The Renaissance World

Human Vision and Electronic Imaging V, 2000

Nexus Network Journal, 2009

Paolo Freguglia examines the relationship between perspective and geometry before Guarini, and more precisely, in the 1500s. The representation of space, which in the pre-Classic age was substantially conceptual and sometimes ideographic, was gradually organised so that it became optical representation, and finally arrived at being able to give a sense of three-dimensions. The techniques of perspective were presented not only as practical rules for drawing in a given manner, in conformation with how observed reality appears to the eye, but were also described according to their geometric underpinnings. Thus were introduced new points of departure for considerations on geometry, as made evident by the work of Desargues and Pascal.

Lundström, Jan-Erik (ed.) Kuinka valokuvaa katsotaan (How to know photographs), 2012

The rules of perspective set down in the Renaissance have been more honoured in the breach than in the observance. They derive from the camera obscura, which gave us the idea that there is a truer, more 'scientific' view to be had of the world if only we can stand away from things and see them more objectively. This claim to truth was inherited by the camera. This paper presents the opposite view, that a more generalised viewpoint is truer as it brings us closer to things, and also to each other. It draws on the examples of Chinese and Byzantine art, where central perspective was fully understood and consciously rejected. It shows how, with the computer, photography can now free itself from the perspective limitations of the lens.

Traditional teaching of perspective wants the perspective image to be generated with various procedures, which make use of the orthogonal projections of the object that is to be represented. It is nevertheless well-known that the perspective image also can be generated autonomously, that is to say, without resorting to the orthogonal projections, as part of a method known as 'central projection'. In many schools and in many textbooks these two paths, which both lead to the genesis of the perspective image, remain distinct, as if they were two different methods, if for no other reason than their vocation; the first, also called, improperly, 'the architect's method', which only focuses on the achievement of the result: an image similar to the natural vision of the space; the second, conceptual, devoted to the study of the central projection in itself and its applications of projective nature: from the genesis of the quadrics to the homography. In the Roman school, yet, as from the second half of the twentieth-century, it was attempted to bring together into one single method the two above-mentioned approaches to perspective, giving a happy ending to a history that for centuries has seen the perspective split between artists and mathematicians. In this paper, after a short presentation of the characteristics of the 'perspective as a representation method', is highlighted the advantages of the aforesaid method in academic teaching. These are, precisely: first of all the possibility to see in the perspective the generalization of the representation methods, following on from the thought of Wilhelm Fiedler (1832-1912); then the possibility to easily add the concepts relating to infinity (points, straight-lines and the improper plane); and, the possibility to establish a relationship that is not general, but operational, between the graphical perspective and the digitally rendered perspective.

Nexus Network Journal, 2010

Perspective projection distortion is the inevitable misrepresentation of three-dimensional space when drawn or projected onto a two-dimensional surface. It is impossible to accurately depict 3D reality on a 2D plane. The main focus of this paper is to research how the new technologies pushed the boundaries of perspective projection distortion in the digital art world: I will explore contemporary artists’ work like Felice Varini and his optical art, William Kentridge’s anamorphic animation, Amon Tobin’s stage performances, and lights and shadows installations by Kumy Yamashita. This paper will be focusing to a few selected artists in order to illuminate noticeable contrasts, which have occurred over time in the realm of digital art. To address the various mediums, techniques and methods within this broad subject would be a staggering task. This is why only a few key subjects, will be addressed. One subject will be to analyze how methods of visualization in digital art have evolved, since this aspect is directly responsible for the perception and aesthetic value of the majority of digitally displayed mediums. We need a new approach to linear perspective that relates it to the more general development of projection methods, and yet something more than that provided by nineteenth century historians of mathematics and science who were searching for the origins of descriptive geometry. It is not just a question of how the laws were discovered. Needed is an history of how these laws became recognized as being independent from Euclidean theories of vision; a history of how laws of projection and theories of vision were and were not applied to the visual arts. Such a history will need to emphasize that the Renaissance fascination with projection, which included linear perspective and anamorphosis, did not push artists into becoming mechanical copiers of nature. Indeed it led gradually to a distinction between technical drawing and what we now term fine art.

2016

the domain of Art critique and becoming a philosophical argument. How can we think of Perspective as symbolic Form? Is Perspective really a symbolic form? Why is Perspective so important? Because at the beginning of the Modern Age, Perspective as spiritual figure grounds many symbolic or even many scientific constructions. We could we say that perspective open the foundation of modern science as such. The “Geometrization” of Vision, beginning with perspective, will be for us the interpretative key in order to understand the Modern Age as a whole. This understanding will allow us to understand the anthropologic dimension arising from the Modern Age, called „Perspectivism“. Assuming that perspective was neither only an invention of painting nor of geometry nor of philosophy, taken as singular fields of human inquiry, we will try to sketch the genesis of “perspective” from an interdisciplinary point of view. By doing so, we will also try to fix its deep significance for the anthropolo...

Electronic Workshops in Computing, 2017