Contemporary Art

Modes of Thinking and Perceiving 

We ware commonly educated to appreciate and rely on one mode of thinking and this becomes our dominant method of learning.  This dominance will then show itself in our preferred way of perceiving and viewing the world we live in.

The Left Mode and Right Mode designate two ways of knowing and seeing – the verbal, analytical mode and the visual, perceptual mode – no matter where they are located in the individual brain. before the recognition of the plasticity and adaptability of the brain this perceiving function was called right or left brain thinking.

• Left mode is a step-by-step style of thinking, using words, numbers and other symbols.
• Left mode strings things out in sequences, like words in a sentence.

Right mode on the other hand, uses visual information and processes, not step-by-step, but all at once, non-sequential way of perceiving, like when we recognise the face of a friend.

Left Mode                  Right Mode

Analysis                          Rhythm
Logic                                Size
Linearity                          Spatial Awareness
Lists                                  Colour
Numbers                          Daydreaming
Words                               Wholeness
Verbal                               Imagination
Reductive                         Non-verbal
Rational                            Intuitive
Sequence                          Patterns
Serial                                 Symbol

Order                               Random

Structural                       Pictures

Concrete                          Abstract