This book breaks with the conventional model of perception that views vision as a mere inference to an objective reality on the basis of "inverse optics." The authors offer the alternative view that perception is an expressive and awareness-generating process. Perception creates semantic information in such a way as to enable the observer to deal efficaciously with the chaotic and meaningless structure present at the physical boundary between the body and its surroundings. Vision is intentional by its very nature; visual qualities are essential and real, providing an aesthetic and meaningful interface to the structures of physics and the state of the brain. This view brings perception firmly in line with ethology and modern evolutionary biology and suggests new approaches in all disciplines that study, or require an understanding of, the ontology of mind.

The book is the joint effort of a multidisciplinary group of authors. Topics covered include the relationships among stimuli, neuronal processes, and visual awareness. After considering the mind-dependent growing of information, the book treats time and dynamics; color, shape, and space; language and perception; perception, art, and design.

1 Vision and Information

I Time and Dynamics

2 Riddle of the Past, Puzzle for the Future

3 Extending Pragnanz: Dynamic Aspects of Mental Representation and Gestalt Principles

4 Informing through an Imperfect Retina

5 Perceptual Organization in the Visual Cortex

II Color, Shape, and Space

6 The Perception of Material Qualities and the Internal Semantics of the Perceptual System

7 Visual Information in Surface and Depth Perception: Reconciling Pictures and Reality

8 Good Continuation in Layers: Shading Flows, Color Flows, Surfaces, and Shadows

9 lllusory Contours and Neon Color Spreading Reconsidered in the Light of Petter's Rule

III Language and Perception

10 From Grouping to Visual Meanings: A New Theory of Perceptual Organization

11 The Perceptual Roots of Metaphor

IV Perception in Art, Design, and Computation

12 Becoming Information:Paul Cenanne and Pragnanz

13 Becoming: Generative Art and the Production of Information

Contributors

Author Index

Subject Index