Visual structure of a Japanese Zen garden
- 26 September 2002
- journal article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Nature
- Vol. 419 (6905), 359-360
- https://doi.org/10.1038/419359a
Abstract
The dry landscape garden at Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto, Japan, a UNESCO world heritage site, intrigues hundreds of thousands of visitors every year with its abstract, sparse and seemingly random composition of rocks and moss on an otherwise empty rectangle of raked gravel. Here we apply a model of shape analysis in early visual processing to show that the 'empty' space of the garden is implicitly structured and critically aligned with the temple's architecture. We propose that this invisible design creates the visual appeal of the garden and was probably intended as an inherent feature of the composition.Keywords
This publication has 5 references indexed in Scilit:
- Science in cultureNature, 2002
- Fractal analysis of Pollock's drip paintingsNature, 1999
- Perceptual sensitivity maps within globally defined visual shapesNature, 1994
- Symmetry-curvature dualityComputer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing, 1987
- Biological shape and visual science (part I)Journal of Theoretical Biology, 1973