Post -779 -by Gautam Shah
Texture is roughness or surface fluctuations, that also marks surface variations between adjescent elements (such as object-parts, object-background, and current vs past experiences vs expectations).
Roughness (or smoothness) plays an important role in determining how a real object will interact with its environment and how a body will perceive it (through sense of touch and other sensorial perception).
In surface metrology, roughness is typically considered to be the high-frequency, short-wavelength component of a measured surface. However, in practice it is often necessary to know both the amplitude and frequency to ensure that a surface is fit for a purpose. In tribology, rough surfaces have greater area, and so wear more quickly. Roughness (or smoothness) promote adhesion, frictive resistence, and form nucleation sites for increased reactivity.
Textures as Haptic (touch) experience are called tactile texture, physical texture or actual texture. These refer to different densities of micro sized dots, lines, crosses and motifs, in the form of random, repeated, variegated or oriented arrangements. Textures offer haptic sensation on a natural or developed surfaces. These occur on a wide range of materials, including but not limited to fur, canvas, wood grain, sand, leather, satin, eggshell, matte, foods, or smooth surfaces like metal or glass.
Textures relate mainly to the haptic (tactile) experiences, but can also convey other sensorial encounters. Here the textural qualities represent the contrasting conditions. A Contrast is the remarkable differences of perceptions within a class of sensuality. Contrast can be between perception of different sensualities, when these exist synchronically or separately, in time and space. A contrast, as a texture represents distance or difference between two locations or time slots.
Contrasts are explored in narrations, reporting or story telling, where the descriptions replace visual, audio, smell, taste and touch experiences. Audio textures are perceived through persistence of rhythm, sound quality, intermittent poses, starts and ends of delivery, timbre, etc., and all these relate to time scale. Similarly variations in aural qualities are determined by the speaker, singer or sound generating equipment. In addition, the natural and built environments reformat the aural texture (reverberation, echoes).
Many of the aural gaps or breaks that cause aural texture get bridged by the visual corroboration in ‘live shows’. Gestures, postures, garments, etc. visually convey more information for ‘back-benchers’. Video recordings are better than audio captures. Silent keying devices make more sense, if accompanied by micro sounds of actioning through the display device.
Food textures are contrasts of visual, taste, smell, besides the tactile experiences through fingers, tongue, palate, or teeth. Real food textures are offset by the smell, and sometimes through past experiences.
It is a common happening, where the tactile texture is compensated by other senses or even past exposures. The tactile texture is a haptic phenomena and can function through active participation of the body, or indirectly through sensors that amplify or de-amplify the sensation (typ. stethoscope).
Tactile and visual textures, though of different classes of sensualities, often the one needs to be replaced by the other. Visual conveyance of textures is used in digital transfer of information (like, digital merchandising through visual means such as static images, films, videos, non-touching display of products or sensors like cardiogram, thermometers, etc.). There are also few rudimentary reverse processes, like braille language, where tactile data is conveyed.
Visual textures reflect ‘the tactile expression’ of a surface, mainly the roughness (or smoothness). Visual textures cannot reflect other haptic experiences, such as warmth (or coldness), moisture, resilience, electrical charges, etc. Visual textures, sometimes, inadvertently convey many other associated values, such as the degree of smoothness through the gloss, colour differentiation between illuminated and shadowed surfaces through reflection.
Visual texture is a false volumetric variation. This is manipulated by level and direction of the illumination, colour and contrasts between adolescent elements (object-parts and object-background). Visual textures are also formed by morphing directional patterns over objects. The surface quality is affected by the type of gloss, sheen or matt characteristics, which in turn are governed by the angle of illumination, dark-light surface colour, and contrast. Glossy surfaces are perceived as ‘hard’ whereas surface with sheen are sensed as soft or ‘handle-able’.
Artists produce or suggest textures in order to enhance the notion of reality. This is done by intimately connecting the source of light within the scene and also through direction of the shadows for actual architectural space. Painters, since primitive periods of cave painting, have taken advantage of the texture of the substrates (natural or scratched), roughness of pigments and additives, and strokes of colour application. The illumination and shadows are so intimately ingrained that resulting object form and the surface texture, both seem awkward in museum displays (strongly lit from top-down) or son-et-Lumiere (mostly lit from bottom-up).
Many forms of real textures are created for their visual appeal, rather than their tactile relevance. Surface textural effects are constructed by indenting patterns in plaster work, or through colour differentiation of joints in flooring and masonry works. Large scale architectonic elements used on architectural facades in the form of windows, columns, pilasters, pediments, eaves, projections form textures. Printed patterns with Black and white added (tonal) colours over leather, fabrics, paper, metal sheets, flooring ceramics tiles, etc. enhance the tactile sense.
Chiaroscuro (Renaissance period) uses strong contrasts between light and dark areas through colours, for achieving a sense of volumetric effect in the composition. Impasto is texture forming application to build textures through thick paste like oil colours and strokes with rough brushes or spatulas. Strokes and patches were the basic tools for impressionistic paintings.
Visual representation of textures carry a wide range of indirect messages, remembrances and evoke diverse sentimentalities. Visual textures were means of representing the experiences, or conveying ephemeral imagery, such as in story-telling, writing, record keeping, dance, drama, geographical mapping, selling or merchandising, etc. The fuzzy textural detail in any visual representation implies distance (farness), whereas the clarity reflects the nearness of the object.
Visual textures are also used in murals and paintings to differentiate identically coloured surfaces (walls, clothes, body-parts, terrain features, parts of skies, distances, etc.). Creating visual textures is not an easy process as it can reveal the ‘phony’ sources of illumination. Monochrome arts use etched or engraved surfaces for implying the visual texture. Frottage is a technique of rubbing a pencil, graphite, chalk, crayon, or another medium onto a sheet of paper that has been placed on top of a textured object or surface. The process causes the raised portions of the surface below to be translated to the sheet. The term is derived from the French frotter, which means ‘to rub’.
A Collage is a composition of visual and tactile textures, where the presence of edges become the key elements of expression. Modern day paints and media (paper, colours, constituents) offer both visual (sheen, matt, gloss) and tactile textures.
Colour and texture of soils are visually revealed through the moisture, present state of green cover and ingredients of soils. These was once done by comparing mono focal and bifocal visions. Now aerial remote sensing images are processed through colour separation techniques. Similar techniques are used to study MMR images.
The Visual texture, is also referred to as ‘implied texture’, as it is not detectable by our sense of touch, but realized by our sense of sight. Visual texture is illusionistic impression of a real texture. Any texture perceived in an image or photograph is a visual texture, a static two-dimensional surface. Though video or films, offer little more distinctive experience, due to the variations in capture and illumination. Visual textures are enlivened by other concurrent sensualities, like clicking sound of a key being struck, some food ingredients of a recipe producing a crunching noise, a smell producing cooling (or other sensation) effect in mouth or nose, a seemingly smooth chocolate offering sense roughness on chewing, etc.
Physical and Visual textures, are evident through the contrast. Contrast is the remarkable difference of perception within a class of sensuality. So tactile and visual textures, though of different classes of sensualities, the former needs to be replaced by the later, as we do not have (yet) the means to record or project the other.
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Interior Design Assist 