Toward Deeper Understandings of the Cognitive Role of Visual Metaphors in Emerging Media Art Practices

Abstract

In this paper, we explored the role and impact of a visual metaphor and the metaphoric-thinking process in emerging media art practices. We also examined how designers can leverage the metaphoric-thinking process to empirically create a visual metaphor. Our primary focus was to explore what kinds of design considerations are involved and what types of cognitive operations are performed to support designers as they create visual metaphors. By employing a critical analysis method, we probe how participants used metaphors to leverage their prior knowledge, expertise and experience when creating visual metaphors from an information-processing perspective using a cognitive task analysis method.