[visionlist] THE 30th KANIZSA LECTURE

[Trieste Symposium]

= = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = =
- - = = - - = =


                      THE 30th KANIZSA LECTURE


= = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = =
- - = = - - = =

Dear colleagues,


this year the 30th Kanizsa Lecture will be delivered by prof. Charles
Spence (University of Oxford) on Friday 8 July, starting at 6.00 pm.

The 30th Kanizsa Lecture will be hosted by the GTA Conference (
https://gtaconference2022.com ) and will take place at the University of
Trieste. The event is open to the public, and will be streamed live online
on the official channel of the University of Trieste on youtube (
www.youtube.com/universitatrieste ).
For more information: http://www2.units.it/bernardis/index_TSPC2022.html

Venue: Aula Magna, ground floor. H3 building
Main University Campus. Via A. Valerio, 12 - Trieste

= = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = =
- - = = - - = =

The 30th Kanizsa Lecture

On Crossmodal and Multisensory Gestalts: Evidence & Application


Charles Spence
University of Oxford

I) Perceptual Grouping Across the Senses
While, on occasion, Kanizsa studied perception beyond the visual modality,
he, like so many other Gestalt psychologists, tended to study the senses in
isolation. As such, it has long remained an open question as to whether the
principles of perceptual organization that were first articulated by
Kanizsa and other early experimental psychologists cross the senses. In the
first part of this talk, I would to make the case that crossmodal
correspondences may allow for crossmodal perceptual grouping (Spence,
2015). While it has sometimes been suggested that the crossmodal
correspondences are based on perceptual similarity, I will argue that that
is mostly not the case. Focusing, in particular, on the higher spatial
senses of vision, audition, and to a lesser extent touch, I will summarize
the various kinds of perceptual outcomes (of both a crossmodal and
multisensory nature) that may be expected when the senses are grouped,
including emergence, harmony, unification, and modulation.

II) Edible Gestalt: Crossmodal Connections in an Arts/Entertainment Context
Having established the fundamentals of crossmodal perceptual grouping, in
the second part of this lecture, I will take a look at the various ways in
which crossmodal correspondences and other Gestalt grouping principles have
been introduced in an arts/entertainment context. I will start by taking a
look at the literature on sonic seasoning at the pitch of harmony. I will
describe a number of our attempts (together with chef Jozef Youssef) to
make edible Gestalts as in The Picasso Dish, and Jastrow’s Bistable Bite
(e.g., Youssef et al., 2018). I will then take a more general look at the
explosive recent growth of interest in multisensory experience design in an
arts/entertainment context (what some refer to as Sensploration), tracing
its roots to the Italian Futurists (Marinetti, 1932/2014). I will
demonstrate the key role that the crossmodal correspondences have played in
everything from the Tate Sensorium exhibition (in London in 2015) through
to the much earlier interest in Colour Music (Spence & Di Stefano,
submitted). Although often confused with synaesthesia, I will argue that
people’s feeling that certain complex stimuli presented in the different
senses (such as painting and music) somehow ‘belong together’ is perhaps
best understood in terms of affective (i.e., rather than perceptual)
crossmodal Gestalt, or what have been described as emotionally- (or
hedonically-) mediated crossmodal correspondences instead (Spence, 2020).



= = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = = - - = =
- - = = - - = =



Paolo Bernardis
Carlo Fantoni
Walter Gerbino
organizers
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://visionscience.com/pipermail/visionlist_visionscience.com/attachments/20220620/a94c7bbf/attachment.html>