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Images in the mind’s eye are quick sketches that lack simple, real-world details

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Re: Images in the mind’s eye are quick sketches that lack simple, real-world details

#21

Post by syntheweave »

interstice wrote: post #15

I struggle to imagine a fixed image or object on demand, but when falling asleep or in certain situations its like something gets unplugged and then everything becomes way more vivid and detailed to the point of becoming a flood. I've often wondered if artists can naturally get into that state much more easily.

When drawing, if I only use the mental imagery then I tend to draw blobs of value and symbolic shapes without respecting the true proportions of the object. What I fill in the details with instead are learned contours: motion patterns are easy to train with repetition, and when they are combined with an arrangement of primitive forms, more complex stuff can be described without visualizing it completely at any step.

If you do some contour drawing exercises, you'll notice right away how much you can fill in just by getting a decent silhouette: a lot of systems of figure drawing simply go into more detail with that and aim to codify rules for what lines are necessary.

Re: Images in the mind’s eye are quick sketches that lack simple, real-world details

#22

Post by webmaven »

gabereiser wrote: post #3
webmaven wrote: post #2

> “Mental images fill our daydreams, fuel our fancies, and color our memories. People often experience these images as richly detailed, making the imagination seem like a talented artist quickly painting a lifelike scene before our mind’s eye. Our results suggest that while the imagination may indeed be a good artist, it’s on a deadline, and stingy about paint.”

Reminds me of those videos where a comic book artist draws a character in 1 minute, 10 minutes, and 100 minutes (sped up of course). Cool stuff but also hilarious at the 1 min sketches.

Also "How to Draw an Owl":

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-to-draw-an-owl

Re: Images in the mind’s eye are quick sketches that lack simple, real-world details

#23

Post by joedevon »

interroboink wrote: post #4

This brings to mind the whole Aphantasia¹ concept (briefly mentioned in TFA), where some people don't see images in their mind. It always amazes me how people's minds can be so fundamentally different. Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to be born blind, but being sighted and still not being able to create mental imagery seems almost stranger. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

I've been scared to take the VVIQ test because I guess, in the back of my mind, I feared, or kinda knew...that I have aphantasia. Even spoke about aphantasia at an accessibility talk a couple days ago.

I finally pushed myself and took the test tonight. Of the 5 choices:

1. No image at all, I only “know” I am thinking of the object 2. Dim and vague image 3. Moderately realistic and vivid 4. Realistic and reasonably vivid 5. Perfectly realistic, as vivid as real seeing

I am either a 1 or 2 across the board. I can't decide which. But absolutely never a 3. And this is making me a bit wistful. Particularly because I can't remember my Dad's face. His scent. My Mom. Mom's been gone 3 years. Dad left us in 2013. I'm so jealous of people who have vivid memories of loved ones who are gone.

Been looking at subreddit /aphantasia a bit too tonight, and blown away that people actually see sheep when counting sheep. Or that reading a book means literally seeing the action. WTH? I still don't get it. That can't be real.

Whew what a night.

Re: Images in the mind’s eye are quick sketches that lack simple, real-world details

#24

Post by niccl »

steve_taylor wrote: post #14
mathewsanders wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that people’s minds can be so different is something I didn’t realize until a couple of years ago and has been a lightening bolt moment for me in better understanding myself and others! I believe I have aphantasia, and the idea of being able to visualize things on demand seem so strange to me that it’s hard for me to even imagine (isn’t it distracting?). When I heard things like “count sheep to fall asleep”…

> but the moment I try and focus it disappears in a snap I can conjure up images in my mind, but they’re usually not vivid and can be quite fragile. I’m not sure how normal this is.

Tangetially associatied: what happens when you 'think' about something? I don't mean consciously deciding to imagine something. I mean something like (perhaps) thinking about an algorithm for a computing problem, or considering how a car engine works.

For me, reality utterly disappears. I have a clear image of whatever it is that blots out what is coming through my eyes. the image doesn't have photographic detail, but it's what the seeing bit of my brain is processing instead of what my eyes are getting.

Re: Images in the mind’s eye are quick sketches that lack simple, real-world details

#25

Post by NotSuspicious »

interstice wrote: post #15

I struggle to imagine a fixed image or object on demand, but when falling asleep or in certain situations its like something gets unplugged and then everything becomes way more vivid and detailed to the point of becoming a flood. I've often wondered if artists can naturally get into that state much more easily.

Visualization is a skill that can be trained. Close your eyes for a few minutes a day and visualize and mentally "reward" yourself during the brief glimpses when the visualization is hyperreal. Eventually you can tap into it easier. It's very close imo to lucid dreaming. An easy way to help kickstart it is move around in 3D space in the imagining. Sometimes interesting stuff happens like if you are visualizing a fireplace you will suddenly feel a bunch of heat as though a fire were in front of you.

Re: Images in the mind’s eye are quick sketches that lack simple, real-world details

#26

Post by goodbyesf »

interroboink wrote: post #4

This brings to mind the whole Aphantasia¹ concept (briefly mentioned in TFA), where some people don't see images in their mind. It always amazes me how people's minds can be so fundamentally different. Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to be born blind, but being sighted and still not being able to create mental imagery seems almost stranger. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

> It always amazes me how people's minds can be so fundamentally different.

Not just between different people. What about a single individual. Is a single individual's mind the same over time? Is your mind the same now as it was yesterday? Is it the same before your nap and after you awake? Everyone is separated from each other by their own personal subjective reality. But does that also apply to the individual?

Re: Images in the mind’s eye are quick sketches that lack simple, real-world details

#27

Post by bobsmooth »

joedevon wrote: post #23
interroboink wrote: post #4

This brings to mind the whole Aphantasia¹ concept (briefly mentioned in TFA), where some people don't see images in their mind. It always amazes me how people's minds can be so fundamentally different. Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to be born blind, but being sighted and still not being able to create mental imagery seems almost stranger. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

I've been scared to take the VVIQ test because I guess, in the back of my mind, I feared, or kinda knew...that I have aphantasia. Even spoke about aphantasia at an accessibility talk a couple days ago. I finally pushed myself and took the test tonight. Of the 5 choices: 1. No image at all, I only “know” I am thinking of the object 2. Dim and vague image 3. Moderately realistic and vivid 4. Realistic and reasonably vi…

> I'm so jealous of people who have vivid memories of loved ones who are gone.

The same way a song can get stick in your head an image can get stuck in your head. I'd rather be able to visualize than not but it comes with negatives.

Re: Images in the mind’s eye are quick sketches that lack simple, real-world details

#28

Post by fwlr »

Research and discussion of mental imagery has always confused me. It seems like there is a perennial surprise at conditions like aphantasia, or of discoveries that some people have high fidelity mental imagery while others have low fidelity mental imagery. But one of the very first major published papers on mental imagery, arguably the paper that opened this topic up to scientific inquiry, was a statistical study of peoples’ varying experiences of mental imagery. It demonstrated the existence of aphantasic individuals as well as high fidelity and low fidelity individuals! From the very beginning, back in 1880!

The paradigm proposed in that paper is more or less that there’s a bell curve of varying vividness of mental imagery, all the way from a few percent who almost completely lack it, up to a few percent with hyper-real “more detailed than reality” mental visualization, with most clustered in between. This new paper fits neatly into that paradigm; they chose a high threshold and (inevitably) discovered that most of the bell curve falls below that high threshold.

The paper is Sir Francis Galton’s Statistics of Mental Imagery https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm (incidentally interesting: it was so long ago that the paper notes “There are many who deny to statistics the title of a science”, which is a bemusing thing to read today.)

Re: Images in the mind’s eye are quick sketches that lack simple, real-world details

#29

Post by ankurdhama »

interstice wrote: post #15

I struggle to imagine a fixed image or object on demand, but when falling asleep or in certain situations its like something gets unplugged and then everything becomes way more vivid and detailed to the point of becoming a flood. I've often wondered if artists can naturally get into that state much more easily.

Do artists really visualize the whole thing? To me it seems more like a feedback loop, you start with a rough visualization, you draw something and that drawing feedback into the visualization process and then you draw more details and so on. Also it seems that in this process you can focus on visualizing different parts of the whole thing to get clarity about the details for specific parts.

Re: Images in the mind’s eye are quick sketches that lack simple, real-world details

#30

Post by karmakaze »

interstice wrote: post #15

I struggle to imagine a fixed image or object on demand, but when falling asleep or in certain situations its like something gets unplugged and then everything becomes way more vivid and detailed to the point of becoming a flood. I've often wondered if artists can naturally get into that state much more easily.

I'd read that Tesla designed in his mind's eye, the A/C electric motor which was thought to be impossible by others. Here's an article I found in a search[0].

Whenever I try, I only get the blobs and don't have great control of even the blobs: barely recognizable if at all. I have on rare occasion have moments of lucid dreaming where it starts as a regular vivid dream, but then I realize that I may be dreaming and have some control of myself or the scene. I could will myself to fly around, but not very high off the ground. Maybe the realism of the vision was forcing an unconscious (even within a dream?) safety measure.

[0] https://mindtasting.medium.com/the-mind-of-nikola-tesla-4305...

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