record

Thesis Info

LABS ID
00373
Thesis Title
The Place Of The Viewer's Expansion in Optical Systems: The Use Of Time in Media and its Spatial Applications
Author
Christopher Michael Caporlingua
2nd Author
3rd Author
Degree
Master of Fine Arts in Media Arts Production, Emerging Practices Concentration
Year
2011
Number of Pages
65
University
The University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
Thesis Supervisor
Mark Shepard
Supervisor e-mail
shepard6 AT buffalo.edu
Other Supervisor(s)
Marc Böhlen (marcbohlen@acm.org) , Paul Vanouse (vanouse@buffalo.edu)
Language(s) of Thesis
English
Department / Discipline
Department of Media Study
Copyright Ownership
registered to self
Languages Familiar to Author
English
URL where full thesis can be found
ccapor.net/research/CCaporlinguaThesisNov11B.pdf
Keywords
Perspective, Affordances, Realtime Graphics, Image Manipulation, Synthesized Optics, Expanded Camera, distortion, apparatus, representation and storage of images
Abstract: 200-500 words
The real spaces we deal with everyday and the representations of them that we create all are mediated through the experience and reconstitution of them with memory and media, both of which are molded from our anatomy, psychology and experience. Visually, experience and representation conforms to the workings of our own vision through the eye and our perception of the sequence of images that it produces. Perspective is a trait of this type of vision that allows us to locate ourselves in our surroundings. It is enhanced by time but not assisted by the other senses. As a result, the simulation and manipulation of it are critical to the development and advancement of art and visual media up to the advent of photographic film and motion pictures. The ‘Kino-eye’ brought advancement to the process of seeing by providing a mechanical apparatus for the equal segmentation of vision and time. Sequential recording made time accessible, editing made it malleable, projecting it made it able to be reconstituted into new forms. The visual part of the camera bears little difference to the optics of the camera obscura and the eye. This expands our perception of time beyond our position in it. Filmed motion made the linearity, continuity, duration and singularity of time and sequence variable. The structure of film makes many provisions for this new way of interpreting time and we have easily accepted and adapted to it. These new abilities are explored in film montage, chronophotography and photodynanism. There has not been an equal expansion on our view of space and our position in it. The camera allows us to go to many places and see many things, but these processes are a derivative of movement. It does not allow us to be in many places or see things in a way greater than we can already. In this way, the camera gives us an ability to expand or modify our temporal experiences of the image sequence. The camera has not afforded us an equal expansion of our understanding of the spatial image and experience in a similar way. We experience an expansion of space not in itself but through time and sequence. Image capture does not necessitate an exploration beyond the optical systems of the camera obscura and the eye. Perspective is a format, bias and affordance in media and actual experience. It is perhaps one of our most basic affordances; it is the system by which we can relate our position, distance and scale to our environment. In trying to explore space and geometry as far as we have explored time in film, we must consider the internal processes (and distortions) we use to make sense of our experience in space, and the apparatus that we have to simulate it. Time and sequence let us create and reconstitute the image and motion of an object or self. The same sequence can be used to expand our experience of the spatial properties. The research done has resulted in a new process to expand the place of viewer through a new idea for the process of storing images. This is an additive process that aims to expand and question our perception. This is in contrast to the process of editing and montage that is a selective process to focus our experience. Key to this new system is using devices normally dedicated to the capture of chronographic information to instead capture the depth of a scene. Because of this, the process will be just as automated a system as moving film. The reconstitution and projection of the image will be a remapping of this visual information onto a new system. New ways of seeing can be found through researching this new system of alternative optics and perspective.