Gestalt: Psychological Closure

       This week's reading by Zettl: "The Two Dimensional Field: Forces Within the Screen" was particularly interesting to me as he talks about a variety of visual optical illusions. In the section where he talks about vertical versus horizontal, he mentioned that we as people have "applied" it to our civilization. The most obvious example of course is the architecture around us. Why are some buildings horizontal and why are some vertical? He claims that this is because horizontal images "suggest calmness, tranquility and rest," whereas vertical images suggest "dynamic, powerful, and exciting." I never noticed it, oddly enough as someone who grew up in a huge city with gigantic skyscrapers everywhere. But if I were to apply what he was saying about vertical versus horizontals, it definitely seems to me that houses, for instance are obviously horizontally shaped and generally flatter surfaces than say, big corporate office buildings. 

   But anyways enough about that. Although I'm not a psychology major, I find it absolutely fascinating, especially during the part where the author talks about this idea of psychological closure, which is called gestalt, a german word. At first it was kind of hard for my mind to wrap around what exactly he meant by this, as his definition was puzzling. He defines it as "a perceptual whole that transcends its parts." To break it down, I think the main concept is that the bigger picture as a whole is more important than the "sum of its parts," and he also says that our brains naturally fill in the gaps.  With this combination of psychology and visual art, I started googling examples of this and came across how gestalt can be applied and even used to enhance photographs. Photography is one of my favorite hobbies and interests, so naturally I was immediately drawn to this idea. With this particular image, this photographer only captured a close-up image of the top of what appears to be color pencils. Although you can't see the rest of the pencils, you know what they are because well, we've probably all been using them since kindergarten - so naturally therefore you put the missing pieces together.

In light of our next assignment that is going to be a video, I thought I would look up some examples of this concept, gestalt, in film. I came across so many that I wanted to share, but I thought this advertisement for Baskin Robbins in South Korea was hilarious!! All jokes aside though, I thought their use of gestalt was actually somewhat effective as well!