Modern Perspectivists

PERSPECTIVE has a long and fascinating history, having played key roles in art, science and technology over the last 500 years. Nevertheless, the ‘journey of perspective’ continues, because the future holds much promise—and many exciting opportunities—for this rapidly evolving subject.

Perspective directs human attention ever forwards/outwards/upwards, providing new vistas on all spatial scales. Introduced is a systematic approach to three-dimensional spaces and objects contained therein. Perspective leads to mastery of the spatial topics, foreshadowing unprecedented innovations in art, science and technology.

All of this begs the question: what does the future hold for the apparently established/distinguished (if somewhat fragmentary) field of optical perspective? What new technological wonders will the subject unlock?

Modern Pioneers

In the following sections, we explore the innovations of pioneering perspectivists from the modern era.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Einstein saw perspective as key to reality, asserting that measurements and experiences are relative to the observer. He encouraged shifting viewpoints to discover opportunities, embracing wonder, and overcoming the illusion of separation from the universe.

Einstein’s views on perspective

Relativity of Viewpoint: Everything is relative; observers in different frames of reference have their own valid definitions of time and space.
Optical Delusion: Humans often mistakenly see themselves as separate from the universe, which Einstein termed an “optical delusion of consciousness.”
Miracle Mindset: Einstein advocated for a perspective of wonder, believing we can choose to see everything as a miracle or nothing as such.
Constant Change: Transforming our world requires changing our thinking.

Einstein was a fan of visual thinking, or thinking with the aid of mental perspective views/images, which serve as doppelgängers of actual/possible optical perspective views/images, rather than purely using literal or symbolic images.

Einstein said: “Words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be “voluntarily” reproduced and combined…but taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought—before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other signs which can be communicated to others.”

Albert Flocon (1909-1994)

Albert Flocon is an artist and author of two books on perspective; named ‘La Perspective’ and ‘Curvilinear Perspective: from Visual Space to the Constructed Image (1988)’. The latter work is a major work that went along way to popularising the concept of curvilinear perspective.

Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)

Alfred Hitchcock’s perspective in film is characterised by his use of point of view (POV) shots, framing, lighting, and long takes to create tension and emotion.

Hitchcok’s use of perspective is evident in his filmwork:

Point of view (POV) shots: Hitchcock used POV shots to make the audience feel like they were directly in the scene. For example, in Psycho, the audience is placed inside the shower with Marian Crane and her attacker.
Framing: Hitchcock used framing to mirror the protagonist and antagonist, and to help the audience determine who was good and bad, and to create shots that made the audience feel like they were on the outside looking in.
Lighting: Hitchcock used lighting to help the audience distinguish between good and bad (for example). He also used lighting to create a gradual transformation from one time of day to another, making it seem as if the story were unfolding in real time.
Long takes: Hitchcock used long takes to make the story feel like it was unfolding in real time.

Benoit Mandelbrot (1924-2010)

Benoit B. Mandelbrot (1924–2010) was a Polish-born French-American mathematician known for inventing fractal geometry and coining the term “fractal,” focusing on the “art of roughness” and self-similarity in nature.

A fundamental tenet of linear perspective is the inverse size-distance law which states that if one doubled the distance, the represented size was one-half. If one trebled the distance, the size was one-third and so on. Indeed, this law is still basic and applied to many problems in science/engineering.

In 1967 Benoit Mandelbrot (1924-2010) wrote an interesting article on Fractals that questioned the universal applicability of the size-distance law [52]. Mandelbrot’s article concerned the size of the coast of Britain, and implicitly introduced a spanner into this assumption by showing that size was a function of both scale and distance. The measured coastline length depends upon scale or the apparent ‘jaggedness’ of coastal outline. Accordingly, walking or taking a boat around the coastline will involve travelling vastly different distances in each case! Modern mapping systems like Google Maps do (or should) implicitly consider related ‘scaling’ effects when calculating route distances /arrival-times for walking, driving, etc.

Mandelobrot’s idea relates to a little-known fact. Measuring size implies measuring also the dimension of shape, wherein the perceived object shape is a variable quantity that becomes fixed (or quantified) only at a specific projection scale or optical magnification. Thus, shape and measured size are both functions of the projection scale and its associated resolution, which is known as the scale/shape/size problem in optical/technical perspective.

In a sense, we have been vaguely aware of this ever since the 17th century. The shape of an ordinary image is transformed entirely when we change its scale in a telescope or a microscope. What is needed is a new approach to perspective—multi-scale perspective—that takes into account scale as well as distance, whereby any given shape only applies within a given range of scales. This multi-scale capability is vitally important in a world where we travel between scales with greater frequency.

True multi-scale views/images/measurements would open the way for better understanding of, and links between, nanoscopic, atomic, microscopic structures and macroscopic happenings.

Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, polymath, and futurist. He published more than 30 books and coined such terms as “Spaceship Earth”, “Dymaxion” (e.g., Dymaxion house, Dymaxion car, Dymaxion map), “ephemeralisation”, “synergetics”, and “tensegrity”. He made important contributions to geometry and perspective, for example, inventing a new kind of cartographic map (Dymaxion map), and the geodesic dome.

David Hockney (1937-)

In the 1980s-1990s, British artist David Hockney combined photography and painting, using photo- montages to create multiple viewpoints within a single photo-assembly, depictions that work somewhat like cubist art. In Hockney’s view, there is another idea involved here: linear perspective, he claimed, creates a wall between the viewer and the object represented. Whereas inverted perspective, according to Hockney, offers a way to remove that wall and integrate both viewer and representation within the same space.

Dick Termes (1941-)

Dick Termes is an American artist who uses a six-point perspective system that he devised to create unique paintings on large spheres called Termespheres. He is the world’s leading spherical artist.

E. Panofsky (1892-1968)

In his seminal 1924 essay, Perspective as Symbolic Form, German art historian Erwin Panofsky argues that linear perspective is not a natural or objective way of seeing, but a culturally determined visual construction that reflects the Renaissance philosophical and scientific worldview (Weltanschauung).

E.H. Gombrich (1909-2001)

Sir Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) was an Austrian-born art historian in the UK, known for his influential works, including The Story of Art and Art and Illusion.

J.J. Gibson (1904-1979)

James Jerome Gibson (1904 – 1979) was an American psychologist who made important contributions to the field of visual perception. In his theory of ecological perception, Gibson emphasises the way that an active observer picks up information from the environment, and that visual space is defined by information (such as texture gradients) contained on environmental surfaces, and also that crucial information for perception is information that remains invariant as an observer moves through the environment. Gibson argued that certain basic aspects of visual perception, including cues from texture gradients and affordances, are perceived directly without mental processes.

James Cameron (1954-)

James Cameron (1954-) is a Canadian filmmaker known for innovative technologies in filmmaking, including 3-D techniques. Additionally, he is a National Geographic explorer who produced documentaries on deep-ocean exploration and contributed to underwater filming technologies.

Kim Veltman (1948-202)

Professor Kim Veltman (1948-2020) was the world’s number one expert on visual/optical/technical perspective. He was also a leading scholar of Leonardo da Vinci, new media, and the history of the alphabet. Kim was a scholar who fervently studied the past—so that we might all learn how to shape the future conscientiously for the benefit of humanity. The upshot is that Kim’s significant and monumental contribution(s) cut right across traditional subject disciplines in the arts and sciences.

M.C.Escher (1898-1972)

Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898 – 1972) was a Dutch graphic artist who made woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints, many of which were inspired by mathematics. His work features mathematical objects and operations, including impossible objects, explorations of infinity, reflection, symmetry, perspective, truncated and stellated polyhedra, hyperbolic geometry, and tessellations.

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980)

Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) was a Canadian media theorist known for the phrase “the medium is the message” and the concept of the Global Village. He predicted the World Wide Web three decades before its invention, renewing interest in his work.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1972)

Pablo Picasso’s perspective concept was that people see objects from many angles, not just one. This belief led to his development of Cubism, an art movement that depicts objects from multiple perspectives.

Picasso believed that people see objects from many angles, selected by sight and movement.
Cubism depicts objects from multiple perspectives to represent them in a greater context.
Cubism breaks down objects into flat geometric shapes to represent different sides and angles.
Cubist paintings emphasise the two-dimensional flatness of the canvas.
Cubist paintings use colour, collage, and contrasting surfaces to create a sense of fragmentation and abstraction.

Paul Cezanne (1839-1906)

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) represents a “lived perspective” rather than traditional photographic or geometric perspective, reflecting human perception of the world. He emphasises touch, multi-view perspectives, and raw visual information, contrasting it with the limited perspective of photographs. Philosopher Merleau-Ponty notes that in Cézanne’s work, as the eye moves over a surface, images vary from different viewpoints, resulting in a “warped” perspective that conveys individual perception, revealing the depth and texture of objects.

Merleau-Ponty writes about one of Cezanne’s methods as follows: “Gustave Geffroy’s table stretches into the bottom of the picture, and indeed, when our eye runs over a large surface, the images it successively receives are taken from different points of view, and the whole surface is warped.” This “warped” perspective captures the subjective perception of an individual, and Cézanne’s paintings show us “the depth, the smoothness, softness, the hardness of objects.”

Paul Debevec

In 1992, Paul Debevec reversed the perspective process by starting from photographs to reconstruct the represented physical space electronically. While linear perspective was a method for aligning with the physical universe, Debevec’s methods introduced the possibility of cross-matching digital images with it.

Over the following 20 years, many practical consequences emerged, including movies such as Jurassic Park, Avatar, and The Matrix, as well as digital games, VR, and AR. Today, these and similar methods have been developed in systems such as the Stagecraft Virtual Production Environment, the Sphere Theatre (Las Vegas), and James Cameron’s 3-D Fusion Camera System.

Paul Klee (1879-1940)

Paul Klee (1879 – 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His unique style blended several key movements in art, including expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee’s works reflect his dry humour and sometimes (apparently) childlike perspective (which was actually very sophisticated in conception), his feelings and beliefs, and his musicality.

Pavel Florensky (1882-1937)

Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky (1882 – 1937) was a Russian theologian, priest, philosopher, mathematician, physicist, electrical engineer, inventor, and polymath. Florensky questioned the validity of linear perspective and held ‘reverse perspective’ in high regard and listed it as a primary essay for the proposed first volume of his magum opus, At the Watersheds of Thought, in 1922.

According to Pavel Florensky, linear perspective is based on 6 premises, which are false (one and all):

We live not in euclidean but in a visual space which is bounded, finite and distorted;
Beholder is not the centre-of-world;
Point-of-view ignores binocular aspects;
Fixed position of beholder is not the usual case;
Whole world is not static;
Excludes all psycho physiological processes.

The overall conclusion is that we humans (re)construct images using a fragmented and roving eye/ mind that is closer to the principles of reverse perspective.

Salvador Dali (1904-1989)

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) was a renowned Spanish surrealist artist known for his technical skill and bizarre imagery, particularly in his famous work, The Persistence of Memory, which features melting clocks. His art explores themes of dreams, the subconscious, sexuality, religion, and science. Dalí utilised linear perspective, optical illusions, and techniques like pointillism and holography to enhance his dramatic visual effects.

Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999)

Stanley Kubrick was filmmaker who often used one-point perspective in his films to create a sense of tension and anticipation.

Kubrick’s Film Technique

Vanishing point: In a one-point perspective shot, all horizontal lines in the frame would extend to a single point, called the vanishing point.
Symmetry: Kubrick often used symmetry in his one-point perspective shots.
Audience focus: Kubrick’s one-point perspective shots direct the audience’s focus to a specific point, even when nothing is happening.
Psychological effect: Kubrick’s one-point perspective shots can force the audience to look at the world differently.

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Steven Paul Jobs (1955 – 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor. He was a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with his early business partner and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. He and Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976 to sell Wozniak’s Apple I personal computer. Later, Jobs saw the commercial potential of the Xerox Alto computer in 1979, which was mouse-driven and had a graphical user interface (GUI). This led to the development of the Macintosh in 1984, the first mass-produced computer with a GUI.

In 1986, Jobs helped develop the visual effects industry by funding Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division, which spun off as Pixar and produced the first 3-D computer-animated feature film, Toy Story (1995).

In 1997, Jobs returned to Apple as CEO, and he worked with British designer Jony Ive to develop the iMac, iTunes, Mac OS X, Apple Store, iPod, iTunes Store, iPhone, App Store, and iPad. The iPhone and iPad led to new kinds of mobile perspective instruments/services, including live star/ celestial chart Apps that enable the user to see through a house ceiling and view stars also in the daytime, and also hand-held Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google Moon, which all pioneered innovative multi-view/multi-scale perspective systems.

Steven Spielberg (1946-)

Director Steven Spielberg’s films are known for their innovative camera work, visual storytelling, and use of lighting, camera angles, and movement. Spielberg is also known for his innovative use of camera movement and framing.

Some of Spielberg’s other techniques include:

Fluid camera movement: Use of zoom shots and fluid camera movement to shift shot composition without cutting. This technique transports the viewer and gives the visuals energy.
Camera movement in every direction: moving the camera in every direction, including tracking laterally, dollies in, and cranes up and down, all in a single shot.
Dramatic and claustrophobic shots: Use of dramatic and claustrophobic shots to create effects that push the boundaries of classic cinematographic framing.
Close-ups: convey actor emotions etc.
Small Aperture Shots (high-F/no lenses): to capture a deep field of view.
Tracking shots: The camera follows the actors as they move through the scene, capturing their performances from multiple angles.
Dolly shots: The camera moves on a dolly track to follow the action within a scene.
Motivated camera movement: The camera is part of the action, and its movement is informed by the motivations of the characters. For example, the camera might tilt downwards if a character is picking something up.
L System: Steven Spielberg is also known for using an “L system” in his movies, which involves actors and the camera moving in an L-pattern. This can include actors turning in an L-pattern, or the camera moving in one direction while actors move in an L-pattern.

Ted Nelson

Theodor Holm Nelson (1937 -) is an American pioneer of information technology, philosopher, and sociologist. He coined the terms hypertext and hypermedia in 1963 and published them in 1965. Later in his legendary 1974 book Computer Lib Dream Machines he also foresaw much of what became the internet and world wide web.

He is a major visionary of New Media perspective, but Nelson’s ideas run at a tangent to, and in some ways contradict, the notion of the World Wide Web as developed by Tim Berners-Lee. He says that the original idea of hypertext (his concept) consisted of a whole suite of (largely ignored) ideas, provided user freedom/capability to do a lot more, and included novel query, navigation, and publication mechanisms.

Crucially, according to Nelson, needed are two-way connections; whereby a ‘forward’ link not only moves you from one item to another, but ‘backward’ links allow you to see everywhere in the digital network where an item is used/referenced. Currently, on the Web, one cannot see where any item of knowledge is used across the network as a whole; hence we need search engines like Google to remedy (poorly) this situation.

Van Gogh (1853-1890)

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) used perspective to create landscapes and other paintings, and to guide the viewer’s eye. He used vanishing points, perspective grids, and a perspective drawing frame to create his work.

Van Gogh’s perspective techniques

Vanishing points: Van Gogh used vanishing points to give life to his compositions. He used them to guide the viewer’s eye, much as objects in a landscape converge at a vanishing point.
Perspective grids: Van Gogh used perspective grids as skeletons to build his landscapes.
Perspective drawing frame: Van Gogh used a perspective frame to learn linear perspective. He built his own frame after following instructions from a 19th-century French book.
One-point perspective: Van Gogh used one-point perspective to represent the inside of a room.

Van Gogh’s perspective in his work

In The Bedroom, Van Gogh uses an unusual perspective to make the objects in the painting seem to “fall” towards the viewer.
In his landscapes, Van Gogh used perspective to guide the viewer’s eye and to create a sense of beauty.

Walt Disney (1901-1966)

Walter Elias Disney (1901 – 1966) was an American animator, film producer, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in cartoon production, including the first use of colour and sound in this film genre. With Ub Iwerks, he developed the character Mickey Mouse in 1928, the first highly popular animated cartoon series.

Later, he introduced synchronised sound, full-colour three-strip Technicolor, feature-length cartoons, and technical developments in cameras (see multi-plane camera). The results, seen in features such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio, Fantasia (both 1940), Dumbo(1941), and Bambi (1942), furthered the development of animated film.

In the 1950s, Disney expanded into the theme park industry, and in July 1955, he opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California. These parks included many innovative applications of visual, optical, and graphical perspective.

Disney 3-D Techniques

Magic Eye Books (1994/1995): Use stereograms for hidden 3-D images of characters like Aladdin and Mickey Mouse.
Multiplane Camera: Creates depth with layers in films like Snow White.
Pepper’s Ghost: A special effects technique for ghostly effects in rides like the Haunted Mansion.
3-D Films & Attractions: Began in 1953 with Melody; modern attractions like MuppetVision 3-D incorporate immersive effects.

See also the Disney companies work on Circle-Vision, Circle-Vision 360, and the Circarama technology, plus the Haunted Mansion ‘Pepper’s ghost illusion, etc.