But how do you generate different ideas and perspectives? One useful technique is to move up and down the ladder of abstraction, a mental model that helps you zoom in and out of the problem space.

Artist Martin Puryear discusses his work’s connection to the history of abstraction and the inspiration for his 1996 installation piece, “Ladder for Booker T. Washington.” ART21: Your work is often ...

Abstraction is the gathering of the general characteristics we need and the filtering out of the details and characteristics that we do not need. We need to know that a cake has ingredients We don ...

For example, a model cat would be any cat. Not a specific cat with a long tail and short fur - the model represents all cats. From our model of cats, we can learn what any cat looks like, using ...

The most common abstraction layer is the programming interface (API) between an application and the operating system. High-level calls are made to the operating system, which executes the ...

3 While nothing quite as hyperbolic as Clark’s reading of Hofmann’s style ever appeared during the artist’s lifetime, his work was, by virtue of its abstraction, vulnerable to dismissal as mere ...

Objective abstraction was part of the general ferment of exploration of abstraction in Britain in the early 1930s. The paintings produced by the group evolved in an improvisatory way from freely ...

The physical abstraction of water from a water resource for use. It excludes in-system uses of water and results, at least temporarily, in a depletion of the resource. Unless water is abstracted ...