Home project process

Hello world!! For my home project, I am developing an experiment that explores the different languages of depth & perspective. This also doubles as my mentorship project. Here an excerpt of the proposal I wrote for the experiment, which summarizes the premise:

Research Proposal: Perception of depth and perspective techniques

February 20, 2024

I. Intro

This research project will focus on confirming or refuting the claim that perceiving depth in an illustration is a learned skill by pursuing the following question: does an individual’s previous experience in looking at images affect their ability to read perspective conveyed through different techniques? Specifically, the differences between linear, atmospheric, focus, and isometric perspectives will be investigated.

In each of the figures above, does the red dot or the blue dot lie at a greater distance from the camera?

How does the viewer know?

Fascinatingly, the reason viewers perceive depth in this set of pictures is different for each image. Figure A uses linear perspective to create depth through the use of receding lines; Figure B uses atmospheric perspective, which desaturates the color or distorts the form of objects that sit farther away from the viewer; Figure C uses focus perspective, which renders objects only in the foreground with clarity/precision; Figure D uses isometric perspective, where it is understood that objects closer to the “top of the page” are farther from the viewer, even if those objects have not been foreshortened at all.

A lot of visual artists must deal with translating three-dimensional spaces onto two-dimensional surfaces. When an artist paints a mountain landscape, they must give the illusion of mountainous forms on what is a really small, flat canvas. To achieve this, many artists use linear perspective. Linear perspective is a technique that involves using receding lines in order to convey depth. More importantly, as Mrs. Jane Samborski often puts it, linear perspective is also the “visual language” in which photographs convey depth — a camera lens perceives the world in terms of vanishing points and foreshortening. These concepts, however, are just that: a language. One only understands where the red dots and blue dots sit in space because there are visual indicators in the image that give context to the location of those dots. Applying linear, atmospheric, focus, or isometric perspective is just a matter of choosing which visual indicators to use.

II. Experiment

Mr. Dash Shaw claims that modern humans understand photographs and art modeled after ‘photographic perspective’ (linear perspective) because the invention of the camera has promoted it as the default visual language of our society. In other words, an individual readily perceives depth in images that use linear perspective because they know “how” to read the image.

This research project will investigate Mr. Shaw’s claim through a survey experiment that follows the procedure below.

1. For each trial, show Participant #1 a brief video or ask them to play a mini-game, daily, over a 7-day period involving a particular technique in rendering space.

2. At the end of the 7 days, test the subject’s ability to perceive depth in compositions that use this technique.

3. On Participant #2, test the subject’s ability to perceive depth in compositions that use the same technique shown to Participant #1. 

4. Compare the performances of Participant #1 and Participant #2. 

5. Repeat steps 1-3 for multiple participant pairs and various perspective techniques. 

Ideally, this procedure will be conducted for as many trials as possible on a sample size that is selected as randomly as possible. The group of individuals who acted as “Participant #1” (referred to as “Group 1”) will be compared against the group acting as “Participant #2” (“Group 2”). Group performance will be determined by comparing the unanimity of group opinion: if only half of Group 1 thinks the red dot is further away than the blue dot, then the perspective technique does not truly communicate depth effectively to Group 1. Overall, if Group 1 performs better than Group 2, then the experiment confirms Mr. Shaw’s claim, and if Group 1 performs the same as Group 2, then Mr. Shaw’s claim is refuted.

Citations

 “Horizonte En Perspectiva. - Dibujar Facil.” Dibujar Facil, 17 Nov. 2022, https://dibujarfacil.com/horizonte-en-perspectiva/.

Curtis, Jason. “Atmospheric Perspective.” Jason Curtis Photography, https://jasoncurtisphotography.com/store/layers-prints. Accessed 16 Feb. 2024. 

Kalhagen, Alyson. “8 Top Small Pet Birds.” The Spruce Pets, The Spruce Pets, 31 Jan. 2012, https://www.thesprucepets.com/popular-small-bird-species-390926.

Owascer. “Isometric Art 2!” DeviantArt, https://www.deviantart.com/owascer/art/Isometric-Art-2-538260827. Accessed 16 Feb. 2024.

CURRENT PROGRESS! I am currently building the minigames that will prime Group 1 before testing their ability to read perspective. I have currently built 5 environments: cool atmospheric perspective, warm atmospheric perspective, focus perspective (uses Gaussian blur), isometric perspective, and "upside-down" isometric perspective. I hope to develop a sixth environment that creates focus perspective using an expressive mark (like the technique used in Heroic Times, Daliás idők) as well.

Because the coding-side of things is quite involved (I'm trying to develop the mini-game in a way that allows the participants to play conveniently from home so that more people will actually participate in the 7-day trial), that is taking a lot of my time. Overall, I'm really happy with the current progress, especially with how the focus perspective turned out.