Minimal graphics

The problem of producing a photorealistic rendering of a graphical model continues to be the focus of considerable research effort in the computer graphics community. However, photorealism is not the only possible criteria for judging the value of an image. In this paper we step back from the physically-based model that underlies many of the existing approaches to rendering, and instead consider the rendering problem from a more fundamental view: how is graphical information processed by the user? Using differences in artistic traditions as our initial motivation, we identify the need for an approach to rendering that is based fundamentally on cognitive theory. Existing work on non-photorealistic rendering has started to take steps that address this need, but using a model of cognitive information processing we identify a significant research problem: the quest for a minimal rendering process.