Getting the Drawing to Look Right as Well as to Be Right: The Interaction Between Production and Perception as a Mechanism of Development

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses interaction between production and perception as a mechanism of development. Denotation systems say what the marks in the picture stand for. In any kind of picture, the marks in the picture, or picture primitives, stand for, refer to, or denote corresponding objects or entities in the real world, or scene primitives. In line drawings, for example, lines commonly stand for the edges of objects; while in photographs the marks in the picture, which may be Benday dots in a newspaper photograph, points on a television screen or grains on a photographic film, stand for the intercepts of small bundles of light rays. Scene and picture primitives may be classified according to the number of dimensions of space into which they can be extended. 0-dimensional primitives like points have no extension. 1-dimensional primitives like lines or edges can be extended in only one dimension. 2-dimensional primitives like faces or regions can be extended in two dimensions. And, finally, 3-dimensional or volumetric primitives like spheres, cubes, pillow-shaped objects or flying saucers can be extended in three dimensions.