See how they turn: false depth and motion in Hughes's reverspectives

Thomas V. Papathomas

doi:10.1117/12.387205

2 June 2000 See how they turn: false depth and motion in Hughes's reverspectives

Thomas V. Papathomas

Proceedings Volume 3959, Human Vision and Electronic Imaging V; (2000) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.387205
Event: Electronic Imaging, 2000, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

'Reverspectives' is one of many titles given to a remarkable class of Patrick Hughes's paintings that share two basic properties: (1) They are painted on a set of intersecting planar surfaces, rather than a single flat surface. (2) The perspective produced by the painting elicits the percept of a depth configuration that is the reverse of the actual depth configuration, as dictated by the construction of the multi- planar combination of surfaces (hence the name reverspective). As a result of these two properties, reverspectives appear to turn vividly as viewers walk past the paintings. This strange motion, which can rarely be observed in flat-canvas paintings unless they elicit strong perspective depth, can be explained by a neural process that matches up kinesthetic information about the viewer's own motion to changes in the retinal images. In this paper I study the role played by the perspective painting, by comparing percepts elicited by conventional Hughes reverspectives to those elicited by the same multi-planar surfaces that are left blank (unpainted). I examine differences in the two precepts in terms of the critical distance, i.e. that viewing distance for which the depth percept switches from veridical to reverse. This paradigm is one example in which the adoption of a depth schema determines the interpretation of motion signals.

Citation Download Citation

Thomas V. Papathomas "See how they turn: false depth and motion in Hughes's reverspectives", Proc. SPIE 3959, Human Vision and Electronic Imaging V, (2 June 2000); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.387205

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