f/g

"Figure" and "ground" entered Gestalt psychology from the work of Edgar Rubin, who [in] about 1915 used those terms to discuss aspects of visual perception. They have here been broadened to embrace the whole structure of perception and of consciousness. All situations comprise an area of attention (figure) and a very much larger area of inattention (ground). The two continually coerce and play with each other across a common outline or boundary or interval that serves to define both simultaneously. The shape of one conforms exactly to the shape of the other. Figures rise out of, and recede back into, ground, which is con-figurational and comprises all other available figures at once... Ground provides the structure or style of awareness, the "way of seeing" as Flaubert called it, or the "terms on which" a figure is perceived. (McLuhan and McLuhan 1988: 5)