Introduction
Click this “button” on the screen to “put” your “file” to your “site,” and your “page” will be “live.” These words “button,” “put,” “page,” “live,” exist in the physical world, but they assume a new role when applied to an electronic action. Are we so used to the illusion of virtual image standing in for a material object that we don't recognize the difference? And what if an electronic medium could not reach its full potential without assistance from a physical filter?
In my electronic portfolio, I exhibit my experiments with stereographic imaging as well as other projects that test the limits of human vision and challenge the viewer to reconsider physical medium as a necessary component to viewing some electronic works. Stereographs are old news. They were in fashion between 1870s and 1930s and are sometimes referred to as the first photographic mass medium because of its affordability and popularity at the time. A stereograph contains two images that are displaced and look distorted to the naked eye. I pursue the idea of an anaglyph stereogram, which, in addition to displacement, combines two color channels—red and blue, which then are filtered through a pair of anaglyph glasses. The glasses trick each eye to see a separate picture while a human brain fills in the space between the two images with an imaginary dimension. Without the 3D glasses, the dimensions will not show.
I test this phenomenon of stereography in several media—in drawing and painting, which are displayed in Gallery section of the portfolio and through animation in the Flash section and the Home page.
The Video section of my portfolio does not utilize stereography, but it involves plenty of mixed media and trickery. Some of the footage was filmed in front of a computer screen with the background playing as the camera recorded. We filmed the last scene in front of a large scale print to simulate city view, we mixed Flash animation and Final Cut Pro-edited video to create a narrative.
The Sound and Scholarship sections represent some of the projects I’ve completed while in the MATX program.
My goal for this portfolio is to see how each medium handles the same visual phenomenon. As it turns out, stereographs work in all media similarly, but are harder to detect in moving images. The quality of stereographic image depends on the quality of vision of the viewer and the accuracy of hue of red and blue that appears on the screen. The lenses in the anaglyph glasses have to correspond to the colors of the image. It fascinates me that two colors—made up of pixels or dye—can make a two-dimensional image split into three dimensions.
I believe that “a medium is more than the materials of which it is composed” it is “a set of skills, habits, techniques, tools, codes, and conventions.” (Raymond Williams qtd. in Mitchell’s What do Pictures Want?) We are conditioned to accept the virtuality of electronic medium. We start to feel like those “buttons” really “click” on the screen, that zeros and ones can represent three-dimensional space. Even as you enter this site, you agree to be tricked into seeing something that doesn’t exist. This is the beauty of stereographic images—being able to embrace the unreal and see the inexistent.
Your paper glasses are what allows you to unlock the hidden dimensions in this site. On a rare occasion like this one, a physical
medium is enabling an electronic medium to do its job.
This website is best viewed in Mozilla Firefox 5.0
Flash player 8.0 or higher is required.
Stereographic images must be viewed through anaglyph glasses provided.
Red lens—left eye; blue lens—right eye.