Gestalt Grouping Theory Essay

The application of Gestalt grouping theories can be found in various aspects of our daily life. The first photo above is the image of flying birds on a wall, and the second is the detailed view of a part of the wall. In fact, this entire wall is filled with small pictures. It is the massive number of pictures that makes up the grand image of birds. This technique is called collage, or assemblage.

This picture wall clearly demonstrates an artistic application of Gestalt grouping theories. Generally, the bird, the shadow of the bird, the ceiling (i.e. the background. It is probably the glass ceiling of Eaton Centre), and the ceiling light (on the bottom left corner), can be considered separate groups. And this grouping can be explained by the following Gestalt laws: the law of similarity, proximity, closure, good continuation, and figure-ground.

The law of similarity states that the objects that are similar tend to be grouped together. On the picture wall, the mechanism being used is that the pictures, or parts of pictures, that have similar tones are collaged together, which is exactly the application of the law of similarity. And people tend to percept the image using this mechanism as

The first factor is "surroundedness", which denotes that if one region is entirely surrounded by another, it is likely that the surrounded region is the figure. In the picture, the birds are completely surrounded by the glass ceiling, which is the ground. Since the ground contains pictures of significantly lighter tones than those on the bird, it is even easier to distinguish between the figure and the ground. The second factor is "symmetry", stating that a symmetrical region is more likely to be seen as figure. The bird at the centre of the picture has been made symmetrical, so this might be the first figure detected by people when they first approach the picture