Beyond Perception: an interaction between graphic design and anamorphosis

Este relatório mostra uma nova forma para, os designers e criadores de conteúdos, apresentarem o seu trabalho e interagirem com o público. Centra-se na criação do efeito anamórfico criado através de software de modelação 3D. O efeito anamórfico é conseguido através da utilização de meios bidimensionais para simular um resultado tridimensional que só pode ser percepcionado de um ponto de vista. Este processo criativo é descrito passo a passo para ajudar outros criativos conseguir esta ilusão, tendo em conta que este relatório se centra apenas na forma de obter o resultado para criar o efeito anamórfico. Outros pontos-chave e terminologia serão mencionados para dar um relatório mais abrangente. Esta ilusão digital pode ser apresentada de várias formas, mas a nossa atenção centrou-se na exploração da sua iteração com um projetor. A este meio de apresentação estão associadas características importantes, tais como: a capacidade de adaptar as imagens a qualquer superfície, a boa mobilidade e o baixo custo. Isto permitiu que as maquetas criadas fossem apresentadas não numa, mas em duas superfícies, o que ajudou este relatório a ser mais exponencial e permitiu uma exploração mais complexa desta técnica do ponto de vista do designer para desenvolver e mostrar exemplos do que poderia ser feito no design de comunicação. Para além destas simulações, são analisados outros exemplos de aplicações reais para demonstrar o que foi feito e o que pode ser alcançado quando existe colaboração entre diferentes áreas que utilizam esta técnica para criar o fator “uau” que a maioria dos criadores de conteúdos e nós, designers, procuramos sempre

Jakob Leupold’s Imaginary Automatic Anamorphic Devices of 1713

In 1713 the scientific instrument-maker Jakob Leupold published designs for three machines were the first attempt to design machinery with internal moving parts that replaced human agency in creating original images. This paper first analyzes his text and engravings in order to explain how he proposed to do this, given contemporary materials and command of physical forces. Next, it characterizes the devices as a transition from concepts of incision to concepts of mirroring, taken as models of the history of mechanical reproduction. And finally, Leupold’s replacement of the sighting grid with differential gears points to a set of problems appearing in contemporary philosophy represented in Rococo artistic production of this period as well. Taking the proposed devices in context, they help to theorize the complex notions of creative activity in Rococo visual culture. Taken as an episode in the history of communications, they instance the development of conceptions of personhood and of physical forces at stake in the invention of automated media

Perceived Depth Control in Stereoscopic Cinematography

Despite the recent explosion of interest in the stereoscopic 3D (S3D) technology, the ultimate prevailing of the S3D medium is still significantly hindered by adverse effects regarding the S3D viewing discomfort. This thesis attempts to improve the S3D viewing experience by investigating perceived depth control methods in stereoscopic cinematography on desktop 3D displays. The main contributions of this work are: (1) A new method was developed to carry out human factors studies on identifying the practical limits of the 3D Comfort Zone on a given 3D display. Our results suggest that it is necessary for cinematographers to identify the specific limits of 3D Comfort Zone on the target 3D display as different 3D systems have different ranges for the 3D Comfort Zone. (2) A new dynamic depth mapping approach was proposed to improve the depth perception in stereoscopic cinematography. The results of a human-based experiment confirmed its advantages in controlling the perceived depth in viewing 3D motion pictures over the existing depth mapping methods. (3) The practicability of employing the Depth of Field (DoF) blur technique in S3D was also investigated. Our results indicate that applying the DoF blur simulation on stereoscopic content may not improve the S3D viewing experience without the real time information about what the viewer is looking at. Finally, a basic guideline for stereoscopic cinematography was introduced to summarise the new findings of this thesis alongside several well-known key factors in 3D cinematography. It is our assumption that this guideline will be of particular interest not only to 3D filmmaking but also to 3D gaming, sports broadcasting, and TV production

Liquid Crystal on Silicon Devices: Modeling and Advanced Spatial Light Modulation Applications

Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) has become one of the most widespread technologies for spatial light modulation in optics and photonics applications. These reflective microdisplays are composed of a high-performance silicon complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) backplane, which controls the light-modulating properties of the liquid crystal layer. State-of-the-art LCoS microdisplays may exhibit a very small pixel pitch (below 4 ?m), a very large number of pixels (resolutions larger than 4K), and high fill factors (larger than 90%). They modulate illumination sources covering the UV, visible, and far IR. LCoS are used not only as displays but also as polarization, amplitude, and phase-only spatial light modulators, where they achieve full phase modulation. Due to their excellent modulating properties and high degree of flexibility, they are found in all sorts of spatial light modulation applications, such as in LCOS-based display systems for augmented and virtual reality, true holographic displays, digital holography, diffractive optical elements, superresolution optical systems, beam-steering devices, holographic optical traps, and quantum optical computing. In order to fulfil the requirements in this extensive range of applications, specific models and characterization techniques are proposed. These devices may exhibit a number of degradation effects such as interpixel cross-talk and fringing field, and time flicker, which may also depend on the analog or digital backplane of the corresponding LCoS device. The use of appropriate characterization and compensation techniques is then necessary

Investigation of an improved technique in the fabrication of multiplex hologram

Multiplex holography is widely used to record live subjects and out door scenes by means of synthesizing a horizontal sequence of strip holograms. This thesis investigates a method of overcoming shadow effects in conventional multiplex holographic systems. The knife edge slit cannot get rid of shadowing effects which results in barriers and blurred images while displaying multiplex hologram. [Continues.

Landscaping the subject: Virtuality, embodiment, and the discourse of the interface

This thesis examines the linear perspective interface as a key technology in the staging of Western subjectivity, and the body and 'nature' as critical terms in the description of the subject and its environment. It examines three historical moments in the discourse of the interface - Brunelleschi's perspective demonstration, eighteenth century landscape gardening, and the present-day virtual reality interface - and shows how, in each case, the discourse of the interface insists on a distance between the subject and its perceived environment. In this visualist paradigm, the body and nature are framed as excessive - uninvolved in the constitution of subjectivity. This is also the framework assumed by Lacan in his description of the subject. Though this distinction may work in theory, in practice it is impossible to sustain - a fact that is made explicit in the eighteenth-century landscape garden. Focusing not only on the landscape view, but on the enclosed sections of the garden between the views, this thesis investigates the complex involvement of representation and the carnal body in the construction of the subject and (its) nature. Here, the relation of the subject to the anamorphic image becomes important. Against the distance and disembodiment implied in the perspectival view, the anamorphic relation is one of embodiment and proximity - suggesting that phenomenology, rather than psychoanalysis, is the most effective approach to the discourse of the interface and its subject. This hypothesis is developed through an examination of the virtual reality interface. The latter both assumes and exceeds a/the actively viewing subject, foregrounding the ontological complexity of subjectivity and the failure of theory to fully describe or prescribe it. Psychoanalytic models in particular fail to address interfaced being as embodied being. The notion of 'anamorphic subjectivity' - interfaced being as a multistable condition of technological embodiment - is put forward as a possible alternative to perspectival models

The Impossible Qualities Of Illusionary Spaces: Stop Motion Animation, Visual Effects And Metalepsis

This thesis examines stop motion animation, its role as a special effect and how the stop motion form impacts on narrative. In particular, it is concerned with the relationship between stop motion animation and the rhetorical concept of metalepsis, as well as the disruption and transgression of narrative spaces in fiction. The studio component of the work is an installation titled All The Nice Things Come From Here which uses an early film special effects technique, the Schüfftan process. The Schüfftan process is a form of in-camera compositing that uses mirrors to align two separate spaces to form the illusion of one cohesive space. The installation uses Newcastle’s light industrial landscape as a backdrop to create impossible miniature narrative spaces that can only be understood when the viewer is aligned to a station point forced by the placement of the mirrors. The theoretical portion of the thesis examines how this exploded view of an animated special effect can be used to explore ideas of narrative, narrative layers and the visual forms of stop motion animation. The thesis argues that object stop motion animation has aspects that are inherently metaleptic, as stop motion’s use of real objects doing impossible things creates its own subtle and impossible metaleptic spaces that simultaneously refer to both the world within the film and the world outside the film

The Untold story of the monster: a psychoanalytic analysis of the monster through the anamorphic lens

Research identifies the perception of evil as a mechanism to segregate people from inhuman and monstrous transgressors. Luke Russell defines that ‘the evil of the agent is supposed to provide a complete explanation of the agent’s harmful actions’ (Russell, 2010, p. 46). Instead, this thesis will argue that Russell’s psychological conception of evil is somewhat in error, as the category of ‘evil’ is no longer sufficient to describe the motivation of a ‘monster’. It is through the deconstruction of traditional monstrous identities, that new interpretations of what we consider evil or ‘Other’ can be remodelled. This study will contend that the evolution of imaginary monsters represents projections created from the repressed urges in the human mind, and further, that society is informed by these fictional personalities of what is socially incorrect or what is ‘acceptably human’. An intertextual focus on both books and films will examine what seems to be unhuman monsters beyond ourselves, and will look to demonstrate that these beings originate within the Self, and are always intrinsically correlated to the Self. The value of the anamorphic lens, or the skewed perspective, will present the possibility of dual meaning that offers new viewpoints of the monster as Other. Anamorphosis, as outlined in Jacques Lacan’s reading of Holbein’s ‘The Ambassadors’ (Lacan 1977), involves looking at an image from a different perspective in order to unearth a different range of significations. Slavoj Žižek terms it ‘looking awry’ (Žižek 1991), and this project will ‘look awry’ at the epistemology and ethical position of the monstrous subject. By close readings from an anamorphic perspective, the monster can be seen as an allegory for how society treats those that are different from the patterns of normalcy. In societal and cultural terms, the monster is an ‘Other’ of whom we are afraid; and by demonising this Other, whether racial, social or class-based, the need for empathy and understanding is undercut and replaced by a desire to chasten and ostraciseN

Viatopias: Exploring the experience of urban travel space

The title of this research is constructed from: `via' - route and töp(os) -a place. Viatopias are urban spaces of continual travel or flux that incorporate multiple forms of perception and inscriptions of meaning. My aim has been to define and describe the increasingly important fluid perceptual spaces that have developed between static nineteenth century destinations. Viatopias such as passageways, underground tunnels, train tracks, and the North Circular escape a sense of destination, operating as ever-changing experiences or events. The practice has sought to produce digital representations of these urban travel spaces that exist in constant flux, to communicate the experience of Viatopias. The research explores themes such as: The North Circular as a Deleuzian Route exploring driving as performance; Plica, Replica, Explica an unfolding of experience through digital media; The Making of Baroque Videos, using Baroque architectures of viewing; Mobilizing Perception treating human vision as an artifact; Mirrors For Un-Recognition disassembling nineteenth century controlled vision; Sound as an Urban Compass considering urban audio experience; Narrative Practice in New Media Space analysing contemporary approaches in digital media; and Convergent Languages, Digital Poiesis investigating the dislocation of representation in different digital languages. These conceptual frameworks developed in symbiosis with the practice. The visual practice presents a collection of digital videos that extend and complicate these concepts through experimental visual and audio techniques such as layering, repetition, anamorphic distortion, and mirroring to produce visual immersion and the fracturing of space. The concluding digital works incorporate video with audio and text resulting in integrated visual statements that attempt to stretch the viewer's perception, in the process offering a glimpse of a new experience within urban space