Shapes of Imagination

Visual calculating in shape grammars aligns with art and design, bridging the gap between seeing (Coleridge's “imagination”) and combinatoric play (Coleridge's “fancy”).

In Shapes of Imagination, George Stiny runs visual calculating in shape grammars through art and design—incorporating Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetic imagination and Oscar Wilde's corollary to see things as they aren't. Many assume that calculating limits art and design to suit computers, but shape grammars rely on seeing to prove otherwise. Rules that change what they see extend calculating to overtake what computers can do, in logic and with data and learning. Shape grammars bridge the divide between seeing (Coleridge's “imagination, or esemplastic power”) and combinatoric play (Coleridge's “fancy”).

Stiny shows that calculating without seeing excludes art and design. Seeing is key for calculating to augment creative activity with aesthetic insight and value. Shape grammars go by appearances, in a full-fledged aesthetic enterprise for the inconstant eye; they answer the question of what calculating would be like if Turing and von Neumann were artists instead of logicians. Art and design are calculating in all their splendid detail.Preface xi
Acknowledgments xxvii
Shape Grammars: Seven Questions and Their Short Answers 1
Exhibit 1: Theory 59
Exhibit 2: Observations 77
Exhibit 3: Pedagogy 117
Notes 155
Index 213“Shapes of Imagination is a pleasure to read. Stiny wonderfully draws on Coleridge’s Magical Realm to persuade us that looking at everything through symbolic glasses is not only strongly limiting, but also entirely unnecessary.”
—Rudi Stouffs, Dean’s Chair Associate Professor, National University of Singapore, Department of Architecture
 
“Stiny exploits ambiguity in his formidable shape grammar formalism—melding Coleridge’s imagination and Oscar Wilde’s critical spirit in a wondrously far-reaching account of shape grammars in art and design. Shapes of Imagination is pure delight.”
—Athanassios Economou, Professor of Architecture and Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
 
“Shapes of Imagination is a seminal account of visual calculating that supersedes symbols. Calculating with rules in Stiny's shape grammars creatively puts arts and design front and center.”
—Alan de Pennington OBE, PhD, Emeritus Professor, University of LeedsGeorge Stiny is Professor of Design and Computation at MIT. He first used shape grammars for painting and sculpture and is the author of Pictorial and Formal Aspects of Shape and Shape Grammars; Algorithmic Aesthetics: Computer Models for Criticism and Design in the Arts (with James Gips); and Shape: Talking about Seeing and Doing (MIT Press).