Augmented Reality

Have been reading an interesting article on Augmented Reality written by James R Vallino that looks at the aspects of it and how it can be utilised. This has now got me thinking further about where my installation can go, and I have started to consider the aspect of eye tracking or face recognition and the possiblity of users being able to take part in a large interactive illusion. Possibly using cameras and sensors running through MaxMSP with face recognition and once tracked then somehow the users can distort other participants views or visual perceptions.......hmmmm. This one needs a bit more thought and time....

Further research

Greg got back in contact and it will hopefully mean that I can take part in the composite interviews playing the part of a victim/witness next Wednesday which will be great. In the meantime I have been researching and developing further ideas in visual cognition. Professor Nick Wade in the psychology dept at Dundee University has an intriguing website based on various visual illusions. I've also come across a few more, including;





Moving the first towards and away from you will create the illusion of movement, the second shows an example of retinal fatigue, staring at the cross in the centre of the box, the dots will start to disappear. Finally click on the third to see an example of an afterimage, which is a visual impression that remains in the retina after the initial stimulus is removed. The afterimage always has colours that are complementary to those of the original image. Look steadily at the cross in the centre of the picture.

Art of Deception

After a tutorial and feedback session with Gair, in which he remembered the artist we spoke about at the assessment presentation - Rod Dickinson, I have discovered some interesting visual and cognitive experimental tricks in which Rod has taken part.



Gair also suggested reading or watching the T.V adaptation of 'The Wave' based on an experiment called the 'Third Wave' which took place in California. All these experiments, and others such as the Milgram experiment, which Rod Dickinson based his contemporary exhibition on, involve duping members of the public or students into believing certain things from visual cues. Often this can lead to convincing people to take part in all kinds of activity, displaying the limits to which subjects are prepared to follow the orders of a supposed authority figure, by what they think they are seeing, or visualising. I find this incredibly interesting that we use learned cues to gauge a situation - such as someone in a uniform generally visually seen as a figure of authority. The idea of exploration into the structure and mechanisms that underpin systems of belief and social control also appeal, and I'm intrigued to see whether this holds for all cultures, races etc.

Examples

Very rough tests to look at different ways of distracting the eye while visual changes occur. The first shows how colours can be changed while an individual is directed to look at another object. The second shows how a time lapse can make it difficult to see changes taking place in a static image. More information on these and other visual perceptions can be heard from the philosopher and scientist Dan Dennett. Another interesting talk on 'fooling our consciousness' can also be seen on the TED website, from Keith Barry.

Induced Failure of Visual Awareness...

Trying out some experimental work to assist in how the brain creates erroneous visual images, and recalls information, and also to receive feedback at my seminar presentation next Tuesday. I'm reading a paper by Daniel J. Simons (Psychology Department & Beckman Institute,University of Illinois, USA) and Ronald A. Rensink, (Departments of Psychology & Computer Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada ) who state that 'Research over the past half century has produced extensive evidence that observers cannot report or retain all of the details of their visual world from one moment to the next. During the past decade, a new set of studies has illustrated just how pervasive these limits are.' (Induced Failures of Visual Awareness). They go on to explain that failures of visual awareness have been induced in a variety of ways. For example, subjects often fail to report a visible but unexpected image when attention is focused on some other object or event in the display. They call this 'inattentional blindness'. They ask the interesting question; are these limitations due to failures of perception? Of attention? Of memory? What is preserved with and without awareness? I'm hoping to investigate further and will find the composite interviews interesting with Greg in a few weeks. Meanwhile, I've attached a few stills from my current quick experimental material playing with visual awareness.

Visual Perception

The Thatcher effect or Thatcher illusion is a phenomenon where it becomes difficult to detect local feature changes in an upside down face, despite identical changes being obvious in an upright face. It is named after British former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on whose photograph the effect has been most famously demonstrated. This was originally created by Peter Thompson, who is a professor at the University of York, England (Thompson, 1980).




I'm finding this visual perception fascinating, and meshes well with the current research I have been doing into forensic art, visual recollection etc. My aim is to create an interactive piece which addresses these issues and also allows people to participate with others, and see how individual and collective responses differ.