VISUAL FACTS

A critical component of the creative conceptual process is when and how we retrieve our associations. As has been discussed earlier, our drawing makes direct deposits in our association database. When we draw, the information becomes part of our thinking and can then be directly leveraged into our designs.

Lockard discusses the dichotomy of conception and perception. In his view, perception is something that is passive, continuous and unprejudiced. Whereas conception is thought of as on demand, deliberative, and prejudiced. (p75)

I would like to think that in the creative process, conception, perception and association retrieval are parts of a whole. That is to say, when new forms are being generated, an ideas mindset is to have all three of these components active and in play. Lockard encourages us to consider this as a network, in which stored ideas establish their own interconnectedness with each other. Idea interrelationships are then infinitely scalable. Some categories are more densely woven than others. For example, if you have spent a lot of time making transparent drawings of the buildings of Le Corbusier, there will naturally be greater potential for association retrieval.

We are conditioned and trained to think in words and formulas, rather than visual relationships. You are hereby being urged to shift your thinking so that visual concepts are just as factual as are literary concepts. We are trained to think in terms of, say, the definitions of words. These definitions impact whether a thought is what we call true or false. I maintain that the visual facts of say a Le Corbusier building, or the bone structure of bird, are just as fundamental. Thru drawing, when we have developed a rich set of visual facts, you are then empowered to use these operatively, just as you would the definition of a word.

Lockard agrees by saying, “The primary symbol system of the human perceptual / conceptual network, however, is visual…” As proof of this, consider the difference between an extensive verbal description of say the Pantheon in Rome (shown above), and a picture of it. Lengthy verbal descriptions of buildings are useless, whereas one descriptive image of the building is all that is required. (p80)

One transparent drawing of the form creates facts in your brain. These facts, or definitions, become something that you can then use to build your own visual language. Exactly in the same way that verbal definitions are the building blocks for the sentences that you write.

These two examples illustrate the visual facts of both the Parthanon and an observatory.  Each is composed of a cylinder with a dome on top.  Each has means to bring in light;  an oculus and a slot.  These visual facts are analogous to nouns and verbs.