51–261 Project 2 ⋅ Final Upload
September 29th, 2020
Slides for Project 2 Final Upload ⋅ Dark Mode. Attaching explanations and connections to Gestalt Principles.
Order gives me the feeling of the organized, patterns, even, familiar, expected, continued, equilibrium. Thus, I made this piece that’s intentionally easily predictable, symmetrical. As regards to Gestalt Principles, I made use of Equilibrium (audience will be drawn to the center for the balance and stability) , Continuation (the organization makes the audience feel something that might be rotating), Similarity (all the bigger squares are of similar sizes) here.
Tension gives me feeling of combat, unstable, pressure, stress, randomness, crammed, intense, motion, irregularity, imbalance, unknown. For tension, I tend to think about more combating parties and emphasizing conflict/contrasting. In this piece, I intentionally make the audience feel uneasy by creating different shapes and unpredictable sequences of squares. The Gestalt Principles I used are Similarity and Continuation (the small squares tend to be thought of together, while the other two bigger ones tend to be thinking of combating each other). I also played with shapes and created tension by revealing the contrast of square sizes and their stabilities.
Congestion makes me feel of crowded, squashed, imbalanced, surrounded, excess. My main focus is on creating a feeling of being stuck in the picture. Over here specifically in this picture, I intended to create the feeling of “Ordered but Congested”, all the blocks are somewhat in order, but you still feel like they’re stuck together, especially compared to the broader whitespace on the right. The Gestalt Principles I used are Isomorphic Correspondence (the squares will make audience think of cars stuck on the road, and thus congested), Closure, Proximity, Continuation and Similarity (these four principles makes you feel like the squares are a whole object, and each of them, though differ in sizes, are similar objects closed and congested with each other).
Playfulness makes me feel unexpected, chaotic, unexpected, happy, fun, particles. I think about the crashes between different sizes of squares. Playing around with the distribution of whitespaces also adds in motion and tendency to the sketches. This is actually the image that I spent most time exploring, as the peer review wasn’t too great initially and audience reflected feeling “tension” and “pressure” more than playfulness, so I added in the tilted square, and modified the squares’ orientation, sizes ratio, added in more smaller squares and played with whitespace and spacing to make me feel more “playful”. I intended to create the feeling of juggling and little particles jumping around. Gestalt Principles I used are Proximity, Continuation, Similarity (audience will feel the squares closed to each other are more as a whole, creating this train of squares that eventually prompts the audience to think about them balancing and juggling on the bottom squares, also that they as a whole are leaning on the left square.
Comfort makes me feel of corner, surrounded, curves, protected, warmth, depth. For comfort, I focused on creating an atmosphere of protection — I added stableness by drafting stable squares at the bottom of the sketches parallel with the ones up above and a feeling of the lower squares would “catch” and “hold” the upper falling smaller squares. Gestalt principles I used are Continuation, Similarity (audience will feel like the upper smaller squares will eventually fall down and the bottom ones would catch them, thus comfort).
