The position of visual analog in the process of Ideation and design in sculpture

The approach used by professional sculptors to come up with novel ideas is a kind of "Heuristic research". Based on their experimental skills in understanding and analyzing the design of a work, they investigate other's works and finally find the right way using a schema inference. Schemas formation can be considered as results of "deductive reasoning" and "visual analog strategy" in the ideation based on previous works. Although the method of deductive reasoning and visual analog design strategy along with ideation in the traditional way are common in the behavior and performance of artists; unfortunately, there is little academic records in the visual arts.
The behavioral studies in the process of creating a work is a part of "research design" studies. The designers create new forms based on the foundation of existing forms in the nature and what they find in the collection of artistic works. It is clear that the combination of visual data requires an understanding of the design and deductive reasoning skills as well. Portions of interdisciplinary studies in architectural design, namely “design studies”, have been done in this regard. The studies in this area have shown that most successful designers use visual stimuli, such as video records, for achieving success in the design process and ideation. Moreover, it has been shown that the use of visual analog design increases the quality of design solutions and ideation. In most cases, the value of a design is attributed to the deductive reasoning, and inductive reasoning is considered as a result of deductive thinking. The deductive thinking means conducting a new situation based on previous similar situations. In this way of thinking, two positions are always defined. The first situation which is a result of the analogous element, represents the old position and it is referred to the element of “analogous origin”. The new, position that the argument is carried on it, is called “analogous purpose”. Each of the analogous elements is representative of a position and the analogous is a systematic relationship among them. The analogous source and target can be represented by images. When the origin position is represented by a packet image in the mind, we get close to “visual analog" as the images could be applied in "understanding" or “problem-solving".
The purpose of this article is exploring the visual analog inductive reasoning and strategies to analyze the behavior of sculptors in the design process and ideation. This study, based on the qualitative- analytical approach and provides examples of the works by Henry Moore, Antony Gormley, Jeff Koons, and Richard Deacon. It explains the relationship between visual studies and process design ideation's records. The results of this study indicate that ideation analysis based on deductive reasoning has an academic, research and practical importance which can be helpful in the theoretical and practical training of sculpture.