By Elspeth Kirkman<\/p>\n
I don’t remember exactly when I first learned about Filippo Brunelleschi, but I know I wrote his name in dry-erase marker on the plastic wet wall panel that inexplicably covered the backside of my kitchen. <\/p>\n
Brunelleschi was a true Renaissance man, remembered above all as a master architect. But it was his pig-headed, ingenious endeavor to solve one of art\u2019s great mysteries that fascinated me. His objective was so simple that it is almost baffling no one had managed it before the 1400s: Create the illusion of three-dimensional depth on a two-dimensional page.<\/p>\n
Maddeningly, the geometry required to crack the code of linear perspective had been understood for centuries before Brunelleschi came along. So when I learned about him hitting the streets of Florence with a mirror, a canvas with a peephole in it, and his paintbrushes, I had to know: Why was something a 7-year-old can copy the basics of so hard to get right the first time?<\/p>\n
The answer was surprisingly simple: Until the Renaissance, artists weren\u2019t trying to faithfully render the world exactly as we see it. Their work concerned itself with other matters like religion and monarchs, and intuitive methods of suggesting depth were usually enough. But the 1400s ushered in a new age in which rationalism was king, and with it came a desire to represent the world with a greater degree of fidelity in art. Artists (and their patrons) now wanted to depict the visible world with greater accuracy\u2014suddenly, being able to accurately capture cityscapes, social interactions, and commercial scenes was considered important. Navigating the societal shocks of the Renaissance required a kind of agility of perspective, and the appeal of being able to create and control our representation of space, distance, and depth must have been powerful.<\/p>\n
Parallels Between Linear Perspective and Decision-Making<\/p>\n
With hindsight, my fascination with Brunelleschi came from a place of empathy. While I can hardly compare myself to the great architect, I was also struggling with my own intellectual project: writing a book about decision-making<\/a>. And even though I couldn’t quite make the link, something about the checkered journey to understanding linear perspective spoke to me.<\/p>\n Then, late one night, I picked up the dry white marker and began sketching out a perspective study (generous!) on the wall panel. A few basic marks with the pen and the central metaphor of my book revealed itself to me: We are, when we make decisions, like an artist desperately trying to create rational space on the canvas\u2014some things fall in the foreground, some in the background, and small errors lead to distortions. We can avoid letting those distortions spoil the whole thing by learning techniques for organizing what I termed our decisionscapes and rendering them more effectively. Just like an artist, we don’t always have to follow the rules, but knowing them helps us understand when and why deviation is serving us.<\/p>\n Exploring Psychological Distance and Cultural Differences in Perspective<\/p>\n Throughout the weeks that followed, I unpacked this metaphor until I had a structure for my erstwhile chaotic manuscript. I wrote about how psychological distance creates mental diminution of decision factors. I explored how pattern recognition<\/a> affects the \u201ccomposition\u201d of our decisionscapes and what that does to our perception of the world and our relationships. And I learned that \u201cperspective\u201d itself is ideologically charged: The Chinese didn\u2019t adopt Brunelleschi\u2019s system because they found it laughable that art should try and render the world as a single individual sees it. Their system\u2014parallel projection<\/a>\u2014instead offers a supra-realistic perspective, showing far more than any one person could see.<\/p>\n So that is how Brunelleschi\u2019s weird little project provided the springboard for a joyful exploration into the parallels between creating art and the psychology of decision-making. And as far as underrated social innovations go, I, for one, am persuaded that linear perspective should be at the top of the list.<\/p>\n Elspeth Kirkman is chief programme officer at the innovation<\/a> agency Nesta and a visiting senior research fellow at King\u2019s College London\u2019s Policy School and Exeter University\u2019s Business School. She is the coauthor of \u201cBehavioral Insights<\/a>\u201d and author of \u201cDecisionscape: How Thinking Like an Artist Can Improve Our Decision-Making<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Elspeth Kirkman I don’t remember exactly when I first learned about Filippo Brunelleschi, but I know I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-547658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}