressing contributions in visual information processing, this volume provides an original and timely account of recent results obtained in this and other related areas of cognitive psychology. The scope of the book is intended to be broad, featuring state-of-the-art contributions from a number of outstanding researchers from different parts of the world -- the United States, Europe, and Australia. The intention is to update areas of considerable theoretical implications and active experimental investigation in this broad field called the'psychology of perception.'This volume's main purpose is to highlight, from a cognitive position, a selected number of important theoretical and empirical topics which deal with critical issues in perception and other high level, related cognitive processes such as attention, mental representation, memory, word naming and semantic categorization. The studies reported were designed to answer many far-reaching questions including: • Is the global precedence effect due to low or high level processing? • Can veridical and illusory perception be explained by the same theory? • What is the relationship between attention and perception? • Is perception'direct'or an inferential process? • What mechanisms are involved in picture and word naming and categorization? • How can word and picture processing be modeled? The answers to these questions seek to unite theoretical perspectives on very important areas of cognitive psychology such as attention, perception, representation of visual objects and words, and human memory.

First published in 1987. This book is the fourth in a series of research monographs reporting the results of a continuing study that deals with the perception of form in two- and three-dimensional space.

Published in the year 1982, Visual Form Detection in Three-dimensional Space is a valuable contribution to the field of Cognitive Psychology.

First Published in 1987. Information processing has come to be regarded as one of the central issues in modern psychology. In recent years it has acquired an especially keen interest due to growing amounts of information. This book continues the authors'research and constructs a conceptual model of peculiarities (separate aspects) of visual information processing based on views similar to those by Arbib and Ivanov.

Suppose that a congenitally blind person has learned to distinguish and name a sphere and a cube by touch alone. Then imagine that this person suddenly recovers the faculty of sight. Will he be able to distinguish both objects by sight and to say which is the sphere and which the cube? This was the question which the Irish politician and scientist William Molyneux posed in 1688 to John Locke. Molyneux's question has intrigued a wide variety of intellectuals for three centuries. Those who have attempted to solve it include Berkeley, Reid, Leibniz, Voltaire, La Mettrie, Condillac, Diderot, Müller, Helmholtz, William James and Gareth Evans. This book is the first comprehensive survey of the history of the discussion about Molyneux's problem. It will be of interest to historians of both philosophy and psychology.

'A Bradford book.'