Glossar-English:Image Morphology

Sub-item of: Image Syntax

Original: Bildmorphologie

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Placement of image morphology In general, the term ‘image morphology’ is not used with any specific meaning distinct from ‘image grammar’ or ‘image composition’. All of these terms refer to an analytical view of the image carrier as composed of parts that are relevant to the image function and essentially determined by visually perceptible properties, which can also be used in other image carriers that differ in the way the parts are put together. It is the assembly of the parts into a whole that, together with other (non-syntactic) factors, determines the (type) identity of the image carrier and thus ultimately determines the possible uses of the image carrier as an image. However, the distinction between grammatical and morphological aspects in the narrower sense when considering language (⊳ morphology and syntax) suggests that the expression ‘image morphology’ should be given a more specific meaning and thus set it apart from image grammar (which thus becomes image grammar in the narrower sense). Image grammar in the narrower sense tries above all to prove syntactic compositionality in pictures in the sense of the formal (Chomsky) grammars, which presuppose the distinction between​ »sentence«​ and​ »word«;​ Through a limited set of replacement rules over a finite set of sentence constituents as intermediate stages (“nonterminal symbols”, such as ‘noun phrase’), they allow for infinitely many sentences to be derived or analyzed from a finite number of words (in the mental lexicon) in a unique way ([Chomsky 1957a]Chomsky, Noam (1957): Syntactic Structures. Mouton, Den Haag. ; [Sachs-Hombach 1999a]Sachs-Hombach, Klaus (1999): Gibt es ein Bildalphabet?. In: Sachs-Hombach, K. & Rehkämper, K. (Hg.), Bildgrammatik. Interdisziplinäre Forschungen zur Syntax bildlicher Darstellungsformen. Scriptum, Magdeburg. ). On the other hand, image morphology in the sense used here is interested in syntactic image compositionality of a different kind: Can image carriers be described with the help of general grouping rules – for instance, analogous to the much “softer” Gestalt laws operating in the geometric continuum – as consisting of “pictorial primitives” that are not already considered signs (words) and originate from a possibly unlimited basic set, whereby the condition of uniqueness of derivation might also be weakened? In analogy to the word formation rules in extremely polysynthetic-​fusional languages, but without assuming that it makes sense to apply the distinction between​ »sentence«​ and​ »word«​ to pictorial sign systems, such a pictorial morphology would have to do justice to the characteristic property of the syntactic density of pictorial sign systems. If such a morphological pictorial compositionality can be rationally introduced, then images, although also complex sign systems, are very clearly distinguished from language sign systems (⊳ Iconic Difference). They lack the subdivision of the individual overall sign actions into words: partially independent, albeit more or less (in Frege's sense) unsaturated partial sign actions that always need to be supplemented. In particular, whether the uses of isolated syntactic elements of pictorial sign systems are always already unsaturated sign actions remains open. The physical properties relevant to an object in its function as a picture carrier can certainly be found above all in the visually perceptible geometric arrangement of colored areas. In this sense, the syntactic elements into which the image carrier is decomposed in an eigenvalued consideration of image syntax can be regarded as pictorial morphological elements. Beyond their intrinsic value, these are neither necessarily charged with a specific meaning – a specific depiction value – nor do they necessarily have a precisely defined pragmatic function – a fixed representational value. Visual shapes, coloremes and pixemes Figure 1: As an example: Gloria Temarre Petyarre: «Arnkerrthe​(Mountain Devil Lizard)-​Dream» In short, exactly those entities into which the picture carrier – or more precisely: the part of its surface marked by the frame – appears divided in visual perception form the morphological repertoire of pictures. Psychologically, this division is determined by the Gestalt laws: they determine which spatial locations are seen as connected, not only in the sense of an undivided, coherent area of ​​the same color but also in the sense of higher-order groups, such as sequences of strokes of the same color. In Figure 1, for example, this leads to the fact that, in addition to the red, brown, black, yellow, and white elementary areas, the groups of yellow or white-framed, dark-filled arches and bars are also perceived as visual shapes that belong together. In her influential book on image syntax ([Saint-Martin 1990a]Saint-Martin, Fernande (1990): Semiotics of Visual Language. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN. ), Fernande Saint-​Martin introduces the so-called ‘coloreme’ as the basic morphological unit: [A coloreme] corresponds to that aggre­gate of visual vari­ables per­ceived in the visual repre­sen­tation by the way of an ocu­lar fixa­tion, or focus of the gaze. … A col­oreme is de­fined […] as the zone of the visual linguis­tic field corre­lated to a centra­tion of the eye. It is consti­tuted by a mass of ener­getic matter present­ing a given set of visual vari­ables. ([Saint-Martin 1990a]Saint-Martin, Fernande (1990): Semiotics of Visual Language. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN. : p. 5). Figure 2: Visualization of a coloreme according to Saint-​Martin (schematic representation): The circular foveal centering area that determines the coloreme is highlighted and enlarged, while the rest is shown somewhat darkened Saint-​Martin's understanding of the coloreme obviously focuses on momentary psychophysical aspects: At any given time, only one ocular fixation can take place and consequently, only one coloreme can be perceived (see Fig. 2). However, a “colorematic (or coloremic) analysis” should build on this basis, which describes the transformations which a coloreme undergoes by its interrelations with the other coloremes of its immediate entourage through macular centrations. The analyzes proceeds thus at a first regrouping of coloremes through the topological relations which establish the first perceptual construction and structure the energetic exchanges between coloremes. ([Saint-Martin 1990a]Saint-Martin, Fernande (1990): Semiotics of Visual Language. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN. : p. 194). In their dynamics and direct dependence on the psychophysical idiosyncrasies of a perceiving individual, coloremes are primarily theoretical entities. In practice, Saint-​Martin suggests dividing the image area into a regular 5*5 grid, which serves as the basis for an approximate description of the possible or probable coloremes: Each grid is in turn divided into a 5*5 sub-​grid, which picks up the division into foveal centers and macular peripheral areas (ibid.: p. 197ff). In order not to be too closely bound to Saint-​Martin's rather specific conception, it is advisable to more generally consider the visual shapes – ultimately related to a hypothetical normal viewer – in the context of image syntax in a rather structuralist manner and, in analogy to the linguistic expression ‘morpheme’, to designate them as ‘pixemes’. At the same time, in a first approximation, the dynamics can also be disregarded, which makes the morphological description of a picture carrier considerably more difficult in Saint-​Martin. Pixeme attributes Saint-Martin distinguishes two types of properties of the syntactic-morphological elements of pictorial signs, which are often interpreted in the following way (cf. e.g. [Dölling 1999a]Dölling, Evelyn (1999): Kategorialstruktur ikonischer Sprachen und Syntax der visuellen Sprache. In: Sachs-Hombach, K. & Rehkämper, K (Hg.), Bildgrammatik: Interdisziplinäre Forschungen zur Syntax bildlicher Darstellungsformen. Scriptum, Magdeburg. ): Plastic properties belong to the material of the image carrier, while other properties are in the eye of the beholder and are of a more visual, i.e. perception-dependent, nature. The geometric shapes and their topological relations are given as typical examples of the latter type of property, while colors and textures are examples of the properties of the material itself. Coloremes are always combinations of plastic and visual-perceptual properties. In fact, the more general concept of the pixem can also be logically analyzed into a purely geometric base structure on the one hand and a conceptual field of marker dimensions that make these structures visible on the other because space as such would not be perceptible. Only the segmentation into areas that belong together – i.e. areas that are marked the same way – results in a structuring into the spatial elements of a whole. However, the distinction between geometry (i.e. spatiality) and color does not (or at least not essentially) depend on the differentiation between properties that belong to the material of the picture support – and should therefore be regarded as objective properties – and properties that are constructed by the viewer – and should therefore be valued as subjective properties. Rather, image philosophers can discuss colors and the relationships between them on the one hand, and spatial entities and the geometric or topological relationships between them on the other, without having to mix the two arguments. They can be viewed as independent of each other and treated as regulated by – at least at first glance – autonomous conceptual fields. Argumentations about pixemes, on the other hand, have to combine the logic of color and the logic of space, ie unite them in a conceptual synthesis. Fundamental properties of pixemes are therefore exactly the attributes that any colored entities of the two-dimensional geometry have, as well as the relations that they can assume among each other. In addition to the characteristic properties of geometric entities – in particular topological, metric, and directional relations between their parts (shape) and to other areas (position) – and the color markings in the narrower sense, which are more precisely determined by hue, brightness, and saturation, homogeneous color gradients or special color variations – textures – can also be relevant as attributes of a higher order. In addition, interactions occur that result from the spatial arrangement of different colors in relation to each other, especially contrast effects. Combinations of pixemes, maximal pixeme Since the subdivision into​ »word«​ and​ »sentence«​ is irrelevant for morphological analysis of images, combinations of several pixemes can also be regarded as pixemes without further ado: The morphology of images thus consists of part-​whole orders of pixemes, which span between the image as a whole – as maximal pixeme – and the areas considered as minimal, each with only a single homogeneous marker occupancy in mostly several stages. Pixemes of a higher order therefore not only have a marker occupancy in the sense mentioned above. Rather, they have a quasi-pictorial substructure. For example, in Figure 1, the centrally located ribbon-like pixels filled with brown and outlined in yellow form a columnar complex higher-order pixeme. Its basic geometric structure is not simply marked by color or texture values, but precisely by the lower-order pixels that constitute it. Although the pixemes of “medium” order resemble an image carrier in their morphological structure, they cannot yet be used as an image carrier without further ado. This is mainly due to two related factors: a) In terms of gestalt theory, pixemes always form figures: The background against which they are inevitably viewed as such does not belong to them. In the above example, the red areas enclosing the yellow-brown bands are not included. Although the pixem segmentation can in principle be broken down into a variety of figure-ground pairs, the image carrier is only a figure in one respect, namely in front of the frame. Of all the pixels involved, this only applies to the maximum pixem and has a special effect there. Figure 3: Pi­xeme section as an image b) The framing of the maximum pixel puts the latter in the context of use that makes this figure as a whole a sign mark in a sign action, ie an image carrier. Of course, in principle, it is quite possible to carry out this framing action with each of the lower-order pixels, ie to regard them as separate image carriers (and thus as other images). However, with such an approach, the pragmatic and semantic references are not preserved: If one cuts out one of the yellow-bordered, brown-filled bands from the middle part of Figure 1 and mounts it alone on the background of a neutrally colored surface (or also freely floating in space), the result can certainly be understood as a picture with a somewhat unusually curved edge (i.e. a frame without an explicit frame) (Fig. 3). However, contexts of use and attributions of meaning to this image are at best very loosely related to those in Figure 1. Pixeme-forming operations The pixeme-​forming operations ultimately go back to the elementary pixeme attributes. Based on the psychophysiological mechanisms of perception, they usually take place unconsciously. Two opposing aspects are particularly important here: contrast enhancement and Gestalt formation. The constitution of pixemes when looking at an image carrier is – as a variant of segmentation when seeing in general – strongly context-sensitive: Locally effective contrast-enhancing components of the perception apparatus lead to boundaries between areas perceived as uniform. These operations become particularly noticeable when they lead to illusions, i.e., to additional pixels (or more generally: perception segments), such as in the case of contrast illusion. Die Mechanismen der Kontrastver­stärkung unter­stützen ande­rerseits das Zusam­menfas­sen homo­gener Gebie­te durch Gestalt­bildung im Sinne der Gestalt­geset­ze. Deren unbe­wusstes Wirken bestimmt die wahrge­nomme­nen Teil-​Ganzes-​Hierar­chien der zusam­menge­setzten Pixe­me. Das Wechsel­spiel von Grenzzie­hung durch Kontrast­verstär­kung und Inte­gration gemäß der Gestalt­geset­ze führt letztlich zur Konsti­tution einer bildmor­pholo­gischen (Normal-)​Struktur zwischen Maxi­malpi­xem und ele­menta­ren Gebie­ten, die aller­dings bei der alltäg­lichen Bildwahr­nehmung bereits beim Aufbau sehr stark von seman­tischen und pragma­tischen Randbe­dingun­gen deter­miniert wird. Eben aus diesem Grund heben etwa Gestal­tungslehr­bücher stets beson­ders hervor, dass “das Auge” in der gestal­teri­schen Sehwei­se geschult werden müsse, die gera­de von solchen Einflüs­sen absieht und letztlich einen rein eigen­wertli­chen Zugang zur Bildmor­pholo­gie errei­chen will (etwa [Klee 1956a]Klee, Paul (1956): Das bildnerische Denken: Schriften zur Form- und Gestaltungslehre. Schwabe, Basel, Stuttgart. Nicht angezeigt: bearb.: Jürg Spiller ). Anwendungen Ab­bil­dung 4: Er­geb­nis ei­ner au­to­ma­ti­schen Seg­men­tie­rung: Tex­tur­ba­sier­te Pi­xem­bil­dung. Rechts sind die ge­fun­de­nen Pi­xe­me farb­lich mar­kiert dar­ge­stellt. Das al­go­rith­mi­sche Nach­bil­den pi­xem-​bil­den­der Ope­ra­ti­o­nen führt zur Mög­lich­keit bild­mor­pho­lo­gi­scher Ana­ly­sen in der Com­pu­ter­vi­su­a­lis­tik und bil­det ei­nen zen­tra­len Be­stand­teil der di­gi­ta­len Bild­ver­ar­bei­tung: Auf in­for­ma­ti­sche Ko­die­run­gen (No­ta­ti­o­nen) von Bild­trä­gern kön­nen ent­spre­chen­de Seg­men­tie­rungs­ver­fah­ren pro­gram­miert wer­den, die (in der ent­spre­chen­den Li­te­ra­tur oft als ‘Ob­jek­te’ be­zeich­ne­te) Pi­xe­me zu be­stim­men er­lau­ben (Abb. 4). Hier­bei wer­den vor al­lem die Ge­stalt­ge­set­ze der Nä­he, Ähn­lich­keit und Gu­ten Kon­ti­nu­i­tät über den Farb- und Tex­tur­mar­kern ope­ra­ti­o­na­li­siert. Auf lange Sicht mag es möglich sein, der Bildwis­senschaft auf diese Weise ein Set von techni­schen Standard­werkzeu­gen zur morpho­logi­schen Bild­ana­lyse bereit­zustel­len. Dies ist insbe­sonde­re sinnvoll, inso­fern die Pixem-​Kompo­sition des Bildträ­gers, wie oben erwähnt, auf einen theore­tisch voraus­gesetz­ten Normal­betrach­ter bezo­gen werden muss. Zu beden­ken bleibt dabei aller­dings, dass die menschli­che Wahrneh­mung von Bildern, wie u.a. von Saint-​Martin beschrie­ben, neben den mögli­chen indi­vidu­ellen Abwei­chungen vom Normal­betrach­ter auch dyna­mische Aspek­te umfasst, die durch eine solche rein struktu­relle Ana­lyse eben­falls ausge­blendet bleiben. Auf begrifflicher Ebene erlaubt die Synthe­se der bildli­chen Morpho­syntax aus geome­trischem Basis­kalkül und dem Begriffs­feld der farbli­chen Marker­werte schließlich, eine lang geheg­te Vermu­tung zu wider­legen: dass nämlich der Begriff der syntak­tischen (Nicht-)​Wohlge­formtheit auf Bilder über­haupt nicht anzu­wenden wäre (vgl. [Plümacher 1999a]Plümacher, Martina (1999): Wohlgeformtheitsbedingungen für Bilder?. In: Sachs-Hombach, K. & Rehkämper, K. (Hg.), Bildgrammatik. Interdisziplinäre Forschungen zur Syntax bildlicher Darstellungsformen. Scriptum, Magdeburg. ). Da durch Beschä­digun­gen des Bildträ­gers die geomet­rische Basis­struktur des Maxi­malpi­xems gestört werden kann, ist der Begriff eines syntak­tisch unkor­rekten Bildes sehr wohl sinnvoll. Siehe auch: Bildgrammatik Bildwahrnehmung Bildverarbeitung, digitale Farbe als bildsyntaktische Kategorie Farbwahrnehmung Ikonische Differenz Interaktion und Kommunikation Gestalt Identitätskriterien für Bildträger Komposition Morphologie und Syntax Notation Pragmatik, Semantik, Syntax Rahmung, Rahmen Raum und Geometrie Syntaktisch unkorrekte Bilder Theorien des Bildraums Theorien der visuellen Wahrnehmung Textur Zeichen, Zeichenträger, Zeichensystem

Anmerkungen Literatur [Chomsky 1957a]Chomsky, Noam (1957): Syntactic Structures. Mouton, Den Haag.[Dölling 1999a]Dölling, Evelyn (1999): Kategorialstruktur ikonischer Sprachen und Syntax der visuellen Sprache. In: Sachs-Hombach, K. & Rehkämper, K (Hg.), Bildgrammatik: Interdisziplinäre Forschungen zur Syntax bildlicher Darstellungsformen. Scriptum, Magdeburg.[Klee 1956a]Klee, Paul (1956): Das bildnerische Denken: Schriften zur Form- und Gestaltungslehre. Schwabe, Basel, Stuttgart.[Plümacher 1999a]Plümacher, Martina (1999): Wohlgeformtheitsbedingungen für Bilder?. In: Sachs-Hombach, K. & Rehkämper, K. (Hg.), Bildgrammatik. Interdisziplinäre Forschungen zur Syntax bildlicher Darstellungsformen. Scriptum, Magdeburg.[Sachs-Hombach 1999a]Sachs-Hombach, Klaus (1999): Gibt es ein Bildalphabet?. In: Sachs-Hombach, K. & Rehkämper, K. (Hg.), Bildgrammatik. Interdisziplinäre Forschungen zur Syntax bildlicher Darstellungsformen. Scriptum, Magdeburg.[Saint-Martin 1990a]Saint-Martin, Fernande (1990): Semiotics of Visual Language. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN. Ausgabe 1: 2013 Verantwortlich: Schirra, J.R.J. Lektorat: Sachs-Hombach, Klaus Seitenbearbeitungen durch: Joerg R.J. Schirra und Marcel Lemmes — (Hinweis) Zitierhinweis: [Schirra 2013g-f]Schirra, Jörg R.J. (2013). Bildmorphologie. (Ausg. 1). In: Schirra, J.R.J.; Halawa, M. & Liebsch, D. (Hg.), Glossar der Bildphilosophie. (2012-2026). [bildglossar.org/index.php?title=Bildmorphologie]. Webadresse: bildglossar.org/index.php?title=Bildmorphologie Schirra, Jörg R.J. (2013). Image Morphology. (Ausg. 1). In: Schirra, J.R.J.; Halawa, M. & Liebsch, D. (Hg.), Glossar der Bildphilosophie. (2012-2026). [bildglossar.org/index.php?title=Glossar-English:Image_Morphology].