which [two] things belong together // grouping

Art, Design and Gestalt Theory: The Film Version

 

graphic design / indispensable tools of the trade

Above and below Still frame excerpts from a video talk, titled Art Design and Gestalt Theory: the film version (2023), about the organizing principles that are fundamental to human vision, including accents (above), unit-forming factors, and closure (below). Nothing is more indispensable to design-based organizing skills, including graphic design. 

Privy aperture: Set right down I'll mark 'er 'round

Roy R. Behrens, front cover, Journal of Creative Behavior (1976)

Buck Johnson, quoted in Remar Sutton and Mary Abbott Waite, eds., The Common Ground Book: A Circle of Friends. Latham NY: British American Publishing, 1992, p. 272—

Cousin Sally wanted an air conditioner, so she went into Metter [Georgia] to buy one, and they said: "Miss Sally, what size you want?"

She said, "I don't know."

They said, "Well how many BTUs do you want?"

She said, "I don't know a thing in the world about BTUs. All I know is I want an air conditioner with enough BTUs to cool a b-u-t-t as big as a t-u-b." She was really large.

•••

Rockwell Kent in It’s Me O Lord: The Autobiography of Rockwell Kent. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1955, p. 177—

…I laughed when he [Mr. Young, an old carpenter who worked with him in Maine] told me of “the big fat lady over on the main” for whom he was building a privy. “Now you be sure and make it big enough,” sez she. Said Mr. Young: “Lady, you set right down there and I’ll mark her ‘round.”

Roy R. Behrens, rear cover, Journal of Creative Behavior (1976)

Logo-like pictorial Native American haircuts

Osage clan-related haircuts

Above These diagrams are not as strange as they might appear. They are an ethnologist's renderings of the purposeful hair designs of Native American Osage boys. See examples below as well. Originated by Francis La Flesche (1857-1932), who was himself a Native American, they were published in a US Government report, titled "The Osage Tribe: Child Naming Rite" in 1928. I first saw them in the early 1970's when they were reproduced in Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (University of Chicago Press, 1968), a book that was greatly important to me at a time when I was trying to grasp the process of categorizing.

These unusual haircuts are like pictorial logos. Each haircut represents a different clan, which is in turn connected with a particular animal (usually). In the examples shown above, they represent (as numbered) (1) Head and tail of elk. (2) Head, tail, and horns of buffalo. (3) Horns of buffalo. (4) Buffalo's back as seen from above. (5) Head of bear. (6) Head, tail, and body of small birds.

In the second set of examples, the patterns are indicative of: (7) Turtle's shell, with head, feet, and tail of the animal. (8) Head, wings, and tail of the eagle. (9) Four points of the compass. (10) Shaggy side of the wolf. (11) Horns and tail of the buffalo. (12) Head and tail of the deer. (13) Head, tails, and knobs of growing horns on the buffalo calf. (14) Reptile teeth.

Einstein and Wertheimer | Street Peek-A-Boo

D. Brett King and Michael Wertheimer, Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory. New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2005, p. 122—

He [Albert Einstein] seemed also to relish his intellectual and social exchanges with [his friend, Gestalt psychologist Max] Wertheimer. Wertheimer was once amused when he and Einstein consecutively covered their right and left eyes with their hands to test the effects of retinal disparity (the slightly different images of the same object on the two retinas because of the spatial separation of the eyes) as they stared at a church steeple.  Watching these figures on the street corner, a crowd soon gathered and the two were surprised to see that the onlookers were also engaging in this curious behavior, shifting their hands back and forth over their eyes. more>>>