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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

#41

Post by ckw »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #32
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'm the opposite, in my mind it's almost like a CAD program mixed with Photoshop and I have complete control over building and visualizing anything. I can imagine building a lego set piece by piece and how each component looks, feels, slots together with others, etc. I can rotate it all around and imagine sides that aren't visible. I can change the colors and the textures and imagine any kind of lighting. As a kid I…

Can you visualize a blackboard and perform calculations ‘by hand’?

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

#42

Post by sfsdw345345 »

parasti wrote: post #33
ankurdhama wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In musical terms this is called audiation - the ability to imagine sound. From my experience, this can be acquired indirectly over time through regular vocal and musical practice (e.g., singing in a local choir or practicing an instrument). You can write music with or without it, or using both: sometimes you have a specific sound in your head that you want to materialize, other times you're experimenting with your in…

> the ability to imagine sound

This is a real, normal thing?? I can hear snippets of music, usually orchestral or opera, as vividly as if they were actually playing, but all I'm listening to is the white noise of a fan, and I'm just remembering them from before. When I was young, it was often a radio announcer because we listened to the radio in the car a lot. I always thought this was very bizarre and was not supposed to happen to normal people.

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

#43

Post by crazygecko »

syntheweave wrote: post #21
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.…

do you mean flat shapes? do you have any recommendation for learning resources using this method of contour drawing?

I wasted years trying constructional drawing (3d boxes etc) without results.

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

#44

Post by SanderNL »

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.

Don’t forget this can be trained as well. Mental imagery can become a lot sharper if you want it to be.

I think mental imagery is always sharp, it’s just your perception and/or your memory of it that sucks. Perhaps a bit like dreams.

I’m somewhat of a lucid dreamer and those are incredibly realistic, way, way beyond what I can conjure up consciously. It opened me up to the idea that your mind might be capable of more than you have conscious control over and the role memory plays in this.

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

#45

Post by IIAOPSW »

Mental images are like a movie set. They only build the parts that are going to be on screen, and even then accuracy and level of detail is only a concern for the parts that are relevant to the plot. Everything else is just shoddily constructed disposable background, often reused in multiple different movies as though filler detail is provided by a common prop manager. At least there's no product placement.

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

#46

Post by lll-o-lll »

niccl wrote: post #24
steve_taylor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, bu…

> what happens when you 'think' about something?

I have aphantasia. There’s no great mystery here, it’s probably the same way you ‘think’ just without the pictures. I think about abstract algebra and car engines in the same way.

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

#47

Post by racingmars »

smokel wrote: post #40
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 am very skeptical about the concept of aphantasia. For one, I think that visual phantasy can be trained, or at least developed. Also, it is near impossible to report objectively about your inner processes in a useful way. As an example, many people believed for some time that dreams were in black and white, which is obviously not true for everyone. However, this does not imply that dreams are in color. It seems mor…

> I am very skeptical about the concept of aphantasia.

> Also, it is near impossible to report objectively about your inner processes in a useful way.

I agree that discussing our mental/inner processes is difficult due to a lack of a common frame of reference on which to base descriptions. (I'm reminded of McCoy and Spock's conversation in Star Trek IV... "Are you telling me I'd have to die to discuss your experience of death with you?")

I (approx. 40 years old) became aware of the concept of aphantasia about three years ago. I immediately identified with it... or rather, I immediately found it mind-boggling that other people claim to experience anything close to "seeing" something by closing their eyes and thinking about it. That's such a foreign concept to me I had always assumed people's descriptions of visualizing things in their mind, daydreaming, etc were extremely metaphorical, not describing a process that is anything like "seeing" something.

I have talked to many friends at length about how they describe their "mind's eye" after realizing I was probably different. And even how it extends, in the case of some of my friends with particularly visual mind's eyes, to the "mind's ears" and "mind's nose" in music and scent recall.

Based on my friends' descriptions to me of how they try to describe how they experience mental visualization, it's clear the capability is a spectrum... some describe it as blurry gray image of what they're thinking about, some describe it as being a picture as real as a photograph that they can literally see and smell.

I agree with you that it's hard to tell how reliable the descriptions are relative to each other, but I can tell you this: hearing all of themselves describe it, even down at the "it's just a blurry gray 'image' in my mind" end of the spectrum, none of them sounded familiar to me or like any kind of "visualization" I've ever experienced while awake (specifically: none at all). If it were simply a matter of being able to accurately report objectively on our inner processes in a useful way, I feel like there wouldn't be such a clear divide between the way a minority of people (allegedly with aphantasia) describe it and the way the majority of people describe it. Whether it's aphantasia or not, it's clear to me at this point that there is definitely a "group A" and "group B" in terms of how people describe their "mind's eye" when asked.

Related, I also have a friend who says she has no internal monologue, another phenomenon I've read about. She thinks entirely visually. Not having an inner monologue is such an incomprehensible concept to me; literally the only way I can think is with my inner monologue.

Brains are weird.

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

#48

Post by racingmars »

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…

> and blown away that people actually see sheep when counting sheep

hahahaha... yeah, I 100% relate to the feeling. When I learned about aphantasia as an adult, so much of what I've heard people say throughout my life suddenly made so much more sense from the perspective of, "oh, wow, people really mean something so different than what I experience when they say that."

> Or that reading a book means literally seeing the action.

Yeah. People say things like "I don't like the movie because it's not what I pictured in my mind" or "the character doesn't look like what I pictured while reading the book." I always assumed they just meant what I would mean if I said something like that... based on the literal description on the page, the character in the movie doesn't match the described hair color, height, etc. But no... I have more recently realized they mean they literally have an almost photographic picture in their mind of the character as they imagine it when they are reading the book. So wild.

As for the VVIQ test, there was never any doubt in my mind -- I'm 1's across all questions without hesitation.

But yeah, that first night I really started looking into it a few years ago... wild. But so much all of a sudden made sense.

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

#49

Post by JacobSeated »

Interesting. I find I visualize concepts more than often irrelevant details, so when asked to visualize a person knocking off a ball from a table, I might emphasize the visual details of the ball rather than the person. E.g. White with black pentagons.

This is simply because the person's characteristics are not described, and a person is more complex to visualize than a simple shape like a ball. After all, why waste mental energy picturing a non-existent person knocking of a ball? It has no relevance to anything you need to do in life. But, the ball is easy to visualize given you can have a generic picture of a ball, and the object might be more important than the person interacting with it.

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

#50

Post by thegabriele »

racingmars wrote: post #47
smokel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very skeptical about the concept of aphantasia. For one, I think that visual phantasy can be trained, or at least developed. Also, it is near impossible to report objectively about your inner processes in a useful way. As an example, many people believed for some time that dreams were in black and white, which is obviously not true for everyone. However, this does not imply that dreams are in color. It seems mor…

> I am very skeptical about the concept of aphantasia. > Also, it is near impossible to report objectively about your inner processes in a useful way. I agree that discussing our mental/inner processes is difficult due to a lack of a common frame of reference on which to base descriptions. (I'm reminded of McCoy and Spock's conversation in Star Trek IV... "Are you telling me I'd have to die to discuss your experience…

What if i ask you to visualize the road from your residence to the first stop you usually make? Kinda like using google street, but in your mind...Do you visualize nothing of the streets, the buildings, the crossroads, trees and the like? Do you orient yourself just by "instructions"? Thanks
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