Reviewed by Omaima Ayoub, Richard J. Daley College

Part of an ongoing interdisciplinary research project on form analysis, this volume explores the origins of conscious qualitative states in perception. Through an examination of the complexity of the field of vision and the integration of the tenets of Gestalt psychology with more recent scientific approaches, the contributors to this volume make a strong case for the coexistence and interaction of different types of spaces in vision, such as the qualitative space of phenomenal appearances and the optical space of psychophysics, neural elaboration, and art. In the opening paper, ‘Introduction to visual spaces’, Liliana Albertazzi presents this general framework and argues that these spaces follow different rules of organization, which must be individuated before potential implementation in cognitive agents can be explored.

Divided into three parts (‘Perception of visual spaces’, ‘Depiction of visual spaces’, and ‘Bridging perception and depiction of visual spaces’), this volume includes a wide range of topics. Within the framework of the Gestalt principles, primary and secondary cognitive processes are theoretically and experimentally analyzed by several contributors. Specifically, while Dhanraj Vishwanath discusses ‘Coplanar reflectance change and the ontology of surface perception’, Timothy L. Hubbard and Jon R. Courtney (‘Evidence suggestive of separate visual dynamics in perception and in memory’) and Barbara Tversky (‘Gestalts of thought’) rely on the principles of Gestalt psychology to offer evidence of  separate visual dynamics in perception and in memory.

Ed Conner (‘The neural space of visual shape perception’), investigates the dimensions of visual shape coding in monkeys, and within the realm of neural space, Steven W. Zucker and Ohad Ben-Shahar discuss the relationship between the law of good continuations and the geometry of visual flows in ‘Boundary Gestalt limits flow Gestalt: The geometry of good continuation’.

The theoretical and experimental relationship between perceptual and pictorial space is examined with regard to theories of painting (Alf C. Zimmer, ‘Visual perception and theories of painting: An uneasy complementarity’), canvas paintings (Liliana Albertazzi, ‘Visual quality: Drawing on canvas’), sculptures (Jan J. Koenderink and Andrea J. van Doorn, ‘Pictorial space: A modern reappraisal of Adolf Hildebrand’), children’s drawings and Paul Klee’s drawings and paintings (John Willats, ‘Rudolf Arnheim’s graphic equivalents in children’s drawings and drawings and paintings by Paul Klee’), and stereokinetic objects (Mario Zanforlin, ‘Illusory space and paradoxical transparency in stereokinetic objects’).

Gert J. van Tonder extends the paradigm of visual perception to the creation, depiction, and perception of naturalistic landscapes in ‘Order and complexity in naturalistic landscapes: On creation, depiction and perception of Japanese dry rock gardens’. Connecting the disciplines of linguistics and pictorial perception, in ‘Dynamics of picture viewing and picture description’, Jana Holšánová discusses the results of empirical studies that examine the dynamics of picture viewing and picture description.

The meaning of shape and its relation to fundamental mathematical concepts are investigated by Frederic Fol Leymarie in ‘Thoughts on shape’. Finally, in ‘Tracing axes of growth’, Athanassios Economou examines a specific class of three-dimensional designs that have one axis of growth and discusses algebraic structures that capture the symmetries of those designs.

This volume is written for an interdisciplinary scholarly audience. As cognitive science researchers specializing in visual perception and its relation to other disciplines, the contributors employ the scientific methods of their research paradigm, which starts from phenomenal appearances and proceeds to the visual field.