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! 

Viewers Make Meaning

     This week's reading of Viewers Make Meaning for me was really hard, in the sense that there were so many arguments that Sturken & Cartwright made within this 30 page chapter. I thought it was particularly interesting that they made that notion of how companies use advertisements to target audiences, to make you feel like you are personally being addressed even though it is to a wide selection of people. It made me think of one time in high school when my social studies teacher was trying to teach us just what S & C were talking about - how ads sometimes use sex appeal in order to entice readers, subconsciously. The ad I can't find anymore, but basically when you looked up close, the model's long and super shiny hair was altered in a way that made it looked like it was forming an "S" shape, and other objects/props in the scene, when looked up close, looked like they were forming the letters "E" and "X" respectively. At the time, the innocent church-goer me thought it made no connection to marketing whatsoever, rather that it just happened to be an optical illusion not intended specifically that way.

   I began researching online on this idea of advertisements as a form of manipulation towards people, and I came across this website that had an entire page with dozens of examples of just that. For the most part, most of the examples they came up with very self explanatory in that they were obvious in the type of audience they were trying to appeal to, but then I came across one on my favorite show, Friends. Key words here are, "my favorite show," and as a tv junkie I obviously had to stop and take a look at what this preposterous website could possibly be saying about my beloved show! I so badly wanted to defend whatever they were claiming, until I realized what they were arguing was true.  This is a picture of Rachel's and Monica's apartments (two of the main characters):

This is where the six friends normally hang out, probably a little bit too much since they are all in their twenties and all (supposedly) have jobs that they love (but i'll let that slide because i love the show). Basically, what they were arguing on the website I came across was what S & C were arguing - that these producers were using these images to manipulate us, leading us to believe that these average people (people just like us! gasp) are living a better lifestyle that we are with "no monetary concerns." It doesn't just stop there though, the article claims. It says that society "shows us advertisements, compelling us to buy the lifestyle depicted in our favorite shows." 
Source: http://lifehacker.com/5824328/how-advertising-manipulates-your-choices-and-spending-habits-and-what-to-do-about-it

David M Carter, psychologist claims that this is a form of "referencing." He says that, "We reference, either intentionally or otherwise, to lifestyles represented to us (in the media or in real life) that we find attractive. We create a vision of ourselves living this idealized lifestyle, and then behave in ways that help us to realize the vision. The problem with this process is that the lifestyles most often portrayed, and ultimately referenced, are well beyond the means of all but a very small percentage of Americans. We aspire to something that the vast majority of us cannot possibly achieve. And, in this attempt to realize our aspirations, we borrow heavily, feel poorly about ourselves because we just can't seem to get there, and become addicted to a way of living that gradually and inexorably separates us from the things in life that bring us the most joy."

Blogging Brands

For the first time, I found myself generally agreeing with what Rettberg had to say regarding blogging and using it as a social platform as well as for marketing and advertisements. Personally, I only really follow blogs for reading short stories or poems and such, or for baking (yay sweet tooth!) and other cooking recipes. When I read about Manolo's Shoe Blog, I began to realize how smart this blogger really is. First of all, it benefits both sides. The blogger gets recognition, giving himself a name in the industry I suppose, and it also benefits the actual Manolo designer because it will then prompt other people to buy that designer's shoes. In this sense, it's a win-win situation. Although I am not personally really into fashion, a lot of my friends are, and therefore I heard about a website called http://lookbook.nu/, which is a social networking website where people can create profiles and upload pictures of themselves in their favorite outfits for people to see. I never thought of that as an advertising mechanism but I suppose it works that way as well.

Another interesting aspect of this chapter was Dooce's blog and how she was making money off of it. It was only when she added graphical advertisements as opposed to her text advertisements that it increased her followers and income. As someone who is a visual person, I couldn't tell you why I prefer visuals over text, and I thought I would do a little research on the statistics. I found that apparently visuals are processed 60,000 times faster by the brain than by text! (Source: Hubspot) And this statistic is pretty astonishing as well : " just one month after the introduction of Facebook timeline for brands, visual content -- photos and videos -- saw a 65% increase in engagement" (Source: Hubspot) and there were many more where generally most people prefer visuals over text.