Perspective is how we humans, internally and externally, ‘spatialise’ reality; whether overtly recognised or not. Technical perspective refers to the process/results of probing a spatial reality to produce an accurate image or ‘systematised’ representation of that reality.
Patently, and regardless of type, perspective is an abstraction of reality. Levels of abstraction systematically operate as a bridge between the concreteness of nature and the abstractions of mathematics. Visual abstraction is creating a visual representation of something, whether it’s visual or non-visual. The goal is to create a representation that’s meaningful and can be processed by the human mind.
Today new media systems have greatly expedited and improved such processes; whereby new kinds of perspective, systems, and related visual user interfaces, enable users to navigate all of the different layers of abstraction from ideas to physical objects in all their layers of magnification (and combination/abstraction).
Modern perspective instruments/methods/systems let us move from universals to particulars, and explore wholes, parts, inside/outside, and relations few and many, scales big and small, etc. This can be seen as a continued development in the role of Renaissance or linear perspective, which introduced an objective method for recording or copying the physical world at different levels of abstraction in photographs, cinema, engineering drawings, computer images, maps, etc.
Multiple Realities
Another way of characterising optical perspective <IMAGING CLASS> is to say that it works to form images of a spatial reality, being one of four different kinds:
- Physical Reality: the so-called physical world or actual reality that comprises the physical universe.
- Mathematical Reality: the modelled world or a mathematical abstraction of physical reality.
- Artificial Reality: a human-made representation of a physical, mathematical, or imaginary reality; examples include drawings, paintings, photographs, movies, computer models/ graphics, and Virtual Reality systems.
- Imaginary Reality: a spatial reality in the human mind.
An optical reality is (potentially) composed of one or more images of a spatial reality—each typically seen from a single viewpoint, whereby said images can (potentially) be used to infer information about the nature of spatial reality contained 3-D forms. Unfortunately, there is no universal way to unambiguously identify the structure of said 3-D forms (the equivalence problem); and we must resort to contextual factors.
One such method is linear perspective (graphical form), which allows encoding/decoding of an optical reality using known metric grid(s) to map/ represent/comprehend a spatial reality.
Worlds
Optical perspective is concerned with making/presenting/analysing visual images of a three-dimensional space (e.g., the physical world or physical reality). Optical perspective works to view, match, represent, or project/display aspects of a spatial scene, ostensibly limited to:
- The Physical World refers to physical reality, or 2-D/3-D Object(s) present in a 3-D space (spatial scene).
- The Optical World (includes optical illusions): refers to the changing appearance of objects as conveyed to the camera, instrument, or the eye/detector by emitted or reflected light (ref. using real, modelled, represented, illusive, or even imaginary light-rays). Ergo, a key goal of perspective is to explore the physical world by using the optical world to probe/represent 3-D space accurately or with sufficient realism.
- The Visual World (unaided eyesight): refers to the natural products of human vision—or the transformation of the optical world according to the rules/processes of human vision (ref. physiological and psychological optics).
We humans also copy aspects of these objective and subjective visual worlds in the form of represented/modelled world(s). Whereby the classes of ‘world’ possess fundamental mapping relations —characterised by the phenomena/principles/methods of optical/technical perspective. However, the precise nature, validity, and operations are by no means straightforward or guaranteed.
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