Visual Form, Art, Perception, and Image Transformations

Doug DeCarlo
Rutgers University
Department of Computer Science
Center for Cognitive Science

Monday, November 11, 3:00PM
Lieb 3rd floor Conference Room
 

Abstract


Each time we look at a picture, our visual system draws on the wealth of information there to infer what's going on in the scene. This process is guided by the structure of visual form: the intrinsic order and organization of natural imagery that manifests itself as visual cues such as contour, shading or texture. Artists implicitly draw upon this structure in a way that clarifies information and encourages specific interpretations; I'll show a number of examples.

Following similar lines, I'll discuss and show results of my recent work (with Anthony Santella) on the transformation of photographs into abstract pictures. We realize a particular visual style by drawing upon representations of visual form. We achieve meaningful abstraction using a very natural interface: the user simply looks at the image. An eye-tracker monitors the user's eye movements, while a perceptual model makes predictions about which visual elements the user found important.