Graffiti and the UX of visual complexity: On Healey and Enns’ “Attention and Visual Memory in Visualization and Computer Graphics”
“Hue is not the only visual feature that is preattentive. In Figs. 1c and 1d, the target is again a red circle, while the distractors are red squares. Here, the visual system identifies the target through a difference in curvature.
A target defined by a unique visual property — a red hue in Figs. 1a and 1b, or a curved form in Figs. 1c and 1d — allows it to “pop out” of a display. This implies that it can be easily detected, regardless of the number of distractors. In contrast to these effortless searches, when a target is defined by the joint presence of two or more visual properties, it often cannot be found preattentively. Figs. 1e and 1f show an example of these more difficult conjunction searches. The red circle target is made up of two features: red and circular. One of these features is present in each of the distractor objects — red squares and blue circles. A search for red items always returns true because there are red squares in each display. Similarly, a search for circular items always sees blue circles. Numerous studies have shown that most conjunction targets cannot be detected preattentively. View- ers must perform a time-consuming serial search through the display to confirm its presence or absence.
If low-level visual processes can be harnessed during visualization, they can draw attention to areas of potential interest in a display.”
(p. 1171 in Attention and Visual Memory in Visualization and Computer Graphics Christopher G. Healey, Senior Member, IEEE, and James T. Enns. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VISUALIZATION AND COMPUTER GRAPHICS, VOL. 18, NO. 7, JULY 2012)
First thoughts:
Healey and Enns show that the ease of visual detection increases in relation to the reduction of the number of types differentiations in a visual pattern.
The user values resulting differentiation of visual variables occurs not only along the axis of hue (i.e. red vs. blue), but the axis of “mechanical” variations like curvature.
In relation to Graffiti Writing, a key value of some of the most seasoned practitioners is to demonstrate an understanding of how to maintain functional (if difficult) legibility of visual components in a composition rather than create a “bad infinity” of underdeveloped and unintegrated visual excesses.
Letters can be created by manipulating the variations between relationships of visual characteristics (such as color or mechanics) while implementing systematic control of the differentiations among those characteristics. The Writers’ difficulty increases with the complexity of the system required to maintain control over the varying relationships between visual features. In other words, mastery as a Writer requires a balance between 1) complexity of visual variation and 2) ability to control the integration of that complexity.
Common criticisms of newer Writers (often labeled “toys”) target letter composition methods that leave visual variability under-integrated in the stylistic whole of the Writer’s approach. If one implements too many extraneous details without any formally integrated stylistic method, i.e. a “signature” style, one’s prominence among the reading community of other Writers is lost to the unstylized clutter of letter constructions.
However, we should not associate this line of reasoning with simplified frameworks of “minimalism” and “maximalism.” If anything, Graffiti Writers employ disciplines of maximalism throughout their craft: an increased duration of a work in situ (i.e. a subway Graffiti piece that has been running for a year), an increased geographical repetition of the Writer’s nom de plume, an increased size (i.e. a whole-car piece vs. a tag), and an increased sophistication (i.e. wild-style vs. a bubble-letter throw-up), are all examples of the way maximalism is a highly aesthetically valued characteristic among Writers.
That being said, Writers can also achieve notoriety by exemplifying what may be called “minimalism.” Take for example Bios of Ukraine (alongside many other European Writers): here praise is earned through the extreme precision in the placement of aerosolized paint droplets such that the pigment appears in the most clean line possible (or even more precisely controlled movements of dripping of spray paint).
@Bios.lines Screenshot from https://www.instagram.com/tv/CHHA7DJDnRc/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
In other cases, the micrological control in the shape of letter angles through the angle of a marker (or even a finger etching lines in snow) when composing a small tag, are key to the recognized achievements of Writers like Faust or Sure (RIP).
From http://bomit.com/stickerblog/tag/faust/
The next step in this inquiry is to consider how the use of aerosol pigments on the network of Subway Trains facilitated unique forms of visualization, such that Graffiti Writers could use spray paint to hack a social network into the infrastructural UX of NYC’s transportation system.
Additional scholarly context:
Rather than attempting to categorize the practice according to classical Western aesthetic models, we may do well to understand that either end of such a binary analysis (such as minimal vs. maximal) are valued by practitioners for the same reason: semiotic and aesthetic recognition. Rather than attempting to commit themselves to conceptualizations of one kind of aestheticized differentiation vs. another (such as minimalism vs. maximalism, or feminine vs. masculine), traditional 19th and 20th century models of semiotics came to focus on critically conceptualizing the ways that differentiation itself may take place.
However, most of these critical theories resist the pragmatic interpretations of scientifically disciplined analyses such as those cited by Healey and Enns. This resistance allows for a powerful critique of such scientific discourses insofar as they themselves rely on culturally and historically contingent understandings of human experience: we know that well into the 21st century leading academics across scientific and humanistic disciplines still manipulate the powers of disciplinary authority to sustain structures of gendered violence. Even an influential leader in theories of semiotic difference, Jacques Derrida, attempted to silence sexual harassment claims by controlling which artefacts his university’s library could access.
Despite the challenge of finding ways that critical semiotic theories can be made fluent with pragmatic scientific studies, we can still use tools from the humanistic disciplines to advance our scientific understanding of the users’ experiencing the process of detection in a patterned image. Here we may also turn to scholarly thinking such as Fred Moten’s critique of race, and his understanding of Wittgenstein’s claims for “aspect dawning.” More on that in the next post.
