A place for computing visual meaning : the broadened drawing-scape

Abstract

Meaning is the essence. It is the primary reason for us to keep doing things. Meaning is both significance and the endless unfolding of significance. Visual Meaning is fundamental for visual arts and design processes. One draws, paints, sculpts, throws sponges on the wall, dips one's own body into paint and crawls on the ground or codes to create lines, spots or fields (Knight), all of which are then looked into, perceived and iterated. Vision is so important that Alberti's eye becomes a godly creature with wings that flies among thunderstorms, Kepler's eye becomes a perfect machine through which stars and galaxies leaks (Alpers), Vermeer's eye becomes the ultimate light filter and depicter. Finally Stiny's eye establishes a "unique computational theory: Shape Grammars" (Knight and Stiny). And all this happens in a series of places (Casey), as one wanders through streams of creative visual processes along one's humaning (Ingold). Once I portray the moment of visual discovery as an encounter, the artists and the designer as encounterers and the computer as the counter, I ask: can the ultimate counter [the computer] provide true encounters for creative visual processes? Computing visual meaning -- it really possible? I unfold these questions by introducing a visual-making apparatus around which all scientifically separated players, the encounter, the encounterer and the counter become interwoven in one place. Visual-making, similar to living, requires us to twist, bend, embrace and abandon. The human-be-comput-ing tree grows to introduce a novel model for drawing and painting, for humaning. An uncommon place for discovering and computing visual meanings, the Broadened-Drawing Scape, emerges.