Predatory vision : 3D imaging and the transformation of screen-space

Despite Wheatstone’s academic interests in the device, the stereoscope languished somewhat as an optical toy. Yet the advent of 3D screen-spaces for home and mass entertainment suggests today’s consumers and practitioners of screen culture hold the view that screen culture will be ‘improved’ through 3D imaging technologies. Like cinema and photography, stereoscopic 3D imaging has the potential to transform visual culture. But what is transformed, as optics and electronic imaging techniques deliver Alice in Wonderland in 3D? This paper links the advent of 3D cinema and TV to the notion that vision is itself a ‘technology of the visual’. As such, our innate binocular stereoacuity is ripe for exploitation by developers of 3D imaging technologies. I argue that contemporary 3D imaging marks an epistemological visual-perceptual shift: toward screenspaces becoming spaces for potential action. Such a shift entails seeing as doing rather than seeing as thinking. 3D imaging exploits binocular vision’s spatial acuity (stereopsis), but is effective only for objects within near distal space. The 3D effect tapers off dramatically for objects only some metres away, because the two retinal images lack significant lateral disparity (difference) to trigger stereopsis: the imagery flattens out and becomes ‘monoscopic’. Information available from conventional 2D media entails a peculiarly unspecified spatiality. Perceptually, the contents of a conventional cinematic screen are like those of a painting: they are situated neither near nor far, and constitute a shared and ambiguous visual space. Our own eyes are like those of a cat: frontally placed for predatory action. The visuality of 3D screen-spaces assumes a perceptuality of the near-by and close at hand, since this is the structure of the visible information to which stereopsis is adapted to respond. Noting the binocular acuity of predatory animals, as well as some etymological links, this paper examines the implications of perceptually ‘capturing’ the sensation of visually solid objects in one’s immediate space. Stereopsis is about decisive action within an immediate environment: but it also presupposes the single viewpoint of an active observer toward which the 3D imagery is targeted.

Instrumental vision

This chapter interrogates stereo-immersive ‘virtual reality’ (VR), the technology that enables a perceiver to experience what it is like to be immersed in a simulated environment. While the simulation is powered by the “geometry engine” (Cutting, 1997: 31) associated with high-end computer imaging technology, the visual experience itself is powered by ordinary human vision: the vision system’s innate capacity to see “in 3D”. To understand and critically appraise stereo-immersive VR, we should study not its purported ‘virtuality’, but its specific visuality, because the ‘reality’ of a so-called ‘virtual environment’ is afforded by the stereoacuity of binocular vision itself. By way of such a critique of the visuality of stereo-immersive VR, this chapter suggests that we think about the ‘practice’ of vision, and consider on what basis vision can have its own ‘materiality’. Pictorial perception is proposed as an exemplary visual mode in which the possibilities of perception might emerge. Against the ‘possibilities’ of vision associated with pictures, the visuality of stereo-immersive VR emerges as a harnessing, or ‘instrumentalisation’ of vision’s innate capabilities. James J. Gibson’s ‘ecological’ approach to vision studies is referenced to show the degree to which developers of VR have sought — and succeeded — to mimic the ‘realness’ of ordinary perceptual reality. This raises a question concerning whether the success of stereo-immersive VR is simultaneously the source of its own perceptual redundancy: for to bring into being the perceptual basis of ordinary ‘real’ reality, is to return the perceiver to what is already familiar and known.

Review of guidelines for children's vision screenings

The aim of children's vision screenings is to detect visual problems that are common in this age category through valid and reliable tests. Nevertheless, the cost effectiveness of paediatric vision screenings, the nature of the tests included in the screening batteries and the ideal screening age has been the cause of much debate in Australia and worldwide. Therefore, the purpose of this review is to report on the current practice of children's vision screenings in Australia and other countries, as well as to evaluate the evidence for and against the provision of such screenings. This was undertaken through a detailed investigation of peer-reviewed publications on this topic. The current review demonstrates that there is no agreed vision screening protocol for children in Australia. This appears to be a result of the lack of strong evidence supporting the benefit of such screenings. While amblyopia, strabismus and, to a lesser extent refractive error, are targeted by many screening programs during pre-school and at school entry, there is less agreement regarding the value of screening for other visual conditions, such as binocular vision disorders, ocular health problems and refractive errors that are less likely to reduce distance visual acuity. In addition, in Australia, little agreement exists in the frequency and coverage of screening programs between states and territories and the screening programs that are offered are ad hoc and poorly documented. Australian children stand to benefit from improved cohesion and communication between jurisdictions and health professionals to enable an equitable provision of validated vision screening services that have the best chance of early detection and intervention for a range of paediatric visual problems.

Circle: orbital commutation

In exercising vision we employ strategies to perceive space and to distinguish the objects of attention. Some processes however remain invisible to us; how we process binocular vision; and how we resolve vision in motion. This work images invisible motion perspective. Revelation of invisible mechanisms of vision exposes the haptic qualities of sight and their contribution to proprioception and ʻaffordanceʼ. Figuring the ʻvortex of visionʼ also releases symbolic and metaphoric potentials. This innovative outcome of practical research develops imagery which depicts relative movement in space using the principles of motion perspective (Herschel) and optic flow (J. J. Gibson); the locative awareness of volumes in space through the dimensions of time and space presented in 2D imagery. The mural scale (3.5 metres) work presented in 'Circle', a group show of work around the idea of 'the circle' curated by Melinda Capp is derived from a large production of digital photographs made in the London Underground. In this work, the circle is associated with the orbit of the commuter which bends around the twin poles of home and employment, work and rest, circulating in an ellipse around the Ideal Life. Each traveller's path is a braid woven through gyrations of force and resistance. Optic flow, emulated with the rotating lens, tracing the moving subject, makes this visible.

Maternity

Fruiting bodies represents human engagement with and consciousness of a corresponding presence in our landscape. ʻFruiting Bodiesʼ is an instance of the application of this practice employed to ask the viewer to consider how strange is the phenomenon of the fruiting tree. Is it promiscuous to offer your seed openly to the elements, to any who will take it. Is this forbidden? Is it profligate to hide your progeny inside gifts so tempting in their appeal to that most primitive desire, hunger? Is this wholly mere biological expedience evolved to ensure the widest migration of your offspring? Or does it derive from some boundless cosmic generosity? These images invite you to come close to the tree, where within its arms you will find shelter from the sun at its zenith and from the autumnal rains. Fruit is the focus of Jamesʼs lens as it circles deep into the embrace of limbs and leaves.

Luxe

Fruiting bodies represents human engagement with and consciousness of a corresponding presence in our landscape. ʻFruiting Bodiesʼ is an instance of the application of this practice employed to ask the viewer to consider how strange is the phenomenon of the fruiting tree. Is it promiscuous to offer your seed openly to the elements, to any who will take it. Is this forbidden? Is it profligate to hide your progeny inside gifts so tempting in their appeal to that most primitive desire, hunger? Is this wholly mere biological expedience evolved to ensure the widest migration of your offspring? Or does it derive from some boundless cosmic generosity? These images invite you to come close to the tree, where within its arms you will find shelter from the sun at its zenith and from the autumnal rains. Fruit is the focus of Jamesʼs lens as it circles deep into the embrace of limbs and leaves.

Lust

Fruiting bodies represents human engagement with and consciousness of a corresponding presence in our landscape. ʻFruiting Bodiesʼ is an instance of the application of this practice employed to ask the viewer to consider how strange is the phenomenon of the fruiting tree. Is it promiscuous to offer your seed openly to the elements, to any who will take it. Is this forbidden? Is it profligate to hide your progeny inside gifts so tempting in their appeal to that most primitive desire, hunger? Is this wholly mere biological expedience evolved to ensure the widest migration of your offspring? Or does it derive from some boundless cosmic generosity? These images invite you to come close to the tree, where within its arms you will find shelter from the sun at its zenith and from the autumnal rains. Fruit is the focus of Jamesʼs lens as it circles deep into the embrace of limbs and leaves.

Glance

Fruiting bodies represents human engagement with and consciousness of a corresponding presence in our landscape. ʻFruiting Bodiesʼ is an instance of the application of this practice employed to ask the viewer to consider how strange is the phenomenon of the fruiting tree. Is it promiscuous to offer your seed openly to the elements, to any who will take it. Is this forbidden? Is it profligate to hide your progeny inside gifts so tempting in their appeal to that most primitive desire, hunger? Is this wholly mere biological expedience evolved to ensure the widest migration of your offspring? Or does it derive from some boundless cosmic generosity? These images invite you to come close to the tree, where within its arms you will find shelter from the sun at its zenith and from the autumnal rains. Fruit is the focus of Jamesʼs lens as it circles deep into the embrace of limbs and leaves.

Gyration

European Renaissance and Romantic landscape appeared in vistas. The conditions of the industrial revolution and, according to Patrick Maynard and Jonathon Crary, the film camera especially, led to a Modernist re-vision vividly recorded in Xavier Herbert’s contrary Modernist vision, prompted by seeing the Australian bush, its ‘... stunted trees, the mulga and the wilga and the gimlet gum, doing a kind of dance, spinning past, seeming to swing away from the train to the horizon and race ahead, to come back...the same set of trees in endless gyration’.

Shifting ground in some Australian photography

This is a report of a practice-as-research project. The chapter outlines McArdle's discoveries of means by which the pre-conscious processes of binocular vision and steropsis can be made visible in an effect which with one-eyed vision renders the scene 3-dimensional.

In the book's introduction editor Mehigan writes "[The] will to creation is only assayable once we estimate the role of the observer in the construction of space. McArdle's contribution, in engaging with the question of the animating presence of the observer focuses not just on what is caught in the lens of the photographer at the moment of depiction, but how the photographer's movement through space is the 'force field' that insinuates itself into the landscape and enters into a reciprocal relationship with it. The schematism of Euclidean geometry, for this reason, cannot account for the truth of the photographer's images; McArdle's metaphors are singularly non-Euclidean in their description of how objects are held together in the imaginative space of mental awareness."

Duoscope

The ambiguous representation of spatial depth in Thornton Walker’s painting The Homage creates a peculiar sense in which the ‘whereness’ of depicted objects and atmosphere cannot be ascertained by, either perspectival convention or perceptual strategies. This visual-spatial ambiguity resonates with my interested in ‘broken’ stereography. Hence, ‘duoscopy’ refers to the limitations of binocular vision when the object of perception is itself duplicitous.

Parallax

Parallax is a live contemporary dance work that incorporates 3D animation, stereoscopic illusions and dance. This work was performed within the Melbourne Fringe Festival at the Substation, Newport. Within this work the stereoscopic illusion creates a new choreographic palette that can be used to manipulate human physicality via animated bodies that appear within the performance space. The stereoscopic image is released from the wall and placed within the dancing environment the image becomes another body within the dance space that can be manipulated in ways that would be impossible for a real physical body. In turn, the dancing body is positioned within the digital environment. The performer’s abilities have not changed, but the space around the dancer can be manipulated with imagery that transforms the place of the dancer within time and space. The stereoscopic illusion and live dance are melded creating a new experience of choreography one that takes the infinite possibilities of 3D animation and places them directly within choreography. Thematically this performance draws on the historical events revolving around the development of the stereoscope in the 1830s and the seminal ideas of the virtual that surfaced at this time. In the early 1830s Charles Wheatstone drew on the ideas and writings of Euclid and Leonardo da Vinci and discovered binocular vision through the use of his stereoscope box. It was this box that became the entertainment sensation of this time becoming a standard parlour entertainment. Unlike now where imagery of people are everywhere in the 1830s these types of imagery were novel. The stereoscopic pictures often showed content of people doing ordinary tasks such as chopping wood, doing the washing or simply standing in front of their house. In Parallax a Victorian woman is transported from her hallway to virtual worlds where she encounters, Euclid’s ancient Greek column, a di Vinci sphere and one of the first stereoscopic images drawn by Charles Wheatstone’s a stick figure cube.

A visual profile of Queensland Indigenous children

PURPOSE: Little is known about the prevalence of refractive error, binocular vision, and other visual conditions in Australian Indigenous children. This is important given the association of these visual conditions with reduced reading performance in the wider population, which may also contribute to the suboptimal reading performance reported in this population. The aim of this study was to develop a visual profile of Queensland Indigenous children. METHODS: Vision testing was performed on 595 primary schoolchildren in Queensland, Australia. Vision parameters measured included visual acuity, refractive error, color vision, nearpoint of convergence, horizontal heterophoria, fusional vergence range, accommodative facility, AC/A ratio, visual motor integration, and rapid automatized naming. Near heterophoria, nearpoint of convergence, and near fusional vergence range were used to classify convergence insufficiency (CI). RESULTS: Although refractive error (Indigenous, 10%; non-Indigenous, 16%; p = 0.04) and strabismus (Indigenous, 0%; non-Indigenous, 3%; p = 0.03) were significantly less common in Indigenous children, CI was twice as prevalent (Indigenous, 10%; non-Indigenous, 5%; p = 0.04). Reduced visual information processing skills were more common in Indigenous children (reduced visual motor integration [Indigenous, 28%; non-Indigenous, 16%; p < 0.01] and slower rapid automatized naming [Indigenous, 67%; non-Indigenous, 59%; p = 0.04]). The prevalence of visual impairment (reduced visual acuity) and color vision deficiency was similar between groups. CONCLUSIONS: Indigenous children have less refractive error and strabismus than their non-Indigenous peers. However, CI and reduced visual information processing skills were more common in this group. Given that vision screenings primarily target visual acuity assessment and strabismus detection, this is an important finding as many Indigenous children with CI and reduced visual information processing may be missed. Emphasis should be placed on identifying children with CI and reduced visual information processing given the potential effect of these conditions on school performance.

Relationship between vision impairment and ability to perform activities of daily living

Purpose: To determine the relationship between clinical measures of vision impairment and the ability to perform activities of daily living (ADLs).

Methods: One hundred and twenty subjects with low vision from a variety of causes participated in the study. Vision impairment was assessed under binocular conditions by measuring distance visual acuity, near word acuity, Melbourne Edge Test contrast sensitivity, Pelli–Robson Chart contrast sensitivity and visual fields. The ADL performance was assessed using the Melbourne Low Vision ADL Index (MLVAI), which is in part an observed performance assessment of instrumental ADLs and in part a self-report assessment of basic self-care ADLs.

Results: All vision measures had a high, statistically significant correlation with MLVAI total score. Near word acuity, had the strongest correlation (rs=−0.86, p < 0.001), followed by Melbourne Edge Test contrast sensitivity (rs=0.80, p < 0.001). Visual field had the weakest correlation (rs=0.56, p < 0.001). Together, age, near word acuity, Melbourne Edge Test contrast sensitivity and visual field accounted for 82.2% (adjusted R2, p < 0.001) of the variance in MLVAI total score. All correlations obtained were higher for the observed performance assessment of instrumental ADLs than for the self-report assessment of basic self-care ADLs.

Conclusions: Clinical vision impairment measures are highly correlated with capacity to perform ADLs, as measured by the MLVAI.