The Perspective Research Centre investigates perspective as a broad interdisciplinary field concerned with how spatial reality is observed, formed, projected, measured, represented, simulated, transformed and experienced. Its research extends far beyond conventional perspective drawing to include natural and visual appearance, optics, geometry, imaging, photography, cinema, instruments, scientific and technical applications, computer graphics, virtual environments and emerging forms of digital media.
A central aim of PRC research is to bring together areas of perspective knowledge that have traditionally been divided among different disciplines. Perspective is commonly encountered separately in art, geometry, optics, vision, architecture, photography, engineering, cartography, cinema and computer science. Yet many of these fields employ related processes, principles, methods, systems, images and phenomena. Studying them together reveals relationships that can remain hidden when each is considered in isolation.
Researching Perspective as a Unified Field
Perspective is often treated primarily as linear or graphical perspective: the geometrical construction of an apparently three-dimensional view upon a two-dimensional surface. PRC research approaches the subject much more widely. Perspective concerns the many processes through which spatial objects, scenes, views and images are viewed or imaged, projected, calculated, measured, matched, represented, simulated and interpreted.
This wider field is both extensive and complex. The Dictionary of Perspective documents approximately 4,000 terms and about 1,200 identified types and forms of perspective. These range from long-established graphical and optical systems to photography, cinema, scientific imaging, computer vision, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and other forms of New Media Perspective.
The scale of this material raises a fundamental research problem: how can the many theories, principles, categories, classes, types, forms, phenomena, functions, methods, systems and products of perspective be understood as parts of a coherent subject?
PRC research therefore seeks not merely to catalogue perspective, but to clarify its underlying structure and develop an integrated theoretical framework through which apparently separate areas of the subject can be compared and related.
Perspective Category Theory
A principal outcome of this work is Perspective Category Theory (PCT), developed as a framework for organising and analysing perspective processes, systems, images, representations and phenomena.
PCT distinguishes the principal sources or modes through which perspective operates. These include Natural Perspective, Visual Perspective, Optical Perspective, Mathematical Perspective, Graphical Perspective, Instrument Perspective, Simulated Perspective and New Media Perspective. Visual Perspective Type 2 identifies the human retinal and perceptual component of the wider Visual Perspective category.
The theory also distinguishes two principal directional classes:
- Viewing or Imaging Class — the image-forming or capturing direction, in which light, visual information or spatial data passes from an object, scene or existing image towards an eye, sensor, image plane or imaging system.
- Projecting Class — the image-projecting direction, in which light, images, shadows, lines or spatial information are projected from a source or representational system into physical, graphical, optical or simulated space.
Individual perspective systems may involve several categories or processes. Category Chaining occurs when categories operate sequentially; Category Overloading occurs when a term, process or image legitimately belongs to more than one category; and Composite Perspective describes the resulting multi-category process, system, image or environment.
This framework enables complex optical, geometrical, technological and perceptual processes to be separated into identifiable components without losing sight of the relationships between them.
Terminology, Taxonomy and Classification
A major area of PRC research concerns the terminology of perspective. The subject contains numerous cases in which several names are used for the same or closely related concept, while a single term may refer to different methods, processes, systems, image forms, functions, outcomes or phenomena.
This ambiguity is not merely linguistic. If different kinds of perspective operation are given the same name—or fundamentally similar operations are treated as unrelated because they occur in different disciplines—it becomes difficult to compare theories, identify general principles or explain how perspective systems actually work.
The Dictionary of Perspective therefore combines definition with taxonomy and classification. Established terminology is retained wherever it is sufficiently precise. Where existing terminology is inadequate, definitions, classifications or usages may be identified as new or refined.
These designations should be understood carefully. They indicate that a definition, classification or usage extends beyond standard accounts; they do not necessarily imply that no comparable idea has ever appeared previously. The purpose is to improve conceptual precision and provide terminology capable of describing relationships that are otherwise difficult to identify or discuss.
Problems and Unresolved Questions
PRC research also examines problems that arise whenever three-dimensional spatial reality is transformed into a visual, optical, geometrical or represented image.
Perspective inevitably involves relationships between object space and image space. Information concerning size, shape, position, direction, angle, distance, scale and time may be transformed, reduced or lost during imaging, projection and interpretation. Consequently, a perspective image can correspond closely with aspects of physical reality without being identical to that reality.
Research topics arising from these relationships include questions of image registration and correspondence, the Scale–Shape–Size Problem, the Shape-Sufficiency Problem, viewpoint, visual angles, optical and geometrical distortion, apparent form, spatial interpretation and the relationships between monocular and binocular visual information.
Human vision introduces further complexity. The two eyes receive separately positioned and differently angled views, yet visual experience normally provides an apparently unified spatial world. Perspective therefore involves not only geometrical and physical optics but physiological and psychological processes of vision and interpretation.
These problems demonstrate why perspective cannot be reduced simply to a drawing procedure or projection formula. It occupies a critical position between physical spatial reality, optical formation, geometrical description, image representation and visual perception.
Perspective Systems and Image Chains
Another important area of research concerns the perspective system: an organised arrangement of components and processes operating together to view, form, capture, project, measure, represent, simulate, display or interpret spatial information.
A single perspective image may pass through a chain of processes. A physical scene may first possess a Natural Perspective, be optically imaged by a camera, processed through an Instrument or New Media system, displayed upon another imaging surface and finally experienced through human Visual Perspective Type 2.
Understanding such an image chain becomes increasingly important in modern imaging systems, because contemporary visual media frequently combine optical, mathematical, instrumental and computational processes.
New Media Perspective can combine multiple views, scales, times and forms of spatial information. Systems such as digital mapping, computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality, computer vision and other computational environments may link, register, transform, compare and explore many separate perspective images within a common spatial framework.
Functions and Products of Perspective
PRC research also asks what perspective actually does. Perspective is not only a family of image forms; its methods and systems perform a wide range of functions.
These include capturing, observing, prescribing, measuring, calculating, classifying, modelling, surveying, mapping, indexing, linking, mixing, exploring, displaying and projecting information about spatial reality.
More broadly, perspective can be used to:
- View spatial reality;
- Match or measure spatial reality;
- Represent spatial reality;
- create an illusion of spatial reality; and
- produce an experience of apparent immersion.
The corresponding products of perspective may include a visual image, view, measurement, calculation, representation, model or other structured description of a three-dimensional object or scene.
This functional approach is important because the same underlying perspective principles may be employed for very different purposes across art, science and technology.
Research Across Art, Science and Technology
Perspective has played fundamental roles across a remarkably wide range of disciplines. Its principles and systems are associated with developments in art and architecture, optics and vision, photography and cinema, astronomy, engineering, surveying, cartography, archaeology and scientific imaging.
Modern technological applications extend the field still further through Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Global Positioning Systems (GPS), computer vision, digital filmmaking, virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence and other computational imaging technologies.
These applications are not merely separate uses of an old graphical technique. They demonstrate how perspective operates repeatedly wherever spatial information is viewed, measured, transformed, modelled, projected, represented or interpreted.
Clarifying and Extending Perspective Theory
Volume 1 of The Art and Science of Perspective describes perspective as historically fragmented: a field divided among numerous graphical, visual, optical, measuring, imaging and modelling techniques, with partial theories and local solutions that often apply only to particular circumstances.
PRC research responds to this fragmentation by seeking more general relationships. The objective is not simply to replace established methods or historical theories, but to determine how they fit within a larger structure, where they overlap, where terminology is inadequate, and where important principles or problems remain insufficiently explained.
This work includes the continuing development of Perspective Category Theory, the classification of perspective types and forms, the clarification of perspective phenomena and functions, and the investigation of relationships between natural, visual, optical, geometrical, technical and computational perspective.
The longer-term aim is to contribute towards a more coherent science of perspective: an interdisciplinary field capable of bringing together the optical, geometrical, visual and representational principles through which human beings observe, understand, measure, model and represent spatial reality.
A Continuing Research Programme
Perspective remains a developing subject. New imaging technologies continually create new systems, combinations and forms of visual experience, while older principles continue to raise questions concerning projection, appearance, perception, representation and reality correspondence.
The PRC therefore treats perspective research as an ongoing programme: to collect and organise existing knowledge, clarify terminology, identify relationships, investigate unresolved problems, refine concepts and classifications, and develop theoretical structures capable of connecting the many different worlds of perspective.
Explore further: Perspective Category Theory → Taxonomy of Perspective → Perspective Resources → People & Archives of Perspective → Perspective Navigation Index →