Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Top-Down Visual Processing

My understanding of top-down visual processing is that it's part of how we understand what we see in real time. It's a goal-based visual activity which uses several fixation points to surmise the function of a thing or how we interact with it.
Being an interdisciplinary major, I've chosen a product for this exercise whose function is highlighted by its written labels. Featured here is Akai's LPK25, Laptop Performance Keyboard. The label, displayed prominently in the upper left corner clarifies the manufacturer and function of this plastic object, however it's not the most prominent fixation point; that being the white and black keys which immediately denote it as a musical instrument with just over two octaves in range. Other fixation points would be the square buttons which give insight to the functional capabilities of this keyboard. First and foremost, that it's electronic, not acoustic. And second, it gives some insight as to the sounds this keyboard is capable of, via the colored labels. These also coincide with the labels above the keys, giving insight to the inner workings of the unit, how it processes and allocates the sounds. The unit is powered via USB, which gives insight to it being a controller, meaning it has no sounds of it's own, simply plays the routed sounds off the software programs from the computer it's hooked in to. I should add that it's size makes it very portable, a quality which abstractly aligns it to being used with a laptop.

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