Instructor's Guide

Visual Memory Exercise

This exercise demonstrates both how impressive our visual system is--afer only 15 seconds of perusal, we can recall quite a bit about an image, but also how selective and fallible it can be. Simply perceiving something doesn't guarantee any kind of detailed recall of the image afterward.

Some issues that arise from performing this experiment:

• Quality and limits of visual recall. Can some people recall virtually every detail of an image or visual scene? For a long time some people were thought to have "photographic" memory. While this is no longer believed, there is a wide variation in people's ability to remember visual materials, and you can train yourself to have better visual recall. Making a drawing of an image or scene, which forces you to focus your attention on different areas of detail, certainly helps. Another factor is the interest and relevance that the information has to you. Viewers well schooled in Greek myths will recognize the figure of Orpheus surrounded by animals. Viewers interested in the evolution of landscape painting will find the hare picture much more interesting than those who are not. Expert chess players remember a board layout better than novices, but not when the pieces are arranged in random locations. This effect relates to memory in general--a gripping narrative is easier to recall than a boring or nonsensical one.
• Effect of high-level mental constructs on visual memory. Memory and recall are not simple processes and are affected not only by visual (or other) stimulus but by our knowledge and beliefs. Entertaining examples, as in the gorilla article, show how our visual system can easily ignore improbably events. This effect is entertainingly described in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series book Life, the Universe, and Everything as the "The Somebody Else's Problem field." Douglas Adams describes how a spaceship is able to land in a crowded cricket field without anyone noticing because it's a SEP: "An SEP," he said, "is something that we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem. That's what SEP means. Somebody Else's Problem. The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye."""The Somebody Else's Problem field is much simpler and more effective [than actually hiding something], and what's more can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies on people's natural disposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain." http://flag.blackened.net/dinsdale/dna/book3.html

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Image Information (this is provided in the Flash software as well).

IMAGE 1

http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/o140425.htm

A Hare in the Forest

Hans Hoffmann
German, about 1585
Oil on panel
24 1/2 x 30 7/8 in.
2001.12

Nibbling on a leaf pulled from a stalk of Lady's Mantle, an alert hare sits at the edge of a pine forest. Unlike the darkness one would expect to find in a forest, Hans Hoffmann painted a theatrically illuminated scene. Each plant and insect—snail, cricket, beetle—is seen in vivid detail. The finely wrought leaves of the thistle, the sprawling fronds of a plantain, and the bright blue flowers of the Hare Bell attest to Hoffmann's meticulous treatment of the subject. In fact, none of these plants could have co-existed in the natural world. Hoffmann imaginatively combined numerous individual nature studies in a single painting.

Hoffmann's golden-brown hare is based on Albrecht Dürer's famous and influential watercolor which, much like his Stag Beetle, shows a hare against a plain ground. Hoffmann had seen Dürer's hare while in Nuremburg. Later, when he went to work in the court of Emperor Rudolf II, he helped the Emperor acquire the watercolor for his Kunstkammer. Hoffmann's hare differs from Dürer's however, appearing amid a striking arrangement of elegant plants and insects. At the time it was painted, this arrangement of nearly life-size subjects was entirely unique, not only within Hoffmann's body of work, but also within the tradition of German nature study.

Put answers here with discussion of why each question was asked.

Landscape with Orpheus

http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/o670.html

Unknown
Flemish, 1570s
Oil on panel
14 x 18 in.
71.PB.64

A high horizon line provides a bird's-eye view into a valley filled with moist air, and gradations of tone and atmospheric perspective define distance. Orpheus sits in the left foreground, enchanting not only the wild beasts but even the trees and rocks with the glorious sound of his sublimely beautiful music. The painting smoothly draws the viewer into the delightful landscape, beginning with the figures at lower left, progressing along the road to encounter a steer drawn to the melody's source, then continuing on as the road repeatedly winds into the background.

This artist was not chiefly interested in Orpheus, but he or she needed an excuse for painting a landscape. Artists of the 1500s usually presented their landscapes as settings for myths or Biblical stories. Despite the burgeoning market for pictures featuring landscapes, landscape was not yet considered an independent subject.

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http://www.pantheon.org/articles/o/orpheus.html
Orpheus was the son of Calliope and either Oeagrus or Apollo. He was the greatest musician and poet of Greek myth, whose songs could charm wild beasts and coax even rocks and trees into movement. He was one of the Argonauts, and when the Argo had to pass the island of the Sirens, it was Orpheus' music which prevented the crew from being lured to destruction.

When Orpheus' wife, Eurydice, was killed by the bite of a serpent, he went down to the underworld to bring her back. His songs were so beautiful that Hades finally agreed to allow Eurydice to return to the world of the living. However, Orpheus had to meet one condition: he must not look back as he was conducting her to the surface. Just before the pair reached the upper world, Orpheus looked back, and Eurydice slipped back into the netherworld once again.

Orpheus was inconsolable at this second loss of his wife. He spurned the company of women and kept apart from ordinary human activities. A group of Ciconian Maenads, female devotees of Dionysus, came upon him one day as he sat singing beneath a tree. They attacked him, throwing rocks, branches, and anything else that came to hand. However, Orpheus' music was so beautiful that it charmed even inanimate objects, and the missiles refused to strike him. Finally, the Maenads' attacked him with their own hands, and tore him to pieces. Orpheus' head floated down the river, still singing, and came to rest on the isle of Lesbos.

Orpheus was also reputed to be the founder of the Orphic religious cult.

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice, as told by Thomas Bulfinch.