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In the mid to late 1960s, art critic Leo Steinberg (1920–2011) carried out research on Titian that was never published and has remained so far unknown to scholars. By examining research material now held in the special collections of the Getty Research Institute, this study reconstructs Steinberg’s inquiry on the topic and discusses more broadly its methodological significance in relation to both his critical thinking and key issues concerning the study of Renaissance art. In particular, it deals with Steinberg’s interest in the relationships between the picture plane and the real space, site-specificity, and the spectator’s engagement. Steinberg’s critical attitude is analyzed by comparison with that of art historians Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968) and David Rosand (1938–2014), with whom he was principally concerned throughout the investigation of Titian’s Presentation of the Virgin (1519–26). The article evaluates how Steinberg’s approach can today effectively serve the analysis of premodern artworks from an alternative perspective to mainstream art history.

Linear perspective has long been used to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on the picture plane. One of its central axioms comes from Euclidean geometry and holds that all parallel lines converge in a single vanishing point. Although linear perspective provided the painter with a means to organize the painting, the question is whether the gaze of the beholder is also affected by the underlying structure of linear perspective: for instance, in such a way that the orthogonals leading to the vanishing point also automatically guides the beholder’s gaze. This was researched during a pilot study by means of an eye-tracking experiment at the Lab for Cognitive Research in Art History (CReA) of the University of Vienna. It appears that in some compositions the vanishing point attracts the view of the participant. This effect is more significant when the vanishing point coincides with the central vertical axis of the painting, but is even stronger when the vanishing point also coincides with a major visual feature such as an object or figure. The latter calls into question what exactly attracts the gaze of the viewer, i.e., what comes first: the geometrical construct of the vanishing point or the visual feature?

The purposeof the research is to reveal the specifics of the visual language of the artist and designer Vasyl Yermylov, in particular, through the study of his diptych «On the Beach» in interconnection with the artistic and theoretical achievements of Bauhaus artists-innovators.Research methodology.The method of deconstruction, structural, formal-stylistic and comparative analysis is applied in the article.Scientific novelty of the research.The results of the study revealed tendencies for Yermylov to create avant-garde compositions based on a subtle creative dialogue with the theoretical approaches of the Bauhaus representatives, which testifies not only to programmatic and ideological unity, but also to the identity of visual thinking. The method of deconstruction and structural analysis allowed to identify the elements of form as certain structures, deliberately introduced into the work by the master in order to rethink it, create another combination and, thus, the assertion of new content. This is the first time such analysis of Yermylov’s works has been conducted.Conclusions.The results of the analysis of Yermylov’s diptych «On the Beach» testify to the universality of the new visual language, Kwhich has developed in Ukraine despite the attempts to adapt it to the service of the totalitarian regime. Today it is important to testify that Ukrainian artists developed in harmony with their Western counterparts. Ermylov’s work, built on rethinking of different, sometimes opposite approaches to the development of form, which existed at different stages in the Bauhaus, is an example of exceptional design skill of the Kharkiv artist in composing virtuoso compositions from elements of art form. At the same time, the diptych with its laconic expression of the theoretical avant-garde heritage under the «mask» of Dadaism is a tribute to the New Art in the conditions of its prohibition and destruction.

The purpose of the research is to reveal the specifics of the visual language of the artist and designer Vasyl Yermylov, in particular, through the study of his diptych «On the Beach» in interconnection with the artistic and theoretical achievements of Bauhaus artists-innovators. Research methodology. The method of deconstruction, structural, formal-stylistic and comparative analysis is applied in the article. Scientific novelty of the research. The results of the study revealed tendencies for Yermylov to create avant-garde compositions based on a subtle creative dialogue with the theoretical approaches of the Bauhaus representatives, which testifies not only to programmatic and ideological unity, but also to the identity of visual thinking. The method of deconstruction and structural analysis allowed to identify the elements of form as certain structures, deliberately introduced into the work by the master in order to rethink it, create another combination and, thus, the assertion of new content. This is the first time such analysis of Yermylov’s works has been conducted. Conclusions. The results of the analysis of Yermylov’s diptych «On the Beach» testify to the universality of the new visual language, Kwhich has developed in Ukraine despite the attempts to adapt it to the service of the totalitarian regime. Today it is important to testify that Ukrainian artists developed in harmony with their Western counterparts. Ermylov’s work, built on rethinking of different, sometimes opposite approaches to the development of form, which existed at different stages in the Bauhaus, is an example of exceptional design skill of the Kharkiv artist in composing virtuoso compositions from elements of art form. At the same time, the diptych with its laconic expression of the theoretical avant-garde heritage under the «mask» of Dadaism is a tribute to the New Art in the conditions of its prohibition and destruction., Мета дослідження – виявити специфіку візуальної мови художника і дизайнера Василя Єрмилова, зокрема, через дослідження його диптиху «На пляжі» у взаємозв’язку з мистецькими і теоретичними напрацюваннями митців-новаторів Баугаузу. Методологія дослідження. У статті застосовано метод деконструкції, структурного, формально-стилістичного та компаративного аналізу. Наукова новизна дослідження. Результати дослідження виявили тенденції до творення Єрмиловим авангардних композицій на основі тонкого творчого діалогу з теоретичними підходами представників Баугаузу, що засвідчує не лише програмну й світоглядну єдність, але й ідентичність візуального мислення. Метод деконструкції та структурного аналізу дозволив виявити елементи форми як структури, свідомо введені у твір майстром з метою його переосмислення, створення іншої комбінації і, таким чином, ствердження нового змісту. Такий аналіз щодо творів Єрмилова проводиться вперше. Висновки. Результати аналізу диптиху Єрмилова «На пляжі» засвідчують універсальність нової візуальної мови, що в Україні склалась всупереч намаганням пристосувати її до обслуговування тоталітарного режиму. Сьогодні важливо засвідчити, що українські митці розвивалися суголосно зі своїми західними колегами. Робота Єрмилова, вибудувана на переосмисленні різних, часом протилежних підходів до розвитку форми, які існували на різних етапах у Баугаузі, є зразком виняткової дизайнерської майстерності харківського митця у складанні віртуозних композицій з елементів мистецької форми. Разом з тим, диптих з його лаконічним виразом теоретичного авангардного спадку під «маскою» дадаїзму є даниною Новому мистецтву в умовах його заборони і знищення.

This study examined the ability of goldfish to visually identify 2D objects rotated in the picture plane. This ability would be adaptive for fish since they move in three dimensions and frequently view objects from different orientations. Goldfish performed a two-alternative forced choice task in which they were trained to discriminate between two objects at 0°, then tested with novel aspect angles (+/− 45°, +/− 90°, +/− 135°, 180°). Stimuli consisted of an arrow and half circle (Experiment 1) and line drawings of a turtle and frog (Experiments 2 and 3). In the first two experiments, the S+ and S− were presented at the same aspect angle. Performance in these experiments exceeded chance on four of seven novel aspect angles. Overall accuracy was not significantly different with complex stimuli (animal drawings) vs. simple stimuli (geometric shapes). In Experiment 3, when fish were tested with the S+ at varying aspect angles and the S− always presented at 0°, the fish failed to discriminate among the stimuli at all but one aspect angle. These goldfish viewing planar-rotated 2D objects did not display viewpoint-invariant performance, nor did they show a systematic decrement in performance as a function of aspect angle.

If, following Bois, the task of the painter is the development of a thought that is properly pictorial, then this article will explore the idea of commitment as a problem for discourse: any claim about a painting’s relation to its outsides being a function of what writing is capable of saying in the face of such a thought. Appropriating the biological model of autopoiesis (which sets out to analyse the genesis of a living form from its point of view rather than from the observer’s), the article analyses Usle’s painting, La Garganta de Albers, Las Muelas de Gaudi, in order to demonstrate that its outsides are a production of its internal ‘organization’. This internal organization cannot be described (from the outside), and so the article suggests the idea that the painting functions through the metaphor of the facade. Ultimately, there is no real evidence for this because the relation between writing and painting is marked by discontinuity. However, although this is a problem for the writer (who might want to control what the painting means), this methodological problem is a sign of commitment insofar as the incomprehensibility encountered in front of the painting elicits a new kind of thinking inaugurated by the work’s specificity.

Judgment of the location of a previously viewed moving or stationary target is often displaced in the direction of implied gravitational attraction, and this has been referred to as representational gravity. Variables that have been investigated for a possible influence on representational gravity include characteristics of the target (size/mass, velocity, distance traveled, orientation, modality), display (retention interval, response measure, height in the picture plane), context (nontarget intramodal stimuli, cross-modal components of a single stimulus), and observer (oculomotor behavior, body orientation, psychopathology), and several additional variables that might influence representational gravity but have not yet been investigated are suggested for future studies. Conclusions and speculations regarding the contribution and relationship of representational gravity to several variables, processes, and tasks (physical gravity, linear acceleration, subjective visual vertical, size/mass and weight, other biases in spatial localization, catching and intercepting a moving target, an internal model of gravity, naive physics, a gravity heuristic, art and aesthetics) are discussed, and compatibility of representational gravity with Gibsonian and representational approaches is noted. It is suggested that representational gravity is an important adaptation that aids observers in interactions with physical objects in the environment, but that such an adaptation is not necessarily fully consistent with objective physical principles.

In his extensive writing about pictures, James J. Gibson offered perspective formulae for square tiles projecting trapezoids onto a picture plane, foreshortening to zero height with distance. I reverse the claim: as distance decreases, the trapezoids increase to infinite height, in marginal distortion, or forelengthening. I also reverse the direction of projection. Usually considered to be incoming, from the distant tile to the picture plane, in reverse—outgoing—the tiles have directions from the center of projection, with implications for haptics and people who are blind. A drawing of a cube illustrates the argument. It is by an adult who is blind. It includes foreshortening, and shows directions of surfaces from a vantage point.

Following its discovery in fifteenth-century Italy, linear perspective has often been hailed as the most accurate method of projecting three-dimensional visual space onto a two-dimensional picture plane. However, when we survey the history of European art it is evident that few artists fully complied with its mathematical rules, despite many of them being rigorously trained in its procedures. In this paper, we will consider how artists have actually depicted visual space, and present evidence that images created according to a “natural” perspective (NP) used by artists are judged as better representations of visual space than those created using standard linear (LP) and curvilinear fisheye (FP) projective geometries. In this study, we built a real three-dimensional scene and produced photographs of the scene in three different perspectives (NP, LP and FP). An online experiment in which we asked people to rank the perspectives in order of preference showed a clear preference for NP compared to the FP and LP. In a second experiment, participants were asked to view the real scene and rate each perspective on a range of psychological variables. Results showed that NP was the most preferred and the most effective in depicting the physical space naturally. We discuss the implications of these results and the advantages and limitations of our approach for studying the global metric and geometrical structure of visual space. Publisher PDF

The perspective representation of architectural objects can be used for illustrative purposes, technical documentation and research. An inverse process, namely reconstruction of such objects on the basis of their single perspective image may prove difficult. The aim of the hereby study is to determine the requirements which the perspective image should meet for restitution purposes, as well as developing an effective method of the reconstruction of architectural objects on the basis of their perspective mapping. Our considerations were constrained to linear perspective as it is the most popular form of perspective presentation. It was stressed that the crucial point of linear perspective restitution is the determination of its base elements; a main point, a horizon line, a ground line and the distance of the station point from the picture plane, which define the method of the perspective representation. The reconstruction attempt was based on geometrical rules and relations occurring between the points of the given 3D object and their perspective 2D mappings. Due to the fact that straight lines are very common in every urban environment, algorithms were developed, with changeable base elements of perspective to draw linear perspective image of any straight line passing through two points of the given object. On the basis of these algorithms the equations were formulated for calculation of the 3D location of the object characteristic points presented in the perspective 2D image, which determined the edge 3D model. Our method of restitution can be useful for reconstruction of different forms of perspective presentation; technical drawings, paintings, photographs and sketches, as well as it can be applied for improving or finding missing building contour in the perspective image. The study shows that retrieving some information about a spatial structure of the architectural object from the single perspective image is not always easy, although it is possible in some cases.

In the article formulation and proof of assertions about the choice of point of view in the main point of picture and choice of distance from the center of projection to the picture plane for the increase of accuracy of transmission of depth of space on the plane of picture is resulted.

We consider techniques used in the articulation of pictorial relief. The related ‘cue’ best known to vision science is ‘shading’. It is discussed in terms of an inverse optics algorithm known as ‘shape from shading’. However, the familiar techniques of the visual arts count many alternative cues for the articulation of pictorial relief. From an art technical perspective these cues are well known. Although serving a similar purpose as shading proper, they allow a much flatter value scale, making it easier to retain the picture plane, or major tonal areas. Vision research has generally ignored such methods, possibly because they lack an obvious basis in ecological optics. We attempt to rate the power of various techniques on a common ‘shading scale’. We find that naive observers spontaneously use a variety of cues, and that several of these easily equal, or beat, conventional shading. This is of some conceptual interest to vision science, because shading has a generally acknowledged ecological basis, whereas the alternative methods lack this.

The Star Wars Scroll Illusion is a dynamic version of the Leaning Tower Illusion. When two copies of a Star-Wars-like scrolling text are placed side by side (with separate vanishing points), the two scrolls appear to head in different directions even though they are physically parallel in the picture plane. Variations of the illusion are shown with one vanishing point, as well as from an inverted perspective where the scrolls appear to originate in the distance. The demos highlight the conflict between the physical lines in the picture plane and perspective interpretation: With two perspective points, the scrolling texts are parallel to each other in the picture plane but not in perspective interpretation; with one perspective point, the texts are not parallel to each other in the picture plane but are parallel to each other in perspective interpretation. The size of the effect is linearly related to the angle of rotation of the scrolls into the third dimension; the Scroll Illusion is stronger than the Leaning Tower Illusion for rotation angles between 35° and 90°. There is no effect of motion per se on the strength of the illusion.

Human vision is extremely sensitive to equidistance of spatial intervals in the frontal plane. Thresholds for spatial equidistance have been extensively measured in bisecting tasks. Despite the vast number of studies, the informational basis for equidistance perception is unknown. There are three possible sources of information for spatial equidistance in pictures, namely, distances in the picture plane, in physical space, and visual space. For each source, equidistant intervals were computed for perspective photographs of walls and canals. Intervals appear equidistant if equidistance is defined in visual space. Equidistance was further investigated in paintings of perspective scenes. In appraisals of the perspective skill of painters, emphasis has been on accurate use of vanishing points. The current study investigated the skill of painters to depict equidistant intervals. Depicted rows of equidistant columns, tiles, tapestries, or trees were analyzed in 30 paintings and engravings. Computational analysis shows that from the middle ages until now, artists either represented equidistance in physical space or in a visual space of very limited depth. Among the painters and engravers who depict equidistance in a highly nonveridical visual space are renowned experts of linear perspective.

The steeply inclined ground planes of Early Netherlandish paintings are often covered with a drapery so stiff and heavy that it seems to break rather than fold. Known as the hard style—in opposition to the soft style common at 1400—this drapery tends to push up toward the flatness and verticality of the picture plane, where its angular folds rhyme reflexively with the rectilinear corners of the painted panels in which it appears.Despite its sweeping generality and seeming anachronism, Wilhelm Worringer's account of this drapery as a form of abstraction gets a good deal right. If Worringer is right—that what he calls Gothic drapery is, in an important sense, nonmimetic—that drapery, especially in its late hard form, may be more “thing” than picture—“thing,” that is, in the specifically medieval sense that Friedrich Ohly describes. Ohly's account of medieval Dingbedeutung (thing-meaning) lends unexpected support to Worringer's abstraction thesis by demonstrating the centrality of formal properties to certai...

On more than one occasion in his critical writings of the 1920’s, surrealist leader André Breton compared Max Ernst’s collages to cinema. In his first essay on the artist in 1921, Breton aligned Ernst’s collages with cinematic special effects such as slow and accelerated motion, and spoke of the illusionistic ‘transformation from within’ that characterized Ernst’s constructed scenes. For Breton, Ernst’s collages employing found commercial, scientific and journalistic images approximated the naturalistic movement of film, and thereby contributed to the radical obsolescence of traditional two-dimensional media such as painting and drawing, which remained frozen in stillness. Thus, Ernst’s images were provocative witnesses to the way in which modern technology fundamentally altered the perspectivally-ordered picture plane. But at the same time that Ernst’s collages rendered painting obsolete, they likewise depended upon fragments of outmoded popular culture themselves. For Breton, Ernst was a magician, “the man of these infinite possibilities,” comparable to cinematic prestidigators like turn-of-the-century filmmaker Georges Méliès. By drawing on the influence of recently outmoded popular culture such as early trick films, Ernst provides a crucial early example of the post-war fixation on counter-temporalities and anti-production. At once technologically advanced and culturally archeological, Ernst’s collages cannily defy strict categorization as “Modernist.”

This research assessed the relative contribution of 3-D virtual structure that generated the stimulus drawings (scene-based and picture-based theories) and 2-D structure of the drawings (object-based theories). Virtual structures were right-angle convex and concave corners in front of and behind the picture plane, respectively. Virtual corner size was manipulated directly (Experiment 1) and indirectly by manipulating drawing station point distance (Experiments 2 and 3), corner depth (Experiment 4), and corner distance from the picture plane (Experiments 5 and 6). Experiments 2 and 4 held the size of the projected corner edge (interior target line) constant, causing virtual corner size to vary, whereas Experiments 3, 4, 5, and 6 held size of the virtual corners constant, causing size of the projected corner edge or interior target line to vary. Subjects reproduced the length of the projected corner edge (interior target line). The illusions (difference between reproduced size of the projected corner edge and T-junction control) were generally well fit by the weighted sum of virtual corner size and size of the projected corner edge, but the projected distance between boundary line terminations (intertip distance) appeared as an additional contributing factor in Experiments 5 and 6. The implications of this methodological approach are discussed for theories of the illusions.

Two often cited but frequently confused pictorial cues to perceived depth are height in the picture plane (HPP) and distance to the horizon (DH). We report two psychophysical experiments that disentangled their influence on perception of relative depth in pictures of the interior of a schematic room. Experiment 1 showed that when HPP and DH varied independently with both a ceiling and a floor plane visible in the picture, DH alone determined judgments of relative depth; HPP was irrelevant. Experiment 2 studied relative depth perception in single-plane displays (floor only or ceiling only) in which the horizon either was not visible or was always at the midpoint of the target object. When the target object was viewed against either a floor or a ceiling plane, some observers used DH, but others (erroneously) used HPP. In general, when DH is defined and unambiguous, observers use it to determine the relative distance to objects, but when DH is undefined and/or ambiguous, at least some observers use HPP.

The studio motif was the central iconographic theme in Matisse’s oeuvre because it gave him the opportunity for introspection. In his fauve and experimental period, Matisse painted the studio without figures (the studio inventory itself), whereas in Nice he was interested in the relation between the (imaginary) painter, the model, and the beholder in the studio. The greatest masterpiece of all of Matisse’s studio pictures is undisputedly The Red Studio (1911, New York, The Museum of Modern Art), which represents a defining moment in European modernism because of its formal radicalism. No painter before that time had reduced a picture of such large format to a single color. Matisse’s intention was not to paint a picture of a real studio interior, but to create a painted equivalent of his emotional experience of his studio. With intense and evenly spread red paint, Matisse achieved a completely flat picture plane, thereby illustrating the idea of the spatial depth of the studio with the addition of easels, pictures, and sculptures. Matisse thus achieved something that seemed impossible: a flat impression of a picture that at the same time offers the feeling of space. With his The Red Studio, Matisse not only broke with tradition, but established a basis for a new tradition. The Red Studio has hung in The Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1949 and has become one of the most influential paintings of the twentieth century. It inspired the Color Field painters Mark Rothko, Barnett Newmann, and Robert Motherwell. Some Slovenian painters also looked to The Red Studio and created several masterpieces. In spite of their quality, they were overlooked outside Slovenia and the former Yugoslavia, and were excluded from European art heritage. The most prominent Slovenian modernist painter, Gabrijel Stupica, did not directly rely on The Red Studio, but is linked with Matisse because of the fact that Stupica entered into modernism only with his picture of the studio as a two-dimensional space. In his pictures of studio interiors, Marjan Dovjak showed a sense for ignoring the depth of space, distorted proportions, and decorative forms similar to Matisse in The Red Studio. Bogdan Borcic also paid homage to Matisse’s masterpiece with his great monochrome pictures of studios. An examination of the studio motif by American and Slovene painters therefore shows that The Red Studio has preserved its inspirational power to today and will therefore remain an interesting topic for future researchers.

Classically, it has been presumed that picture-plane inversion primarily reduces sensitivity to spacing/configural information in faces (distance between location of the major features) and has little effect on sensitivity to local feature information (e.g., eye shape or color). Here, we review 22 published studies relevant to this claim. Data show that the feature inversion effect varied substantially across studies as a function of the following factors: whether the feature change was shape only or included color/brightness, the number of faces in the stimulus set, and whether the feature was in facial context. For shape-only changes in facial context, feature inversion effects were as large as typical spacing inversion effects. Small feature inversion effects occurred only when a task could be efficiently solved by visual-processing areas outside whole-face coding. The results argue that holistic/configural processing for upright faces integrates exact feature shape and spacing between blobs. We describe two plausible approaches to this process.

Presenting a face stimulus upside-down generally causes a larger deficit in perceiving metric distances between facial features ("configuration") than local properties of these features. This effect supports a qualitative account of face inversion: the same transformation affects the processing of different kinds of information differently. However, this view has been recently challenged by studies reporting equal inversion costs of performance for discriminating featural and configural manipulations on faces. In this paper I argue that these studies did not replicate previous results due to methodological factors rather than largely irrelevant parameters such as having equal performance for configural and featural conditions at upright orientation, or randomizing trials across conditions. I also argue that identifying similar diagnostic features (eyes and eyebrows) for discriminating individual faces at upright and inverted orientations by means of response classification methods does not dismiss at all the qualitative view of face inversion. Considering these elements as well as both behavioral and neuropsychological evidence, I propose that the generally larger effect of inversion for processing configural than featural cues is a mere consequence of the disruption of holistic face perception. That is, configural relations necessarily involve two or more distant features on the face, such that their perception is most dependent on the ability to perceive simultaneously multiple features of a face as a whole.

Faces are difficult to recognise when presented upside down. This effect of face inversion was effectively demonstrated with the 'Thatcher illusion' by Thompson (1980 Perception 9 483-484). It has been tacitly assumed that this effect is due to inversion relative to retinal coordinates. Here we tested whether it is due to egocentric (i.e. retinal) inversion or whether the orientation of the body with respect to gravity also influences the face-inversion effect. A 3-D human turntable was used to test subjects in 5 different body-tilt (roll) orientations: 0 degree, 45 degrees, 90 degrees, 135 degrees, and 180 degrees. The stimuli consisted of 4 'normal' and 4 'thatcherised' faces and were presented in 8 different orientations in the picture plane. The subjects had to decide in a yes-no task whether the faces were 'normal' or 'thatcherised'. Analysis of the d' values revealed a significant effect of stimulus orientation and body tilt. The significant effect of body tilt was due to a drop in d' values in the 135 degrees orientation. This result is compared to findings of studies on the subjective visual vertical, where larger errors occurred in body-tilt orientations between 90 degrees and 180 degrees. The present findings suggest that the face-inversion effect relies mainly on retinal coordinates, but that in head-down body-tilt orientations around 135 degrees the gravitational reference frame has a major influence on the perception of faces.

Three experiments investigated the role of attention in visual priming across rotations in the picture plane. Experiment 1 showed that naming latencies increased with the degree of misorientation for objects commonly seen in an upright view (base objects) but not for objects seen familiarly from many views (no-base objects). In Experiment 2, no-base objects revealed a priming pattern identical to that observed previously for left-right reflections (Stankiewicz, Hummel, & Cooper, 1998): Attended objects primed themselves in the same and rotated views, whereas ignored images primed themselves only in the same view, with additive effects of attention and orientation. In Experiment 3 ignored base objects only primed themselves in a familiar (upright) view, indicating that priming only obtains when that image makes contact with object memory. These data challenge theories of object recognition that rely on any single representation of shape and contribute to evidence suggesting holistic (view-like) representations for ignored and analytic (view-insensitive) representations for attended objects.

Donald Barthelme's short story “At the Tolstoy Museum” belongs to his "Picture Texts" and "Art Gallery" that pastes common objects obtained from the world in unexpected proximity on the picture plane and overturns their predictability as artistic symbols. The paper reaches the conclusion that Donald Barthelme's visual approach in the short story "At the Tolstoy Museum" is similar to René Magritte's process of "resemblance". A composition's "resemblance" to the world deceives the viewer into thinking that he can successfully categorize among and interpret his perceptual experience, while the vague relationships among the graphic and verbal fragments, varied and repeated, counter his ordering activity with disorientation. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s2p200

Literature review reveals that there exists, many methods for 3D visualization of a given object or a set of objects[1,2]. To name a few commonly used methods, we have Stereoscopic 3D visualization[3], Cross eye visualization, Parallel eye visualization, Perspective 3D visualization etc. An optimu location of the viewing point for an ideal 3D perspective view is attempted in this paper. The conclusions drawn are presented[4,5].

A central problem for psychology is vision's reaction to perspective. In the present studies, observers looked at perspective pictures projected by square tiles on a ground plane. They judged the tile dimensions while positioned at the correct distance, farther or nearer. In some pictures, many tiles appeared too short to be squares, many too long, and many just right. The judgments were strongly affected by viewing from the wrong distance, eye height, and object orientation. The authors propose a 2-factor angles and ratios together (ART) theory, with the following factors: the ratio of the visual angles of the tile's sides and the angle between (a) the direction to the tile from the observer and (b) the perpendicular, from the picture plane to the observer, that passes through the central vanishing point.

An important question in studies on mental rotation is whether the mental object rotation and the egocentric body transformation rely on dissociable mechanisms. We tested non-dancers and professional dancers as experts in the mental object rotation task (MORT, 3D-cubes used by Shepard & Metzler, 1971) and the mental body transformation task (MBRT, line drawings of human bodies similar to those used by Parsons, 1987). The cubes and body figures were presented in exactly the same rotation conditions; in the picture plane, 0 degree, 45 degrees, 90 degrees, 135 degrees, and 180 degrees, and in combination with a rotation in depth, 0 degree (the stimuli are rotated in the picture plane only) and 180 degrees. We could replicate the linear increase in RT with increasing angle for the cubes whereas the RT for rotated body figures increased for not depth-rotated bodies only (back view). Though, the RTs for inverted body figures were faster when they were rotated in depth (front view) compared to when they were rot...

Legibility has been ineffective as a predictor of environmental preference primarily because of its correlation with another predictor, coherence. The authors tried to separate the two predictors by careful selection of field/forest settings and by using nontraditional definitions. The alternate definitions emphasized landmarks (for legibility) and the two-dimensional picture plane (for coherence). These strategies proved unsuccessful for the entire sample of settings. However, when an empirically derived subset of forest settings was examined, the desired pattern of relations among the traditionally defined constructs was found: Legibility had a slightly stronger correlation with preference than coherence, and legibility was clearly the stronger predictor in regression models that included several predictors. Post hoc analyses involving openness suggested visual access is a major component of legibility in forest settings. The authors now believe the forest setting category is a good domain for establishing the salience of legibility as an independent predictor of preference.

We investigated picture plane rotation effects on the minimum stimulus duration required to recognise pictures of familiar objects in a picture-word verification task. Participants made unspeeded responses, selecting from 126 written alternatives. Longer stimulus durations were needed to identify plane-misoriented views. These orientation effects were non-linear, arguing against a simple mental rotation account of compensation for plane misorientation in identification tasks. Orientation effects were found for almost all items, in particular including those labelled at the basic level (cf. Hamm, McMullen, 1998, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 24, 413-426). We suggest that plane misorientation increases the difficulty of basic level as well as subordinate level identification unless only a small, visually dissimilar set of stimuli are presented. Errors in the task were analysed to provide an alternative, objective measure of perceived visual similarity, by assessing the number and nature of mistaken identifications made to a given target object. We propose that misorientation effects are best understood in terms of the effects of the perceived visual similarity of a target to its set of response alternatives rather than in terms of the level (basic or subordinate) at which the target is to be identified.

The idea of construction of twin buildings is as old as architecture itself, and yet there is hardly any study emphasizing their specificity. Most frequently there are two objects or elements in an architectural composition of “twins” in which there may be various symmetry relations, mostly bilateral symmetries. The classification of “twins” symmetry in this paper is based on the existence of bilateral symmetry, in terms of the perception of an observer. The classification includes both, 2D and 3D perception analyses. We start analyzing a pair of twin buildings with projection of the architectural composition elements in 2D picture plane (plane of the composition) and we distinguish four 2D keyframe cases based on the relation between the bilateral symmetry of the twin composition and the bilateral symmetry of each element. In 3D perception for each 2D keyframe case there are two sub-variants, with and without a symmetry plane parallel to the picture plane. The bilateral symmetry is dominant if the corresponding symmetry plane is orthogonal to the picture plane. The essence of the complete classification is relation between the bilateral (dominant) symmetry of the architectural composition and the bilateral symmetry of each element of that composition.

There are substantial logical and empirical reasons for rejecting the popular view that plane-misoriented objects are identified after normalization of global orientation. Our subjects determined the entry-level identity of common objects (line drawings) before determining basic orientation (upright vs. rotated)--as they must if they are to begin to know how to restore the image to the canonical upright. We used a description-picture matching procedure in which 7596 of the trials involved a mismatch in identity, orientation, or both, so that comparisons could be based on one response (no). Times to verify identity were faster than times to verify orientation and did not increase with rotations in the picture plane. That mismatch objects were positively identified at the entry level was shown both in a surprise recognition test for object names and through the transfer of priming from the matching task to a subsequent object-naming task. We conclude that classic mental rotation-like effects on naming times do not reflect early object encoding and recognition processes, which are view invariant, but may stem from double-checking at a postrecognition verification stage.

The significance of the Liuro de Perspectiva (Book of Perspective), attributed to Antonio Rodrigues, lies mainly in the introduction of an innovative perspective rule designed to solve questions raised by the propagation of inaccuracies and insufficiencies of previous methods. However, the author’s scientific limitations prevented him from fully understanding the enormous potential of his geometrically accurate construction. Decoding and verifying the validity of this peculiar perspective rule leads to the center of the debate surrounding the origins of perspectiva artificialis. Rodrigues’s work demonstrates a striking fidelity to central perspective, especially obvious in one centrally-planned composition with ad quadratum and ad circulum geometry. Rodrigues’s own Onze Mil Virgens Chapel, built some time before 1565 in Alcacer do Sal is a prime example of these concepts.

We investigated the selective impairment of mirror image discrimination in a patient with bilateral parieto-occipital lesions (FIM). We report a difficulty with the discrimination between mirror images more selective than has been previously reported (Turnbull OH, McCarthy RA. Failure to discriminate between mirror-image objects: a case of viewpoint-independent object recognition? Neurocase 1996;2:63). FIM was asked to judge, in five same/different experiments, whether pairs of simultaneously presented line drawings of objects were identical. FIM demonstrated only a minor impairment in discriminating between orientations in the picture plane but was at chance in making discrimination between mirror images. An experiment with normal observers established that our results were not due to differences in task difficulty. Two further experiments investigated the effects of rotation on the discrimination of letters and geometric shapes. FIM's impairment extended to geometric shapes but not to letters. These results would be consistent with the preservation of an abstract representation for object recognition that did not code the difference between mirror image views.

T HE ASSORTED OBJECTS described in Rilke's Neue Gedichte make up a collection whose variety and opulence are reminiscent of the Baroque, as are the Jardin des Plantes and the Jardin du Luxembourg, respective settings of two of the most famous of these poems, "Der Panther" and "Das Karussell." These and other of Rilke's so-called "thing poems" (Dinggedichte) are fraught with a "baroque" tension between the economy of form and the unstable worldly economies that poetic closure works to exclude. Figures of precarious control, panther and carousel alike gyrate, defining an empty center that exists solely in relation to a periphery. The accelerating carousel in particular illustrates how this geometry dissolves into entropy and how the periphery threatens to triumph as empty though dazzling facade. The panther too, turning in circles on tensed loins, reveals form as energy held in reserve. It is no coincidence that these poems occur at a time when the formal dynamism of Baroque art and architecture was receiving new and unprecedented attention. This rediscovery of the Baroque projected modern anxieties onto an earlier epoch torn between containment and expansion. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Heinrich W6lfflin's discussion of animated stone, of restless and unstable forms, and especially of a chiaroscuro that makes objects appear to leap out of the picture plane, might well have applied to the advent of cinema (ca. 1895), which placed the spectator in the path of oncoming locomotives, and whose own use of chiaroscuro helped fold the technological "monster" back into a more archaic fear of the outside. Monsters proper, such as Dr. Frankenstein's creature, not only became commonplace in cinema but came to personify an often disquieting process of animation, a final violation of the law of beauty which, almost two centuries earlier, neoclassicism had installed as a bulwark against Baroque monstrosities (Wellbery 192-94). Likewise, if Rilke's New Poems brim with classical relics, most notably a marble torso whose inner life makes itself felt as the uncanny ability to return the beholder's gaze, his carousel, by contrast, is blind. An afterimage of Baroque spectacle as well as a protocinematic machine, its whirling menagerie uniquely demonstrates the crisis of modernist form.

Observations at The Mystery Spot, a roadside attraction near Santa Cruz, California, suggest intriguing visual illusions based on tilt-induced effects. Specifically, a tilted spatial background at The Mystery Spot induced misperceptions of the orientation of the cardinal axes (i.e., true horizontal and vertical), which then led to illusions in the perceived height of two individuals. This illusion was assessed at The Mystery Spot and replicated in the laboratory using pictorial and lined displays rotated in the picture plane. These findings are described in terms of the orientation framing theory, which suggests that these and other tilt-induced illusions (e.g., Ponzo illusion, Zöllner illusion) can be attributed to distorted frames of reference.

Depth rotations can reveal new object parts and result in poor recognition of “static” objects (Biederman & Gerhardstein, 1993) . Recent studies have suggested that multiple object views can be associated through temporal contiguity and similarity Edelman & Weinshall, 1991 , Lawson et al., 1994 , Wallis, 1996 . Motion may also play an important role in object recognition since observers recognize novel views of objects rotating in the picture plane more readily than novel views of statically re-oriented objects (Kourtzi & Shiffrar, 1997) . The series of experiments presented here investigated how different views of a depth-rotated object might be linked together even when these views do not share the same parts. The results suggest that depth rotated object views can be linked more readily with motion than with temporal sequence alone to yield priming of novel views of 3D objects that fall in between “known” views. Motion can also enhance path specific view linkage when visible object parts differ across views. Such results suggest that object representations depend on motion processes.

The major objective of this article is to demonstrate artistically a basic characteristic of our brain with respect to observation of depth, namely perspective visualization. An example of this characteristic is the following one. If two identical lines are located at some distance one from the other, then the far one will be reflected in the brain as shorter. Moreover, parallel lines never meet in reality, but in the brain or in a picture plane they converge on a vanishing point v demonstrated in Images 1 and 2. Artists adapt the vanishing point as a technique to create more realistic the effect of 3-D.

International audience; We examined whether body parts attached to abstract stimuli automatically force embodiment in a mental rotation task. In Experiment 1, standard cube combinations reflecting a human pose were added with (1) body parts on anatomically possible locations, (2) body parts on anatomically impossible locations, (3) colored end cubes, and (4) simple end cubes. Participants (N=30) had to decide whether two simultaneously presented stimuli, rotated in the picture plane, were identical or not. They were fastest and made less errors in the possible-body condition, but were slowest and least accurate in the impossible-body condition. A second experiment (N=32) replicated the results and ruled out that the poor performance in the impossible-body condition was due to the specific stimulus material. The findings of both experiments suggest that body parts automatically trigger embodiment, even when it is counterproductive and dramatically impairs performance, as in the impossible-body condition. It can furthermore be concluded that body parts cannot be used flexibly for spatial orientation in mental rotation tasks, compared to colored end cubes. Thus, embodiment appears to be a strong and inflexible mechanism that may, under certain conditions, even impede performance.

The mental rotation effect in depth is qualitatively different from mental rotation in the picture plane. The magnitude of angular difference in depth that is depicted between two static shapes has been thought to predict mean response time for same-different comparisons on shapes in the mental rotation effect. The tandem rotation effect provides a counterexample to that hypothesis. Two planar shapes are depicted as separated by a small and fixed angular difference in depth; the pair of shapes is then depicted as tilted in depth. Mean response time to compare these shapes varies nearly linearly with the magnitude of the yoked rotation - though angular difference is held constant. The slope of this response time function is very close to that for single rotation in depth. The tandem effect supports a claim that mean response time varies as a function of the change in area of planar shapes that are depicted to rotate away from the picture plane, rather than as a function of the angular difference of one shape from another. The tandem rotation effect is not found to obtain for rotations in the picture plane. A conclusion drawn from these and other results is that an hypothesis of mental rotation is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain changes in response times for the simultaneous comparison of planar shapes pictured in depth. A piecewise continuous trigonometric function is proposed to describe response times for the comparison of planar shapes that are depicted to rotate in depth. The characteristic Shepard-Metzler response time function for complex solids in depth is shown to be a definite integral of that trigonometric function.

The proposal that identification of inverted objects is accomplished by either a relatively slow rotation in the picture plane or a faster rotation in the depth plane about the horizontal axis was tested. In Experiment 1, subjects decided whether objects at 0 degree or 180 degrees corresponded to previously learned normal views of the upright objects, or were mirror images. Instructions to mentally flip an inverted object in the depth plane to the upright produced faster decision times than did instructions to mentally spin the object in the picture plane. In Experiment 2, the effects of orientation were compared across an object-naming task and a normal-mirror task for six orientations from 0 degree to 300 degrees. In the normal-mirror task, objects at 180 degrees were cued for rotation in the picture plane or in the depth plane in equal numbers. The naming function for one group of subjects did not differ from the normal-mirror function where inverted objects had been mentally rotated to the upright. For both functions, response time (RT) increased linearly from 0 degree to 180 degrees and the slopes did not differ. The naming function for a second group of subjects did not differ from the normal-mirror function where inverted objects had been mentally flipped to the upright. For both functions, RT increased linearly at a similar rate from 0 degree to 120 degrees, but decreased from 120 degrees to 180 degrees. The results are discussed in terms of theories of orientation-specific identification.

as Cezanne's late Bathers, and few artists who occupy a more lofty position than he as the founding father of a subsequent pictorial tradition. In the words of Clement Greenberg, 'Cezanne . . . is the most copious source of what we know as modern art, the most abundant generator of ideas and the most enduring in newness'.' The narrative which traces the anxiety-laden influence of the Bathers through the works of Picasso, Matisse, Derain, Braque and evenJasperJohns (who made a small copy of the National Gallery Bathers in 1977) is all too familiar.2 In the heroic struggle between fathers and sons which is the battle ground of much visual modernism and its critique, Cezanne's Bathers have functioned as a source, an origin, a prize to be struggled over. Their radical assault on traditional modes of representation has become a cliche of conventional critical wisdom while the unorthodox, clumsy appearance of both the figures and the landscape, so shocking to many of their first viewers, is now enshrined as the foundation of their greatness. Cezanne's 'inquietude', as Picasso famously called it, has become legendary, even exemplary. The earlier difficulty of the Bathers has been, for the most part, tamed, suppressed by their status as great modern works, guaranteed by their offspring, and it now takes some effort to recapture and hold on to something of their earlier recalcitrance. Much of the recent critical writing that we have on the late Bather paintings is curiously split.3 The paintings are accounted for (broadly) in one of two ways. In the first of these they are linked to a new and profoundly disembodied formal self-referentiality (the world of pure painting) in which the untidy body of the flesh, with its capacity to allude to the non-pictorial world of desire, is displaced by a hermetic 'pictorial body', the body of the picture, the body in the picture, the body without flesh. Continuing in the tradition of Maurice Denis, Emile Bernard and Clive Bell, this explanatory system posits a new mode of looking for these paintings, a quintessentially modern one, one which looks at a picture as a picture and the bodies to which it gives form as the product of picturing, rather than as a referent to the actual bodies which it purportedly represents.4 The bodies which come together on the surface of these paintings are the result of picture-making. They do not precede it. They do not refer to bodies beyond the picture frame. These are bodies which draw their existence from other pictures and need to be deciphered as self-conscious forays into the processes of picture-making. The beauty of the paintings lies, in this reading, in their ability to disclose the process of becoming which is embedded in their materiality, and to remain true to the flatness of the picture plane while grappling with the problems of three-dimensional representation.5 A measure of their competence is their refusal to conform to standard conventions for representing the nude in the landscape.6 Gottfried Boehm, typically, declared that 'the Bathers make it clear that it was the artistic means he

Memory for the final position of a moving target is often shifted or displaced from the true final position of that target. Early studies of this memory shift focused on parallels between the momentum of the target and the momentum of the representation of the target and called this displacementrepresentational momentum, but many factors other than momentum contribute to the memory shift. A consideration of the empirical literature on representational momentum and related types of displacement suggests there are at least four different types of factors influencing the direction and magnitude of such memory shifts: stimulus characteristics (e.g., target direction, target velocity), implied dynamics and environmental invariants (e.g., implied momentum, gravity, friction, centripetal force), memory averaging of target and nontarget context (e.g., biases toward previous target locations or nontarget context), and observers' expectations (both tacit and conscious) regarding future target motion and target/context interactions. Several theories purporting to account for representational momentum and related types of displacement are also considered.