The central principle of Gestalt psychology is that the mind sees the whole image before it sees the smaller components that create the whole form. At first glance, Stan Brakhage’s video, Stellar, seems to fly in the face of Gestalt. The splashes of color come and go so quickly that it is almost impossible for the viewer to perceive anything except chaos in this video. What this video actually is, though, is a blank slate. The chaos of the colors and shapes and movements allows the brain to see what it wants to see, almost like an inkblot test, to create order out of the chaos.

It is actually difficult for me to watch this video. My brain cannot process the images fast enough, and it begins to feel as if my brain is playing “catch up” the whole time. After watching the video over and over again, my brain was finally able to comprehend what I was seeing, but that only brought more questions. What was I looking at exactly? Sometimes the splashes of color looked liked a thick liquid, sometimes they looked like pieces of tree bark that had been painted. Could other people see what I was seeing?

Was this the intention of the artist? Did he want people to create their own visions using his video as an outlet or was he trying to convey his own vision hoping that others could also see it? I think he did want everyone to see something different. He wanted everyone to see their own ideas and visions. I believe the mission of this video is to reveal the state of the viewer’s mind and open up the viewer’s imagination to what could be.

I believe Stan Brakhage also wanted to demonstrate the fluidity of the mind. This is why he varied the speed of the video. As the video sped up, it forced my mind to work faster to figure out what I was looking at. As I came up with different ideas about the images I was seeing, the video changed speeds again forcing my mind to start all over again with a new image.

While this video may seem like chaos in its purest form, it really is Gestalt psychology in its purest form. It makes the mind create order out of the chaos. That may seem like its only goal, but maybe it is more than that. Maybe its real goal is to demonstrate that there does not always have to be order. It all depends on how we perceive what we see.