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Re: LOGO-L> Re: Or what's a metaphor ...?




Brian Harvey (bh@CS.Berkeley.EDU)
Wed, 8 Jan 1997 08:20:30 -0800 (PST)

KERRB@Magill.UniSA.edu.au says:
>Here's a simple example. If you are painting a picture you could either:
>a) plan the whole thing in your mind first and then implement it.
>b) do it a stroke at a time, step back, see how you like it, another stroke
>etc.
>
>a) is the Planner style, (b) is the Bricoleur style (idealised). (a) involves
>more abstraction but (b) is just as effective. Both styles are legitimate.

I think this is actually yet another distinction, between top-down and
bottom-up planning. Years ago, Cynthia Solomon wrote about *three*
learning styles: top-down planner, bottom-up planner, and tinkerer.

*Any* painting is an abstraction. Out there in the world is a physical
thing. In your painting you are representing certain aspects of the
thing and not other aspects. This is true regardless of your technique.
(And if there isn't a thing, then even the artists call what you're
doing "abstract art"!)

In what I just said I'm assuming that painter (b) does have a goal in
mind, and those one-at-a-time strokes are aimed at that goal. If you
really start out empty-headed, Jackson Pollack style, I suppose you
could call that bricolage, although I think that really even Pollack
had some vague end in view for each painting.
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