Put a Brain in Your Camera: Nonstandard Perspectives and Computer Images in the Arts
Abstract
Ever since the geometry of central perspective (conical projection) was developed in the XV century, it has been observed that mechanical application of the procedure leads to effects of distortion and exaggeration of shapes and sizes, which often make the result look unnatural. Similar observations are made with the optical projections obtained in photography and video. Artists have intuitively corrected these perceptual shortcomings of perspective. In standard perspective, each point of an object or scene is projected upon a plane by means of a bundle of straight projection rays departing from a viewpoint. In the nonstandard perspective that I have developed, I follow a similar procedure, except that I replace the straight projection rays of standard perspective with special curved ones. This model has been validated by visual experiments in the open field. The next step will integrate the nonstandard perspective into a new kind of digital camera which will allow the user to select a preferred perspective by changing an index from i = 0 (conical) up to i = 1 (parallel).
