Meditation: Visual Transition as a Bridge Between Form and Meaning

Abstract

Transition is the process of changing from one state, form, activity, or place to another. It affects objects, events and phenomena, and is affected by them as well. As Hericlitus noted when he said "No man shall step in the same river twice," transition is described by the inexorable flow of space and time. It is the river as a continuum in which all things exist in perpetual change. Individual objects, events, and phenomena act as temporal intervals in its current. As a function of visual communication, the transition from one interval to another is a process of bonding one form to another, one identity to another in a deliberate composition. The transition from one element to another facilitates the identification of individual form and function. As such, transition is a bridge that connects separate elements in the formation of a system. It is the process of bridging separate forms and functions. It is a linking process that identifies a particular system and, when occurring sequentially, can function to give meaning to what we see.