2D/3D . Producing illusion

2D/3D Producing Illusion João Cabeleira & José Capela (coord.) Coleção Paisagens Património & Território Landscapes Heritage & Territory Collection Investigação2D/3D . Producing Illusion 2D/3D . PRODUCING ILLUSION João Cabeleira & José Capela (coord.) 6 9 12 14 16 30 50 60 70 72 76 84 Foreword Regarding illusion(s) João Cabeleira & José Capela Illusion and its mechanisms Clara Imbert — Invited Artist Trompe l’oeil as instrument of thinking Hanneke Grootenboer What is wrong with trompe l’oeil Vítor Moura Baroque Illusion and themediation between built and represented space. From the corporeal to thegaze João Cabeleira The inconsistent images ofPiranesi’s Carceri: filling the gap between 2Dand 3D representation Sofia Menconero Methodologies of restitution Pedro Barbosa — Invited Artist Virtual Experiences: TheRoom of Pompeo as a “Covered” Courtyard in the trompe l’oeil of Angelo Michele Colonna and Agostino Mitelli at Spada Palace in Rome Laura Farroni, Matteo Flavio Mancini & Giulia Tarei The Apocalypse of optics, the eyewitness of the Apocalypse: time, space and illusion at Trinità deiMonti Agostino de Rosa New visualities João Pombeiro — Invited Artist On Perspective as Depth Simulation Jacob Gaboury Domestic Proscenium: Television in the American Postwar Suburban House Luísa Sol The illusion of Open Space — The use of technology and design tools to mitigate confinement in urban underground spaces Luís Mestrinho The materiality of ‘materiality depiction’ José Capela Politics Gil Madeira — Invited Artist Public Situations: Memory and Distancing Livia Koeche @#D: Other Notes on Rendering and Augmentation Gaspar Cohen Reality as composition andconsensus Moiré patterns and circumstantial meanings Vitor Grilo Silva Biographical notes 94 96 104 114 124 132 140 142 144 152 160 168 5 6 2D/3D . PRODUCING ILLUSION Foreword The book 2D/3D . producing illusion stems from the homologous meeting that took place at mala voadora (Porto) on the 27th and the 28th of May 2021. It was a mala voadora initiative included in its four-year program financed by dgArtes, commissioned by the two professors responsible for the specialization course of scenography, lectured at the School of Architecture, Art and Design of the University of Minho. João Cabeleira (EAAD/Lab2PT) and José Capela (mala voadora/EAAD/Lab2PT), in the complicity of a common interest in the domain of visual and spatial illusion, launched themselves in the organization of the event. Moving beyond the strict scope of architecture and the image of space, the initiative opened up to the consideration of illusion from other disciplinary domains of action and cogitation. Taking perception and representation of space or the geometric and mathematical abstraction at the basis of linear perspective as a starting point, the event 2D/3D . producing illusion promoted the exchange of practices and scientific speculation on illusion embracing contributions from philosophy, history and theory of art, architecture, scenography, visual arts, cultural studies and geometry. Parallel to the presentation of communications, the event included an exhibition of works by artists that involve these same themes. Thispublication includes the communications and artworks, both presented at 2D/3D . producing illusion, collecting and disseminating a comprehensive overview of the discussed contents. We can consider the invention of perspective as a defining feature of “European art”. This Cartesian device for space representation and consideration was crucial for the development of the continent’s art, architecture and scenography for several centuries, and its products were one of the cultural marks of European expansionist policy. The construction of mimetic images has undergone considerable changes with the invention of photography, film and digital tools. The illusionist suggestion of three-dimensionality seems to have taken on a new meaning now, when most of us spend the day looking at monitors and screens, in a curiously similar situation to the public who, following the invention of perspective, has seen theatre through a big window called “proscenium”. On the other hand, within the scope of artistic practices, the modalities of representation have deviated from mimicry in favour of admittedly “wrong” games, or meta-representation. The tools of representation have changed, the nature of images has changed, but the will to illusion is maintained, thickened, or countered with calculated ingenuity. In this sense, the 2D/3D conference is not limited to perspective (between its 7 FOREWORD invention in fifteenth-century Italy and what it entails in new technologies), aiming to include a wide variety of representation systems that somehow compete with the production of illusion. Around this thematic core, and extending its scope to all areas of image and space production, the following themes were considered: illusion and its mechanisms, methodologies of restitution, new visualities and politics. To share with us points of view that are references for thinking about these themes, invitations were addressed to two Keynote speakers who promptly and enthusiastically agreed to collaborate with us. We had the privilege to count on with the presence of Hanneke Grootenboer, from the Department of History, Art History & Classics Radboud University, and Jacob Gaboury, from the Department of Film & Media UC Berkeley. Invitations were also addressed to four visual artists whose recent practice explores visual illusions, the simulacrum of space, and questioning on what we see and how we see or perceive: Clara Imbert, Gil Madeira, João Pombeiro and Pedro Barroso. Undoubtedly, the keynotes conferences and the art exhibition were major moments of reflection, share and discussion. In the preparation of the event, the delineation of its image and communication strategy poured into the construction of the website http://www.2d-3d.org. It was an essential instrument for the dissemination of the event and its open Call for the presentation of communication proposals. From the received proposals, 10 authors were selected. The event’s success was only possible thanks to the enthusiastic participation of all guests, authors and collaborators who, from the beginning, were receptivity to the launched challenge. Wethank the presence and contribution of keynotes, visual artists and authors, either in person or online, sharing with us two days of intense discussion, and also of fun, under the spectrum of illusion: Agostino de Rosa (Department of Architecture and Arts, Università Iuav di Venezia); Clara Imbert (invited artist); Gaspar Cohen (Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon); Gil Madeira (invited artist); Giulia Tarei (History, Drawing and Architectural Survey Department, Sapienza University of Rome); Hanneke Grootenboer (Department of History, Art History & Classics, Radboud University); JacobGaboury (Department of Film & Media, UC Berkeley); João Cabeleira (School of Architecture, Art and Design, University of Minho); João Pombeiro (invited artist); José Capela (School of Architecture, Art and Design, University of Minho); José Vítor Correia (Faculty of Architecture, University of Lisbon); Laura Farroni (Department of Architecture, Roma Tre University); LiviaKoeche (Indentity and Territory Research Group, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul); Luís Mestrinho (School of Architecture, Art and Design, University of Minho); Luísa Sol (Faculty of Architecture, University of Lisbon); Matteo Mancini Clara Imbert Dis(places),2018 Metal, magnifying Glass, convex lenses, concave lense 50 × 300 cm 15 16 16 HANNEKE GROOTENBOER * Trompe l’oeil as instrument of thinking * Department of History, Art History & Classics Radboud University ABSTRACT This paper starts from the idea that painting philosophizes about the nature and status of its representation. It argues that 17thcentury trompe l’oeil painting offers a theory on the subtle differences between truth, falsehood, deception, conception, illusion and disillusion, concepts that have become all the more relevant in our present-day society. 17 TROMPE L’OEIL AS INSTRUMENT OF THINKING In 1975, photorealist artist Richard Estes painted Central Savings. We see the front of a spick-and-span diner on a typical Manhattan street corner. The degree of brightness suggests mid-morning — and the clock in the centre tells us that it is a quarter past ten — yet the diner is completely empty. At first sight, this seemingly banal picture demands very little from us, as viewers. There are no symbols to decipher, no clues given as to what exactly is being depicted here. Why have we paused here, in the middle of the sidewalk, whereas other passersby move on (we see their shadowy silhouettes briskly walking out of the frame)? What they remain unaware of we can see: overlaid upon the shiny red counter and its empty stools is the dazzling spectacle of a reflected cityscape extending behind us. Whatshould have remained, strictly speaking, outside of our view is now contained within the diner. The dizzying doubling of reflections simultaneously bouncing of multiple shiny surfaces makes it difficult to determine what is inside and outside. Where, for instance does the orange and red ‘banner’ actually belong? And what about the silver strips running along the ceiling to the right? Something has entered this space that refuses to position itself, that refuses to take sides (are they in or are they out), but seem suspended in the middle, stretched out as it were in both. For a moment we forget that while looking through the large glass window, are also looking at it. The bright red letters spelling ‘burger’ in reverse projected at the window are also projected into the space from outside. When we bend in to study them closely we note that they must be part of the diner’s front that falls outside of this painting’s cropping. Thebackwards word has been projected into the space via its being doubly mirrored in the bank’s windows opposite the diner, Figure 1 Central Savings, Richard Estes, 1975  Image courtesy Nelson-Atkins Media Services, Jamison Miller. Art © Richard Estes 18 such that this reflection brings it ‘back’ to the diner, and into this picture. Indeed, the term reflection comes from the Latin re-flectere that literally means ‘to bend’ and ‘to bring back’. The reflections are brightly articulated and translucent, but remain somewhat impenetrable despite the transparency of the window. The result is a jumble of mirror images bouncing off each other. Arewe being invited to reflect on reflection? What are we looking at? Central Savings goes way beyond its own limitations in that it soradically presents itself as that what it is not — a photograph. Evenif we know of photorealism, when this work is perceived from a distance of about a meter and a half, one won’t be able to register that this is a painting. This work presents painting as replaced by photography, obviously referring to the master narrative that the invention of photography ‘killed’ painting. Within that narrative, photography is presented as painting’s negation, its other. Wecouldsay, from a Hegelian perspective, that rather than being self-reflexive, Estes’ painting is self-conscious by painting itself as its negative, attempting to ‘think’ itself as being “not-painting”, orperhaps trying to “think” how painting would appear as a form ofphotography. If we consider the grand narrative of realistic representation, we see realistic/figurative painting threatened in the Baroque era by illusionism in the shape of trompe l’oeil, and in the 19th century, photography was seen as the ultimate copy of reality, and was considered from the get go as painting’s replacement, consequently putting an end to the aim and function it has had for centuries. Theinvention of photography threw painting into a crisis from which it only slowly recovered through a long period of self-analysis called modernism (and more recently, figurative painting has been making a great come back). For this presentation, I am less interested in what painting may have lost in the transformation in the wake of photography (such as the aura of authenticity as Benjamin would have it), but I am interested in what it has gained in terms of self-consciousness, for early modern as well as contemporary painting. One of the arguments that I would like to make — on the basis of Estes’ work and other spacial illusions, is that painting is a form of thinking, capable of offering a thought, rather than a meaning or a narrative — and that painting can give us a way “into” philosophical issues by offering us, as viewers, an entrance to its pictorial realm, or a site where we can dwell. Adorno once wrote that “art stands in need of philosophy that interprets it in order to say that which it cannot say, whereas art is only able to say what it says, by not saying it”. For now, I will take an opposite stance, basically arguing that it is philosophy that needs art to say what it cannot say. Heidegger famously wrote that people often say that we cannot do anything with philosophy, while they remain unaware that in the end it is philosophy that does something to us. I would like to follow a similar logic for illusionist art: It is art HANNEKE GROOTENBOER 19 TROMPE L’OEIL AS INSTRUMENT OF THINKING that does something to us, by raising questions, or by presenting to us a fundamental encounter that forces us to think (Deleuze). In a recent book, I have made a case for a new category of immersive art works that is determined by their capacity to generate such an encounter, that I proposed to call ‘pensive image’ (Grootenboer, 2020). I define pensive images as those that confront us in such a way that our wonder about the work of art — its subject, matter or meaning — is transformed into our thinking according to it. Anamorphosis could be an extreme example of an image that forces you to look differently, and demand that we depart from patterns and pathways of seeing1. Perspective possesses such a strong rhetoric, convincing us to look at the visible and overlook the invisible. But turned inside out, as with anamorphosis, it shows us the other side of vision. For now, I would like to look at another extreme form of perspectival painting, and that is the trompe l’oeil to which Estes’ work has often been compared. Estes | Double Self-Portrait (1976) I suggest that Estes’ painting is a pensive image that invites us “in” by raising philosophical issues, in this case literally and metaphorically linked to reflection. Few art historians or critics would care to see this “thought” in Estes’ painting. An exception is Hal Foster who, in The Return of the Real (1996), discusses Estes’ 1976 selfportrait. Inthe context of Lacan’s theory of trauma, Foster uses Estes’s Double Self-Portrait (1976) as an example of a contemporary model of pictorial reflexivity akin to Velazquez’ Las Meninas. In Double Self-Portrait we see an empty diner similar to the one portrayed in Central Savings, in which various reflections and refractions are at the point of collapse. We may have been surprised to find in Central Savings only shadows of briskly walking passersby, but no photographer; in Double Self-Portrait, Estes included a reflection of himself proudly standing next to his tripod while pressing the shutter. With all of Estes’s work, nothing is one-of-a-kind — everything carries its double with it. Further in, towards the back of the diner, a much smaller part of the torso of Estes’s reflection is doubled in the mirror wall. Likening it (via Jacques Lacan’s comments on trompe l’oeil) to the kind of superficiality developed in illusionistic painting as deceptive surfaces with nothing behind them, Foster presents Estes’s painting as a visual conundrum deeply rooted in capitalist spectacle, whereby the lines and windows of Estes’s shopfront flatten pictorial depth, and thereby flatten psychic depth. For Foster, photorealism conceals reality rather than revealing it. But he seems to forget that photorealism represents a conundrum less about the real than about realism, or rather illusionism as such. If anything, photorealist painting presents us with a reflection, not of reality but of the way we experience reality through what we take to be its most reliable means of recording: 20 photography. So many critics, like Foster, have attempted to explain away photorealism’s extreme resemblance to photography as a lazy 20th century version of Baroque trompe l’oeil painting. The real link between photorealism and trompe l’oeil painting lies not, I suggest, in a similar sense of illusionism, but in their shared philosophical concern of that illusionism: what it DOES to us. Reverse Side of a Painting by Cornelius Gijsbrechts Early modern trompe l’oeils are ambitious art works that aspire to literally become the objects they represent. Their greatest wish is to overcome their limitations as two-dimensional images, so as to participate in the material world as objects. Probably the most perfect embodiment of this aspiration is Reverse Side of a Painting (1680), by Cornelius Gijsbrechts. This is an almost perfect paradox: The Reverse Side of a Painting presents everything that constitutes a painting: we see a wooden stretcher, held together by several nails that cast small shadows on the construction. The stretcher frames the back of a painted canvas, its frayed edges visible between the wooden slats. But where is the image? If, like the curious visitor of the Kunstkammer in one of the palaces of the Danish King near Copenhagen, we would follow our inclination to turn this canvas around in order to see what is represented on its “front” side, we would realize that we’d fallen into a trap, and that the reverse side of this painting contains nothing but its own verso, this time real. At first insulting our perception, which detects the illusion only belatedly, this canvas has a second frustration in store: since there is no image, what meaning can be found in a painting that lacks HANNEKE GROOTENBOER Figure 2 Reverse Side of a Painting, Cornelius Gijsbrechts, 1680 21 TROMPE L’OEIL AS INSTRUMENT OF THINKING every quality that has defined realistic painting as such? The Reverse Side of a Painting lacks narrative; not a single object is represented; the picture depicts the opposite of a frozen moment in time; and, lastly, this trompe l’oeil lacks any suggestion of pictorial depth, realism’s most profound condition. Whereas in realistic painting meaning may hide in the depth of the pictorial space created by perspective, for Gijsbrechts’s trompe l’oeil there is rear or behind: the real verso and the painted one cancel out any suggestion of what is inside and what is outside of this painting. It leaves us in the end with an accurate painting of essentially nothing. We could say, with Victor Stoichita who wrote the modern classic The Self Aware Image (1993), that this is the ultimate self-aware image, that in the wake of iconoclasm had achieved full awareness of its being — and of its nothingness. Literally turning its back on painting, as well as on its viewer, this canvas intends to be its negative: it is an anti-painting. Gijsbrechts’s Trompe l’Oeil Cabinet ofCuriosities with Ivory Tankard A statement on the operation of this paradox is nowhere better articulated, I believe, then in Gijsbrechts’s Trompe l’Oeil Cabinet of Curiosities with Ivory Tankard (1670). This painting represents a cabinet door with leaded-glass windows through which we see the contents inside the cabinet: an ivory tankard, the small figure of a horseman and some shells. Framed by panels of painted wood, the door has real hinges and can be opened just like any other door. Apainted iron bar running across the window, with a quill pen and some letters placed behind it, competes with the real metal lock and hinges for realistic effect: the tactile quality of the iron bar is similar to the genuine lock and hinges, if not greater. This window both shows and hides simultaneously: what we see behind the glass — items from a Kunstkammer collection whose sole function is showing, and showing off — is partly covered by letters that themselves reveal only a few readable sentences. Our desire to see more of the art objects in the window results in the inclination to look around the letters, moving our head this way and that in trying out viewpoints that might give us a different angle of vision. Gijsbrechts’s breathtaking virtuosity demonstrates its ultimate greatness in a deception that misleads even the most scrutinizing observer: the glass in the window is partly broken. A sharp fracture line cuts the lower right window in half, the upper part being slightly lighter than the lower part, indicating that a piece of glass has been removed. Real and painted transparencies are indistinguishable at the level of the fracture. It is precisely the clear-cut caesura of the non-existed glass that leaves no traces of its being made of paint, and leaves our eyes dazzled: Are we looking at glass, 22 or are we looking through it? Are we looking through a hole, or are we looking at it? I believe that Gijsbrechts examines painting as the intersection of artificial and natural perspective. Whereas in natural perspective the invisible space through which our eyes travel is a condition for seeing, the art of painting requires the application of artificial perspective to generate a similar illusion of invisible space between objects in a picture. From the moment the first procedures for perspective were written down by Alberti in his treatise On Painting (1435), it has been understood as a method for transforming painting into a window. Gijsbrechts’s ingenious broken window interrogates the far-reaching effects of Alberti’s famous metaphor, not through demonstrating what painting is supposed to be according to Renaissance standards, but rather by representing that to which it has been compared in the centuries since. Instead of using the window metaphor to widen the boundaries of painting, Gijsbrechts brings painting back to its limitations by inviting us to look at a window through which we cannot see. The shallow pictorial space of the cupboard is filled with collector’s items which are clearly visible behind the glass. What becomes more apparent, however, inits suddenly visible invisibility, is the window glass itself. Gijsbrechts’s door may further assist us in understanding the paradox of perspective because it hides an ingenious surprise. Unlike most trompe l’oeils, this one has a behind: its verso, the HANNEKE GROOTENBOER Figure 2 Trompe l’Oeil Cabinet ofCuriosities with IvoryTankard, Cornelius Gijsbrechts, 1670 23 TROMPE L’OEIL AS INSTRUMENT OF THINKING inside of the cabinet door, also contains a painting that remains concealed as long as the door is closed. The verso represents the exact reverse side of the image: we see the back of the letters pressed to the glass, the quill pen protruding a bit. While the “glass” in Gijsbrechts’s cabinet door already enables our gaze to pierce what looks like the first layer of the picture, this layer itself displays a puncture, facilitating our desire to peep in. But then, the double disillusion reveals itself dramatically. There is no difference between the glass and the hole; that which shows itself behind it is of the same order as the window; that is, the window is not a window at all, notwithstanding the fact that it shares all its major features, even incorporating a view from the reverse side. For when we open the door, we are astonished to find out that we are unable to look through the window from the other side. We are able to see both sides, but still cannot look “through” this image. What we do see is that which is always invisible both in regular paintings and in our perception, namely how things would look when seen from the other side, from the point towards which we direct our gaze, but from which we cannot see. Gijsbrechts’s work indicates that perspective’s impact goes farther than providing a method of representation. If indeed his Cupboard makes something like a statement in painting, then it must be that perspective should be understood as laying out the conditions for vision and for the visible, rather than for representation. The conditions for vision and for the visible can be found on the other side of a cabinet door, as well as on the reverse side of a painting. There, mapped out by perspective, vision and the visible emerge as a thought in painting rather than its meaning. Studiolo As these examples demonstrate, trompe l’oeil painting does not merely deceives the eye but invites for philosophical reflections. In addition, trompe l’oeil painting takes in a special position in philosophical discourse. For instance, in his study on The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (1993), Gilles Deleuze describes the notion of the monad, as an inside without an outside, comparable to a Renaissance studiolo. The monad is an interior space that has furniture and objects painted in trompe l’oeil, Deleuze explains. Everything is there, but weightless, and as sheer appearance. In an early essay entitled The Trompe l’oeil (1988), Jean Baudrillard states that trompe l’oeil transcends painting. It might flirt with painting (in the same way as surrealism might flirt with the history of art without truly been part of it, but, he argues, trompe l’oeil painting is not a representation as it seems to be opposed to the representative space that the Renaissance has created. Even though it is usually a vertical depiction of flat objects on a flat 30 30 VÍTOR MOURA * What is wrong with trompe l’oeil * Department of Philosophy at the University of Minho ABSTRACT Richard Wollheim's seeing-in theory is one of the most powerful and ductile philosophical accounts of depiction. It portrays the experience of art as the phenomenon of conscientiously acknowledging something being represented in a material support. A disturbing consequence, however, and one fully endorsed by Wollheim himself, is the disavowal of the representational status to all graphic forms that deny the viewer the twofold experience of the represented object and of the “marked surface”. This anathema affects hyper realist works but also, and most significantly, trompe l'oeil painting. After surveying Wollheim's arguments we propose a different solution, by entertaining the thought that it is possible to have a kind of aesthetic seeing-in without the need for a perceptual seeing-in. 31 WHAT IS WRONG WITH TROMPE L’OEIL Two friends, A and B, are visiting the Nelson-Atkins Musem of Art in Kansas City. Upon entering in one of the exhibition halls they notice a painting on a tripod placed in a corner of the room. Aadmires Venus Rising from the Sea, a painting by the American artist Raphaelle Peale (1822) which constitutes an intriguing partial copy of an earlier work with the same title by Irish painter James Barry (1791). She utters a remark so as to draw her friend’s attention to the exquisite trompe l’oeil. B replies “Humm, there must have been complaints.” (Meaning that maybe the painting was considered too sexist or too erotic.) The two friends had two very different experiences of the object held in the tripod. A acknowledged it prima facie as a painting and admired its technical prowess accordingly. B however mistook it for a painting covered with a rather large napkin hanging from a thread. In order to get to the moral of this story we need to consider at least three questions. First, does B’s early experience amount to any kind of representational seeing given that she really thought a real napkin was hiding the actual painting? Second, does A ever get to experience the painting as a trompe l’oeil given that she recognized it prima facie as a deception? And third, what was Peale’s categorial intention in creating this work of art — and how is the category of trompe l’oeil pictures related to the more general Figure 1 Venus Rising from the Sea — A Deception, Raphaelle Peale,ca. 1822 32 category of pictorial depiction? The latter question leads to the related issue of how to understand trompe l’oeil as a pictorial genre. Does the success of any trompe l’oeil necessarily involve deceiving the viewer into believing she is perceiving something other than a bidimensional rendition, or is the awareness of the illusion a necessary condition for properly experiencing trompe l’oeil pictures? If the latter, then only A had a proper experience of Peale’s painting. But if the former is correct, then it is B who indeed experienced the painting as mandated by the author and the rules of the genre. Now, this second hypothesis, fascinating as it may be, leads to a complex and inconclusive philosophical discussion of whether trompe l’oeil pictures should be classified as a pictorial genre at all, given that they require, for proper enjoyment, that the viewer ignores that she is contemplating a pictorial depiction. In other words, how can one entertain a pictorial experience of a painting that requires, for proper enjoyment, that one dispenses with its pictorial nature? Forlack of a better expression, let us call this an artistic contradiction. Trompe l’oeil pictures have become a philosophical topic because they constitute a serious problem for those theories of picture that grant a special role to the viewer’s awareness of the pictorial means for representation, namely, the awareness that one is looking at marks in a surface, that the author is transposing a tridimensional reality into a bidimensional rendition, that one should pay attention to the brushwork or indeed the lack thereof, the contour, punch mark, aerial perspective, the ruggedness or smoothness of the surface, fineness of detail or sketchy and raw execution.1 According to these medium-oriented theories, to be aesthetically involved with pictures necessarily means that the spectator is interested in the making of the work, i.e., the particular way in which the representing surface was produced.2 This opens up another important aspect of our aesthetic enjoyment of art, namely that we are always probing the ways in which the painting’s plasticity or its material implementation hold symbolic meaning, or to put it in other words, how the artist’s particular choices in her treatment of the medium makes us see an object presented in a quite unique way. Arguably the most notorious of such theories is contained in Richard Wollheim’s aesthetics of painting. Most notoriously, trompe l’oeil pictures became a subject of aesthetic controversy after the sort of anathema that Wollheim has thrown upon them, denying them the status of pictorial depiction and withdrawing them from the realm of proper representation. Whatever they may be, trompe l’oeil pictures are not depictions. The reason for this cancelling lies in the fact that trompe l’oeil pictures work in contradiction to the kind of representational seeing that Wollheim describes as the basic tool for the perception of pictures. He calls this seeing-in. Wollheim’s seeing-in provides a sure path towards finding a reply to the three above mentioned questions and to explore the issue of trompe l’oeil pictures and the particular instability they VÍTOR MOURA 33 WHAT IS WRONG WITH TROMPE L’OEIL provide between the bidimensional medium and tridimensional perceptive awareness. First of all, we must start by understanding how seeing-in acts a tool for pictorial comprehension. Wollheim describes seeing-in as a basic perceptual ability with the function of identifying an object in a marked surface. To discover the faces of famous actors in the clouds hovering our heads, to recognize wild animals in the humidity stains of a wall, or to identify the face of a young woman in a Vermeer painting, are all instances of seeing-in. They all have in common the simultaneous twofold awareness of both a) marks in a surface (the configurational fold) and b) the emergence of a foregrounded and bounded object (the recognitional fold). Notice that, in order for the recognitional fold to manifest itself all that is required is that the viewer is able to perceive that there is one object in front of another. The protruding, receding or occluding of objects among themselves, or in relation to the painted surface, is all that is required for proper recognition of a depicted object to occur. This constitutes an important edge of Wollheim’s theory of painting vis-à-vis other theories (such as Ernst Gombrich’s partial illusion theory) because it allows him to encompass within the breadth of representational art the wide range of abstract and non-figurative art. Once abstract art gets accepted aboard the vessel of representational painting, the only difference between abstract and figurative art lies in the kinds of concept we use when we want to refer to that which is seen in the marked surface. When viewing figurative art, we use figurative concepts such as “boy”, “ship” or “flower”. In abstract painting we use abstract concepts such as “sphere”, “space”, or “depth”.3 They both constitute nonetheless genuine cases of seeing-in in different kinds of representational art. Essentially, we cannot classify something as a depiction that does not allow for this twofoldness, or somehow expects the viewer to dispense one of its folds. Thus, the gamut of pictorial depiction is confined, on the one side, by works (we should hesitate to call them “pictures”) in which there is, so to speak, nothing to see, i.e., marked surfaces that don’t offer the minimal basis required for the viewer to entertain the thought that she is looking at an object in a surface, not even the slight hint that could induce awareness of depth.4 That would be the case of Barnett Newman’s Vir, heroicus, sublimis (1950–51). The other side of the gamut confines with that kind of work that demand from the viewer that she suppresses awareness of the marked surface in her visual experience. That is precisely the case of trompe l’oeil pictures, that negate the role of the recognitional fold and consequentially the twofoldness characteristic of the seeing-in that defines the pictorial experience: “[Some] paintings are non-representational […] because they do not invoke, indeed repel, attention to the marked surface. Trompe l’oeil paintings are surely in this category.”5 34 Thus, seeing-in is a necessary condition for representational seeing and proper experience of pictures. But it is not sufficient because, as the case of famous actors in the clouds show, we can have manifestations of seeing-in outside the realm of depiction. Therefore, Wollheim introduces a second condition for the obtaining of depiction and that is constituted by the painter’s intentions, or more exactly, by the viewer’s awareness that the surface in front of her was intentionally designed. Notice that she is not required to grasp (at least not at first) nor to be informed of the real intentions of the author. All that is required is that she knows that the picture is intentionally laden. The picture’s motivation — its design — will then act as a sort of more or less conscious criterion for assessing which interpretation of the picture is the correct one — a standard for correctness. Something which is obviously absent from our twofold experience of clouds qua famous actors. Ifmy friend denies that the face of Kristen Stewart is presented in the cloud above us, there is nothing I can do to prove her wrong. But if she is not able to see Dora Maar in one of her portraits, I can always use Picasso’s intentions to condition her recognition of the portrait. But when we get to this point, we plunge into some rather muddy waters. In order for some visual surface to be classified as a depiction, it must support twofoldness and be an intentional object. This assumes the form of a definitional implication: (p) a is a depiction if (q) a supports twofoldness and (r) a is anintentional object: p ⊃ ( q . r) Trompe l’oeil pictures negate (q) because they supposedly expect the viewer to ignore the configurational fold, as was the case with friend B in our initial example. However, if we resist that suppression and deny ourselves the possibility of being deceived, in some way or another, by the marked surface (friend A’s experience), then we negate r because we are not experiencing the object as it was intentionally designed by the author. Either way, pis not the case. Another contradiction seems to arise here for although we recognize the whole object as a painting and thereby acknowledge the surface as an intentional object (otherwise we’d be already deceived and not be able to acknowledge the illusion, like in the case of friend B) we are ipso facto unable to follow the author’s intentions, which should be assumed as the standard for correctly engaging with the object. In order to assume the painting as an intentional object we have to somehow dismiss the fact that the author’s intentions constitute the standard of correctness for pictorial seeing and, to some extent, prescribe the proper way to look at a picture. To sum up the problem: VÍTOR MOURA 35 WHAT IS WRONG WITH TROMPE L’OEIL a) In order to have proper representational seeing we require twofoldness and be willing to abide by the intentions that originated the depiction. b) Friend A does not suppress the configurational fold (either because she is not willing or no longer able to do so) and thus does not experience the work as trompe l’oeil but as a depiction — arguably, the fact that the illusion is not held makes the entire project a lesser work, if indeed deception was the intention of the author. c) Because she prima facie acknowledges the work as a depiction, she is ipso facto aware that the work is an intentional object, and that the author’s intentions provide a standard for correctly viewing the picture. But then she is not able to experience the work according to that standard, which entails that she is not willing or able to see what the author wants her to see. Even worse: in order to keep twofoldness she has to ignore the author’s intentions as standard for correctness and thus the two conditions for depiction seem to go against each other. d) The second friend is unaware of the configurational fold and thus suffers the work literally as a trompe l’oeil. e) Although she is unaware of the illusion as an intentional object (or she may reserve intentionality to the picture that she falsely believes is hidden behind the napkin), she is indeed following the standard of correctness constituted by the author’s intentions, which also means losing twofoldness. Let us now return to our previous set of questions. Does the second friend’s early experience amount to any kind of representational seeing? According to Wollheim’s model, we should reply “no” because (1) she lacks any attention to the configurational fold and is therefore not experiencing the object as twofold, and (2) she is also not aware of the intentionality behind the existence of the entire object. However, she is actually corresponding to that standard by perceiving the object in the proper way and therefore, albeit in a quite peculiar fashion, she is entertaining some kind of representational seeing. Does the first friend ever get to experience the painting as a trompe l’oeil? According to Wollheim’s model, the answer is also negative. Notice that Wollheim does not consider non-delusional experiences of trompe l’oeil as proper trompe l’oeil. Trompe l’oeil is ex definitione designed to baffle and repel the viewer’s attention to the marked surface.6 It could be argued that in trompe l’oeil illusion itself becomes the topic and the aesthetic focus, and therefore in order to proper appreciate it the viewer should be able to move between letting herself be tricked and bouncing back to a distanced view of the painting.7 But this wouldn’t do basically because there is a 36 normative constraint regulating how trompe l’oeil pictures should be experienced, namely, being tricked into thinking we are facing a tridimensional object, which implies experiencing the depiction as something different from what it is. However, only the first friend is able to recognize the painting as an intentional object and although it may be argued that she won’t be able to correspond to the standard of correctness for watching the painting, she is in a position to value her friend’s mistake as ultimate evidence of the author’s success. But why should we accept Wollheim’s thesis that twofold seeing is required in pictorial experience? Well, first of all, it is significant that such a basic ability carries enough weight as to become the main tool for the appreciation of art. Given sufficient information, it is a tool for understanding the many symbolic levels generated by the synergy between the configurational and the recognitional. Sometimes it is the configuration that elaborates on the recognitional. A significant part of the pleasure that we derive from appreciating art derives from our identifying how certain formal traits of the configuration provide a commentary or a symbolic modulation of the represented object. Some other times it is the recognitional that provide the viewer with a guide to the configuration. Another source of such pleasure is constituted by identifying how the recognizable object makes aesthetically salient some (but not all) features of the marked surface. The interplay between the configurational and the recognitional folds is manifold and unpredictably rich. It can be the function of a number of often very unexpected factors joined together in the kind of pleasure that we tend to seek in our aesthetic transactions with artworks. Take Sassetta’s Saint Francis and the Poor Horseman (1437–1444) [Figure 2] as an example of this interplay.8 Sassetta chose to use lapis-lazuli as pigment for colouring the cloak that Saint Francis offers to the Horseman. Sassetta’s contemporaries — and particularly his patrons — knew exactly how expensive this pigment could be (and still is). The material used — astraightforward component of the configurational fold —, when properly recognized by the viewer, increases the generosity of Saint Francis’ gift and thus makes the recognitional fold more precise. Quite often this interplay is ignited by certain configurational “anomalies” that, as it so happens, are there to guide the viewer’s recognition of the depicted object by making salient a particular element or an otherwise neglected layer of the representation. Thisis the case with Anthony van Dyck’s Equestrian Portrait of CharlesI (1637–1638). Hanging on the wall well above the visitor’s vantage point, it seems obvious that Van Dyck clearly meant the horse and the king to be observed from a lower perspective. That explains why we see the belly of the horse or the sole of the king’s boot. To assume that perspective is also important in order to explain the strange disproportion between the horse’s torso and its head. However, VÍTOR MOURA 37 WHAT IS WRONG WITH TROMPE L’OEIL if this was indeed the realistic perspective organizing the entire scene, why is Charles I face designed as if the king is looking straight at the viewer’s eyes, i.e., as if we are no longer looking upwards but at the same level as the king? The dual focal point in the configuration introduces instability that shakes the superficial realism of the entire picture and prompts the viewer into searching for other layers in the recognitional fold. She could, for instance, start entertaining the idea that maybe Van Dyck’s intention was not merely to portray the king but his political agenda, a sort of primus inter pares interpretation of absolutism of the kind he so admired as a young prince visiting the courts of his French and Spanish cousins. A political program that ignited the Puritan Revolution and led to Charles I own demise. Both cases exemplify the power of seeing-in as an explanation of pictorial experience. The theory also holds its value against other very strong competitors. When compared to its most immediate rival, Ernst Gombrich’s partial illusion theory, it offers a much more simple and straightforward phenomenology of our experience of painting. Instead of an alternate attention either to the marked surface or to the depicted object, the twofoldness thesis grounds our experience of depictions in the more basic ability of seeing an object in a marked surface. Also, Gombrich neglected the role played by the artist’s intentions in our perception and Figure 2 Sassetta, Saint Francis and the Poor Knight, andFrancis's Vision (FromBorgo del Santo Sepolcro Altarpiece), 1437–1444. 38 interpretation of pictorial art. To Wollheim, the standard of correctness composed of these intentions constitute a fundamental condition of pictorial experience, by upgrading common seeing-in to the level of intersubjective appraisal. Seeing-in theory is also a formidable opponent of similarity-based theories of picture. Fundamentally, because seeing-in grounds representational seeing in the relation between a marked surface and a represented object, and not in a comparison / similitude between the represented object and the real object. Many authors, such as Nelson Goodman, have successfully argued that visual similarity occurs after and not prior to representation and cannot thus qualify as the epistemic basis for the latter. Asthe extreme case of caricatures eloquently show, it is often a manufactured representation that generates the set of similarities upon which the viewer will then juxtapose the real object and itsdepiction. However, and contrary to conventionalist views, such as Goodman’s, or imagination-based theories of picture, such as Kendall Walton’s, Wollheim insisted that seeing-in is a kind of perception not a top-down cognitive state or a kind of imagination. Imagination is, to great extent, an act of will but seeing-in is, at least most of the time, an involuntary exercise. As soon as the visitor enters an exhibition room in the art gallery, she recognizes men and women, animals and flowers in the canvas hanging on the wall. Viewers tend to pay close attention to the details in the marked surface and to consider how these marks condition the way the represented object should be perceived and interpreted. An imaginative appreciation of art neglects or ignores the marked surface because the appreciation of art is a mental affair and the object is but a prop that affords such elaboration. Now, Wollheim had very specific purposes in mind when he developed his theory of depiction based on seeing-in. First, by noticing how depiction demands the exercise of a very clear perceptual skill (“seeing-in”), pictorial depiction could now be again analysed in a very objective and non-relativistic way. Accordingly, painting was retrieved from the dominion of conventionalist views such as Nelson Goodman’s or Louis Marin’s, in which depiction was perceived as having a semiotic nature, and pictures were described as conventional symbols working in a way not unlike other symbolic systems, such as notations or verbal language. Second, seeing-in made it possible for the broadening of the realm of pictorial depiction so as to encompass genres traditionally deemed to be more eccentric, like abstract painting, that were now rehabilitated as appealing to the very same perceptual skill — for the recognitional fold to be present the awareness of asimple juxtaposition of surfaces was sufficient. Third, seeing-in rehabilitates one of our “most basic intuitions about painting”, namely that depiction is essentially a perceptual phenomenon VÍTOR MOURA 39 WHAT IS WRONG WITH TROMPE L’OEIL (and not a cultural, imaginative or conceptual one). And fourth, his theory showed how this perceptual skill, employed in such a basic function as that of identifying an object in a marked surface, could also be used, given sufficient information, to understand the different symbolic levels in which the represented object may acquire meaning. On the other hand, however, seeing-in was presented as an extremely elusive phenomenon and one very difficult to fully explain: “[t]he nature of the perceptual kind of which the seeing-in is a species is […] very difficult to characterize”9 and “[n]ot all the marked surfaces will have this effect, but I doubt that anything more can be added regarding the exact way in which a marked surface has to be produced in order to hold such effect.”10 In support of twofoldness as the basic experience on which our representational seeing is built, Wollheim would add two main arguments, one psychological and one historical. The psychological argument, derived from the work of Maurice Henri Pirenne and Michael Polanyi, drew attention to the “perceptual constancy” ofrepresentational seeing.11 If we look at a real object, say a table top, and then we move to one side, there occurs a distortion in perspective. The top looks more like a trapezoid than a rectangular shape. But that distortion does not occur in the case of depiction. If we are looking at a painting of a table straight on and then we move away from the centre of the canvas, the shape of the table top remains the same. The fact that no shift in perspective takes place in the case of depiction is explained by Wollheim through twofoldness and the fact that the observer is constantly aware not only of the depicted object but also of the marked surface.12 Notice that trompe l’oeil does not seem to comply with the principle of perceptual constancy. In fact, trompe l’oeil is subjected to perceptual inconstancy because as soon as the viewer moves away from the ideal vantage point, rectangle become trapezoid shapes. Since perceptual constancy constitutes a necessary condition for depiction to obtain, trompe l’oeil painting cannot be included in that category. The second, historical argument reviewed twofoldness as constituting a normative restriction of the way pictorial artworks are traditionally appreciated and underlined the fact that proper interpretation of paintings has historically been involved with providing an account for the interaction between the configurational and the recognitional. An example proves particularly eloquent in this regard. Heinrich Wölfflin famously described Raphael’s The Expulsion of Heliodorus (1512) as affected by a “great void” in the centre. Wölfflin acted as a sort of ultimate formalist critic and art historian recuring whenever possible to the jargon of geometry and visual dynamics in order to describe compositional technique. However, and quite significantly, even a staunched formalist such as Wöllflin could not dispense with referring the shapes or forms he was analysing back 46 But maybe there is a way of considering aesthetic twofoldness without perceptual twofoldness and the idea that the configurational fold is somehow the product of the spectator’s pre-focus without collapsing into a semiotic conception of art. One way to achieve this is to consider the issue of twofoldness in seeing-in under a functional definition of artistic form.28 What exactly makes up the formal structure of an artwork, or more specifically what exactly fits into the configurational fold of pictorial seeing-in? Functional definition of form points out to the rather remarkable fact that spectators can quite easily discern what constitutes the formal structure of any artwork, i.e., its configuration. This is explained by the postulating that artistic form has an intrinsically semantic quality, i.e., that it is composed of all and only those formal elements and relations that contribute to the recognition of its pictorial purpose. To put it in another way, it is the work’s meaning that acts as a filter that makes aesthetically salient some formal features of the work while suppressing others that the spectator will actively ignore (such as the cracks in Petrus Christus portrait). Aesthetic saliency identifies the work’s characteristics that identify it as member of a genre, or period, or any other artistic category (like trompe l’oeil), and that identification conditions our understanding of its content. Based on the knowledge that anticipates her contact with the artwork, the spectator will focus her attention precisely on those formal elements and relations that are instrumental in conveying the work’s purpose. Knowledge that ranges from the compositional strategies of the author, stylistic conventions and artistic practices, to a proper understanding of the author’s intentions, and particularly her categorial intentions, i.e., the specific way she intends her work to be perceived. The work’s genre, its historical period as well as other artistic categories play a significant role in determining what formal features of the work should be made salient and what should be suppressed. If we know we are watching a horror movie and recognize that the character is disgusted at the sight of a zombie, when the point/object shot of the monster arrives, “we will attend to the open sores on the zombie’s body and not to his designer jeans”.29 In the case of Petrus Christus’ portrait, it is because we know that we are looking at a sixteenth century oil on wood painting and not a contemporary artwork that we will actively dismiss the cracks as elements of the configuration and attend rather to the expertise with which the author conceals the brushwork. Accepting the functional role of artistic form may lead to some significant changes in the way we appreciate art. Take the case of Arthur Danto’s defense of Van Meegeren’s “forgeries” of Vermeer.30 Van Meegeren’s original intention was to play a ruse on Professor Abraham Bredius, the leading authority on Vermeer at that time, and his wrong assessment of Vermeer as having been influenced by Caravaggio. Having been asked to certify the fake Christ at Emmaeus (1937) as a Vermeer, this was Bredius’ verdict: VÍTOR MOURA 47 WHAT IS WRONG WITH TROMPE L’OEIL I am inclined to say that this is Johannes Vermeer of Delft’s masterpiece… It is so different from all his other paintings and yet every inch a Vermeer. If we stop considering Van Meegeren canvas as a forgery and look at it instead as the core piece of the critical trap laid against Bredius, we change the artistic salience of its formal features by acknowledging the relevant associations between the painting’s content and Bredius’ wrong conjectures about Vermeer’s life (that he had come acquainted with Caravaggio’s work during an Italian trip, etc.).31 In a way the rather obvious perceptual differences between Van Meegeren’s painting and Vermeer’s work become irrelevant and the work strikes us as a sort of Caravaggian version of Vermeer, and an obviously false one — an obviousness Van Meegeren wanted us to recognize, and not ignore. As Arthur Danto puts it, it is not so much a question of what we see in a painting but rather what is shown in what we see.32 And what is shown determines what we see. Recent discoveries in cognitive neuroscience provide tools to consider this pre-focusing of the configurational properties as a transcendental cognitive condition and the consequent “choice” of what fits into the configurational fold to be regarded as a psychological matter, thus preventing art to be regarded as a conventional and cultural product, as Wollheim would have it. Human beings are capable to run longer distances than virtually any other animal. This is to large extent the result, in part, of the evolution of the human brain and its ability to dissipate energy due to its relatively numerous circumvolutions. This allows the human brain to keep its temperature within an operative threshold even under strenuous circumstances such as a long run under a scorching sun. But another important factor for preventing the brain from overheating consists in the way information processing has also been made quite efficient, and namely by conceptually blending different phenomena under a restricted number of categories and by privileging visual information that is easier to process. That is the cognitive reason why we privilege symmetry, centered objects, and balanced proportions. That is also the reason why human being have developed biased competition models of selective attention as cognitive tools by which distractions are ignored and attention is focused.33 Our perceptive systems make salient certain environmental characteristics such as contrast, sudden movements, etc. A number of categorial expectations are generated about the identity, the structure, the dynamics and the emotional relevance of the objects and events we hope to find and these expectations shape what we perceive and how we perceive. Significantly, meaningful environmental characteristics are seldom the more salient from a purely perceptual point of view. This means that not everything we see will sustain our attention and many visible 48 elements will be actively ignore under a biased model — like the cracks in Christus’ portrait. Our cognitive systems will guide our perception in real time and in a flexible way by making salient some perceptual characteristics, according to an interpretation of the context. Expectable characteristics are processed while distractive, redundant or eccentric elements are inhibited. If this is so, then the configurational fold in Wollheim’s twofoldness is not to be understood as a pre-established structural form neutrally offered for the observer to recognize an object. The visual elements and their relations that compose the configuration will vary in saliency according to content, artistic genre or historic period. They should be flexible enough for incorporating 2D–3D transition to the extent that optical illusion will have the same status as perspective as components of the configurational fold. Lastly, trompe l’oeil per se is seldom the painter’s intention and its function should be connected to the artist’s authorial intentions. That seems to be the case with anamorphosis, such as Andrea Pozzo’s monumental frescoes. Visiting the Church of Saint Ignatius in Rome, the observer starts by observing the distorted shapes in the false vault above. Once she arrives at the yellow marble spot that marks the ideal vantage point the anamorphic illusion dawns on her and the ceiling rises up in an apotheosis of augmented reality. The distortion and fuzziness observed earlier are now part of the configurational fold in which she sees the Glorification. The message is clear: one should also look for that particular vantage point from which everything comes into perspective, visually and existentially. That is the bias that guides the viewer’s attention and makes her pre-focus the configuration. VÍTOR MOURA 49 WHAT IS WRONG WITH TROMPE L’OEIL 1. Cf. Richard Wollheim, Painting as an art, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987: 75. 2. Cf. Andrew Harrison, “The limits of twofoldness: A defence of the concept of pictorial thought”, in Richard Wollheim on the Art of Painting, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001: 41. 3. Wollheim, 1987: 62. 4. Wollheim, 1987: 62. 5. Wollheim, 1987: 62. 6. Wollheim, 1987: 62. 7. This shuttle between illusion and marked surface corresponds to Ernst Gombrich’s description of pictorial experience. Wollheim’s denial of trompe l’oeil as proper representation should also be understood in the context of his criticism of Gombrich’s views. 8. The example comes from Michael Baxandall’s Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy and is quoted in Wollheim, 1987: 90. 9. Richard Wollheim, Art and its objects, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980: 209. 10. Wollheim, 1987: 46. 11. Michael Polanyi, “What is a painting?”, in British Journal of Aesthetics, 10, 1970, 225–236; Maurice Henri Pirenne, Optics, Painting, and Photography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970 12. Wollheim, 1980: 216. 13. Wollheim, 1980: 14. 14. Wollheim, 1980: 14. 15. Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion, Astudy in the psychology of pictorial representation, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960: 275. One should recall here that Art and Illusion presented the still lives of Henri Fantin-Latour as the epitome of pictorial partial illusion. 16. Wollheim, 1980: 211–212. 1 7. Wollheim, 1980: 212. 18. Erwin Panofsky (1939), Estudos de Iconografia — Temas humanísticos na arte do Renascimento, translated by Olinda Sousa, Lisboa: Estampa, 1982: 23–24. 19. Cf. Wollheim, 1987: 91. 20. Cf. Susan Feagin, “Presentation or representation”, in Richard Wollheim on the Art of Painting, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001: 193. 21. As proposed by Alberto Voltolini, A syncretistic theory of depiction, Nova Iorque: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015: 77–80. 22. Voltolini, 2015: 78. Voltolini transforms Gombrich’s notion of pictorial experience as the partial illusion of seeing the configuration as the object into the recognitional fold of trompe l’oeil illusions. 23. Cf. Jerrold Levinson (1998), “Wollheim on pictorial representation”, in Richard Wollheim on the Art of Painting, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 28–38; Bence Nanay, “Is twofoldness necessary for representational seeing?”, in British Journal of Aesthetics, 45–3, 2005, 248–249; Dominic Lopes, Understanding Pictures, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. 24. Richard Wollheim (1998), “On pictorial representation”, in Richard Wollheim on the Art of Painting, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001: 19. 25. Jerrold Levinson goes even farther and denies that twofoldness is actually present in our experiencing of pictures in general: “If you see a woman in a picture in virtue of visually processing a pattern of marks, then of course in some sense you are thereby perceiving the medium in which those marks inhere or consist. But it is far from clear that when you see the woman in the picture you must in some measure be attending to, taking notice of, or consciously focusing on the picture’s surface or patterning as such.” (Levinson, 1998: 31) 26. The example is discussed in Nanay, 2005: 251. 27. Wollheim, 1980: 216. 28. Cf. Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Art, London: Routledge, 1999, 137–148; W.P. Seeley, “Art, meaning, and perception: A question of methods for a cognitive neuroscience of art”, in British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol.53, number 4, 2013, 443–460. 29. Noël Carroll, “Toward a theory of point-of-view editing”, in Theorizing the moving image, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 132. 30. Arthur Danto “Art and Meaning”, in Theories of art today, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000, 130–140; cf. Seeley, 2013: 452. 31. Danto, 2000: 134. 32. Arthur Danto, “Seeing and showing”, in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 59, 2001, 1–9. 33. An exploration of the ways in which these biased competition models can help in our understanding of aesthetic issues is proposed in Seeley, 2013. Notes 50 50 * School of Architecture, Art and Design, University of Minho/Lab2Pt JOÃO CABELEIRA * Baroque Illusion and themediation between built and represented space. From the corporeal to thegaze ABSTRACT Under the assumption that the illusion triggered by the Baroque Quadratura is not strictly solved or constricted within the limits of the pictorial surface, this article aims to explore the applied apparatus in the mediation between built and represented space. As such, and departing from specific case, the pursuit of illusion will be regarded as a global mechanism intertwining different strata, since the material conformation of space, in a direct relationship with the human body, up to the impression of materiality, adimension exclusively inhabited by the gaze. 51 FROM THE CORPOREAL TO THEGAzE Quadratura studies are strongly attached to the scope of representation, examining its iconographical contents, pictorial attributes, architectures and, more often, its perspective structure. A circumstance that, although debating the idea of an illusory space is strongly constrained to what takes place inside the picture frame. Such appreciation cannot be detached from the way we survey, analyse and communicate quadratura examples, often through its photographic capture, since a position coincident with its perspective’s projective centre, restricting our sight and reasoning to such limits. Despite the consideration of Quadratura as illusion, apprehended space is often examined since two autonomous entities: one before and another beyond the picture plane. Adichotomy underlined by coeval specialized treatises, according to their disciplinary nature: optics/mathematics or architecture/painting. From the field of optics/mathematics, treatises, such as the ones from Abraham Bosse (1653) and Jean Dubreuil (1649), focus upon projective science, exploring optical and geometrical statements in order to substantiate and assist perspective procedures. Here, the tectonic circumstance is often emptied from its architectural qualifications being reduced to a geometrical surface. On the other hand, and from the architecture/painting domains, treatises as the ones from Andrea Pozzo (1693/1700) and Ferdinando Bibiena (1711), exhibit, in addition to a practical explanation of the perspective outline, strategies for composing the illusory space as well as its relation towards the tectonic support. In the aftermath, these treatises deal with compositional continuities, among both sides of the picture plane, tending to an idea of space as a global event that comprises, simultaneously, built and represented features. However, where do the elements responsible for a spatial intertwinement are regarded? Such cogitation over intermediation mechanisms and strategies, connecting built and represented elements, can be traced throughout the practice and codification of scenography in works such as the ones from Guidobaldo del Monte (1600) or Nicola Sabbatini (1638). Departing from this assumption it must be highlight that the illusion triggered by the Baroque Quadratura is not solved exclusively within the limits of the pictorial surface. Hence the imperative of going beyond its projective qualities, a fundamental condition to provide an illusion of depth, the mechanisms of intertwining spatial strata, since the tectonic conformation of the architectural space until its deception played by Quadratura's representation, must be considered. From this background, and acting under an eminently architectural point of view, illusion is here examined from a broad-spectrum intertwining construction, scenic apparatus, and perspective representation that combined trigger illusion and enhance the inhabited space as a total entity. 52 JOÃO CABELEIRA Invoking the presence of a body Going further deep into the idea of illusion, the set of participating layers in the overall perceived space must be identified. Asetcomprising the material strata and the glimpse of its appearance, as well as its relations with the body and the gaze of the perceptive individual subordinated to illusion. Once all the elements displayed in space participate in its global configuration, is illusion exclusively triggered by the eye? Recalling Pallasmaa phenomenological approach to architectural space (2007, 46), there is an immediate relation among proximity and distance correlating spatial elements with the body and the eye1. Although the gaze relates us with elements at the distance, visual inducement relies on prior body experience. Distance and proximity, seeing and touching, are permanently intertwined in shaping illusion. A binomial essential to enhance illusion and settle a new reality. Baroque illusion is grounded over the articulation of different elements whose nature request the simultaneous participation of all senses. Although we cannot deny the domain of vision, the perceived reconfiguration of space must be taken as a multisensory experience. Thus, the apprehension of the quadrature illusion and its merge with the built space, defining a new reality, cannot be restricted to what’s beyond the picture frame (the place inhabited by the eye) but must also be assisted by what is displaced before such frame (the place inhabited by the body). The perceptive experience is triggered, simultaneously and interdependently, by the body and the gaze. Such idea is also mentioned by Pallasmaa (2007, 64), being responsible for the articulation of the overall apprehended space2. To claim the presence of the body in the illusory space (now considered as a global entity gathering both material and represented features as a new reality) implies experiencing, simultaneously, what is placed before the picture surface as well as what is induced to the eye by the perspective image. Hence the need to consider the materiality of the built space exploring links of visual likelihood to foster deception. Departing from the experience of stone, touched by the body and the eye, its illusion is defined at the distance according to a proportional crescendo between close materiality and distant appearance. Such bodily experience accelerates the pictorial deception of stone [Figure 1], whether painted on stone (stone pretending to be stone)3, plaster, wood or even paper (material transfiguration). We speak thus of scales of veracity (from materiality to its deception) that are established in space according to a refined sense of composition. Explored the sensual nature of facts, 53 FROM THE CORPOREAL TO THEGAzE illusion stands from a general state of ambiguity where the apparent plasticity apprehended by the eye and the tangible plastic quality of the built elements captured simultaneously by the body and the gaze, merges both sides of the picture plane. Looking at an imaginary space The quadratura of the Glorification of the Virgin (1754), painted by Luis Gonçalves de Sena, at Santarém’s Jesuit College, demonstrates the painter’s aptitudes in the domain of perspective and architectural image, denoting a spatial awareness and intentionality that, surpassing the condition of image, puts it at the level of architectural intervention. Operating within the (re)configuration of the perceived space, the work is part of the main chapel’s global design that, in the overlapped of strata of constructive and decorative material, reveals a great coherence fostering the qualification of spatial illusion. Verifying the structural and compositional qualities of the illusion proposed by Sena, two methods were applied: the perspective restitution, dismantling the quadratura through a reverse application of perspective procedures; and, the rehabilitation of the architectural design, grounded upon the same procedures applied by the Scientia Aedificandi. The rehabilitation of the architectural design departed from the detected synchronisms with Pozzo’s compositions, namely the89th figure of Perspectivae pictorum et architectorum (1693), VolumeI. Once Sena didn’t draw the architectural project but directly its appearance through the combination of Pozzo’s engravings [Figure 2], such striking coincidence is also identified with the 80th,86th and 99th figures from which stands out the adopted formal vocabulary. Concerning the perspective restitution, the analysis departed from the perspective outline, identifying succesive perimeters of Figure 1 Scales of veracity: frommarble to its faking in different pictorial supports. the outlined space and individualizing points of the architectural elements structure. Both processes allowed to achieve the orthogonal projections of the imaginary space that combined with those of the built space evidenced compositional and proportional properties allowed to evaluate properties of the overall illusory space. Confronting both results, the obtained projections point out a composite correspondence even if evidencing slightly different metric and proportional criteria. Variations consequent to the painter’s option on an empirical regulation of depths, attached to perceptual factors, to the detriment of a projective accuracy. JOÃO CABELEIRA Figure 2 Confrontation between theworks of Andrea Pozzo (Entrance of St. Ignatius in the Paradise, 1691/94; Perspectivae Pictorum et Architectorum, 1693 — 80th, 86th and 99th figures) and Luís Gonçalves Sena (Glorification of the Virgin,1754). 55 FROM THE CORPOREAL TO THEGAzE Synthesis and the acceleration ofillusion The previous methods exposed the structure of proposed imaginary architectures, but not the aparatus applied in modelling and qualifying the overall spatial illusion. In fact, and from the unavoidable example of Andrea Pozzo, in the transformation of the Roman church of Saint Ignacio’s (1685–98), arises aclear relation between built and represented strata evidencing a coherent spatial conception. The development of such a complex illusory program presupposes the application, into the quadratura outline, of the same instruments of the architectural design (since the survey of the supporting building, to the composition of the imaginary space). Besides that, also the continuity of compositional logics, between constructed and represented elements, attests the author’s ability in manipulating and controlling the perceptive experience of the overall space. For instance, and concerning the idea of scales of veracity, the continuity of the marble structures, either in the built and the represented space, unify the overall apprehended space. However, on the Portuguese panorama, rarely the quadratura illusion was coordinated with the built space, corresponding, more often, to autonomous campaigns. Exception, is the Joanina Library of the University of Coimbra (1717–28). A global commission that gather simultaneously all scopes of action enrolled in spatial qualification, from architectural design (JoãoCarvalho Ferreira), to quadratura illusion (António Simões Ribeiro) and decorative layout (Manuel da Silva and Francesco Gualdini). Being the built structure underlined by its marble materiality, the transition between stone and its appearance (namely in the ceiling’s quadratura), is operated through wood carvings that, obeying to the volumetric veracity of the architectural ornament, are transmuted by marbled painting. A strategy that fakes the materiality of the carved elements (usually closer to the observer’s body and eye), diluting the borders between three-dimensional and bi-dimensional elements and dismantling the idea of a proscenium arch. It is under these same assumptions that the main chapel of Santarém’s Jesuit church exhibits the full potential of the Baroque spirit according to an ordered apparatus which we cannot detached from identified centres of visual convergence and sound resonance [Figure 3]. A symbiosis of the seen and heard message, intrinsic linked to the formal resolution of space and the proselytizing temple mission. 62 SOFIA MENCONERO Figure 1 From the etching to the3Dreconstruction: a Plate VIII of Piranesi’s Carceri; b Schematisation of the inconsistent image introduced by the engraver; c Rendered view of the 3D model from the projection centre; d Axonometry of the reconstructive 3D model, highlighting the parts that show adherence to Piranesi’s drawing, the hypothesised parts, and the modified ones. space represented in the plate VIII of the Carceri. The aim is to fill the gap between the 2D and 3D representation of inconsistent images. Architectural interpretation. Perspective images can only evoke configurations known to the observer, so knowledge of architecture is essential when choosing functional elements to base the restitution (e.g. triorthogonal elements) (Baglioni et al. 2016: 1029–1030). Inspired by the method of graphic analysis of architecture, consolidated in the Roman School since the 1950s (Fasolo n.d.), the architectural values traced in the perspective image are selected. Thedrawing of architecture is the medium through which the analyses are conducted. In this case, the drawing 63 THE INCONSISTENT IMAGES OFPIRANESI’S CARCERI Figure 2 Architectural interpretation of plate VIII. Some examples of drawings for graphic analysis: a Mass analysis, b Symmetry analysis, c Connections for the systematic analysis ofrecurring elements, d Openings for the systematic analysis ofrecurring elements. allowsobservations not on concrete architecture, as is the practice in typical graphic analysis, but on fantastic and immaterial architecture. Following the principles of structuralism, which considers the work (literary texts, paintings, architectures) as an organic whole that can be broken down into elements and units, different levels of analysis are identified, whose functional value is determined by the set of relationships between each level and all the others. The decomposition of a complex space into more easily readable representations allows the modelling of the phenomenon. The graphic analysis involves eight different types of investigation [Figure 2]: 64 — Re-drawing of the work — Analysis of masses — Analysis of the full/empty relationship — Analysis of symmetries — Analysis of proportional ratios — Analysis of structures (arches/beams, floors, pillars, masonry, trusses, vaults) — Analysis of materials (stone, rope, metal, brick, wood) — Systematic analysis of recurring elements (connections, openings, architectural furniture, anthropic environment, prison furniture). The critical synthesis of the various levels of investigation lets to recompose the unity of space through its three-dimensional interpretation, as will be seen later. The architectural interpretation of plate VIII suggests which elements are to model, excluding all those not participating in the spatial configuration. It also suggests the composition triorthogonality, the recognition of architectural elements and symmetries. The last two help present a hypothesis of the development of space that is not directly visible in the etching. Perspective interpretation. After analysing and interpreting the space from an architectural point of view, we try to understand the spatial relationship of the represented objects, using, as far as possible, the tools of perspective restitution and the principles of stage design. Thefirst one only allows to obtain general information on the perspective setting that the author chose for his work, which informs his communicative intentions. Theidea of breaking down the plates into various planes at different depths, as if they were backdrops or stage flats, derives from stage design. Inthis way, it is possible to indicate the spatial relationship between the represented elements, at least in relative terms. Thisoperation is carried out by searching for elements that define limits in the representation and identify space sectors at different distances from the observer. These segments of the representation can be characterised by different graphical and tonal treatments, through which the author creates the illusion of depth. Therefore, perspective interpretation is based on the interrelationship between the decomposition of the image into depth planes and the perspective analysis of these individual planes, aiming to identify as much information as possible about the objects’ point of view and spatial arrangement. In particular, what can be sought are the vanishing points of horizontal lines, through which the horizon line passes defining the height of theobserver. The plate VIII can be broken down into three depth planes [Figure 3]: the element framing the right margin in the foreground; the central architectural complex cannot be broken down into other planes as there are no visible continuity solutions between the elements; and the background. SOFIA MENCONERO 65 THE INCONSISTENT IMAGES OFPIRANESI’S CARCERI According to the analysis of the perspective setting, these three depth planes share the same horizon h (that is not common in all the plates of the series). What varies are the vanishing points, both left (L1, L2) and right (R1, R2), of the elements in the first depth plane (L1, R1) compared to the other two (L2, R2). The non-coincidence of the vanishing points suggests a different orientation of the right margin wall in the foreground compared to the following architectural complex. Perceptual interpretation. Assuming that the aim of the three-dimensional reconstruction of the perspective representations is to arrive at a space configuration closest to the one perceived by the observer, the third and final component of the proposed method isthe perceptual interpretation of space. Figure 3 Perspective interpretation of plate VIII. Analysis of the perspective setting of the three depth planes. Foreach depth plane (a, b, c), a construction detail (top) and the miniature of the complete construction (bottom) are shown. All lines running to the same vanishing point have the same colour. 66 The experimental method of perceptual interpretation proposed by this study is based on the processes of image decoding, which occur in the human visual system continuously and unconsciously, recorded through eye movements with the eye-tracking technique. Since the human maximum visual acuity is in the central region of the retina (fovea centralis), eye movements allow us to select what we are looking at clearly, and their recording is significant for perceptual purposes. An important study conducted at the end of the 1960s shows that the elements of largest fixation are those that the observer considers most useful for perception and understanding of the scene (Yarbus 1967). Since looking at an artwork is influenced by the cultural variability of the observers, the experiment was conducted upon a reasonable sample of individuals (29) from different age and cultural backgrounds. Each of them was asked to look freely at the plate for 20 seconds before a webcam monitor, and eye-tracking was recorded through a software-based system. The free view let us understand whether, without any instructions, the areas that include spatial ambiguities are considered more than the others, as one would expect according to literature, or whether Piranesi managed to include ambiguities and to “hide” them in the composition at the same time. This information is important for the three-dimensional reconstruction, as it directs the modelling to pay more attention to those areas where fixations are most frequently focused. The test results includes an eye-tracking map in which warm tones are associated with the most observed areas of the plate [Figure 4]. The perceptual interpretation of plate VIII shows a pattern concentrated on the portal and the monumental staircase in the centre. Since the eye-tracking map shows few fixations in the upper part of the two pillars, it seems reasonable to assume that most observers did not notice the impossible figure introduced byPiranesi. A reconstructive model of the space was obtained by combining the results of the architectural, perspective and perceptual interpretations. This model shows the same perspective as the etching when observed from the same projection centre. Clearly, the model and the etching are not perfectly coincident. The 3D model shows different colours according to the elements directly taken from the Piranesian engraving (light grey), the elements modified for reasons of architectural and structural coherence (violet), and the elements hypothesised because they are not visible in the boundaries of the plate (dark grey) [Figure 1]. In order to solve the inconsistent image three-dimensionally, it was decided to follow the non-planarity of the side faces of the pillars suggested by the areas most observed during the perception test. Consequently, the width of the walkway connecting the two pillars, which is smaller than the engraved one, is modified, so it takes the width of the left pillar. SOFIA MENCONERO 67 THE INCONSISTENT IMAGES OFPIRANESI’S CARCERI Other changes were necessary for architectural and compositional reasons: on the first flight of the staircase, whose left balustrade diverges to make it wider and more imposing in the etching, on the arch supporting the second flight, which is not centred in the etching, and on the pillar in the centre of the right span, which was not on axis with the staircase. Conclusions The present research allows us to draw up a valid method in all cases in which the three-dimensional modelling of non-rigorous perspectives is to be achieved. The proposed method entrusts architectural interpretation with the understanding of the Figure 4 Perceptual interpretation of plate VIII. Eye-tracking map showing the pattern recordings of 29 individuals who freely observed the plate for 20 seconds. 68 SOFIA MENCONERO represented architecture, perspective interpretation with the investigation of the spatial relationships of the architectural elements, and perceptual interpretation with the identifying of spatial relationship in the most ambiguous cases. None of these three fields, on its own, provides sufficient information for reconstruction, but together they allow to synthesise knowledge that supports the three-dimensional modelling and reconstruction process, basing it on data that is as objective and shared as possible. The outcome of the modelling represents one of the infinite possible reconstructions of plate VIII. It is not the reconstruction but a reconstruction because many variables come into play, and the biunivocity between the representation and the represented space is lost. The application of the method on the plates of Piranesi’s Carceri allows tracing a reasoned path of space reconstruction, pointing out in the 3D model the areas of greater and lesser adherence to Piranesi’s drawing. The study highlights the extent to which the Carceri are visions, images. They are not the result of a project, of the rational space prefiguration. They still and forever belong to the embryonic phase of the idea, which, brought to maturity through a spatial project, becomes architecture. Therefore, the work that this research undertakes belongs to that phase of the prefiguration process that transforms Piranesi’s images into architecture based on the clues that the engraver left in his works. Piranesi’s mastery in the art of perspective allowed him to insert impossible figures and hide them in the composition at the same time, to alternate rationality and incoherence in a balanced way, so that the observer is left with the appearance of a logic regulating the total scheme: “piecing together the fragments of an insoluble puzzle” (Sekler 1962, 335). 69 THE INCONSISTENT IMAGES OFPIRANESI’S CARCERI BAGLIONI , Leonardo, FASOLO, Marco, MIGLIARI, Riccardo. 2016. “On the interpretation of the architectural perspectives”. In BERTOCCI, Stefani, BINI, Marco. The reasons of drawing. Thought, Shape and Model in the Complexity Management. Roma: Gangemi, pp. 1027–1032. ERNST, Bruno. 1986. Adventures with impossible figures. Stradbroke: Tarquin Publications. FASOLO, Vincenzo. Analisi grafica dei valori architettonici. Lezioni del prof. Vincenzo Fasolo. Istituto di Storia dell’Architettura — Facoltà di Architettura — Università di Roma. PRIEST, Graham, BERTO Francesco. 2018. Dialetheism. In E.N. Zalta (ed.) The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ fall2018/entries/dialetheism/ SEKLER, Patricia May. 1962. Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Carceri etchings and related drawings. In The Art Quarterly, XXV: 331–362. YARBUS, Alfred. 1967. Eye Movements and Vision. Boston: Springer. VOGT-GÖKNIL, Ulya. 1958. Giovanni Battista Piranesi “Carceri”. Zurich: Origo Verlag. Notes Bibliography 1. Ulya Vogt-Göknil is the first to have analysed graphically what she considers “the most daring structures” of the Carceri (plates VII, XIV and XV) [Vogt-Göknil 1958]. 70 Methodologies ofrestitution 78 plan of the illusionary space imagined by Bernardino Spada and paintedon the wall. The last part is also the experimental one. We propose some fruition models that lead to explore and to understand the illusionary space and the relationship between real and unreal: a. the spherical render; b. the 3D model; c. the immersive model. We highlight pros and cons of each type of model and their use to overcome the illusion. The Room of Pompeo The Room of Pompeo was painted by Agostino Mitelli and Angelo Michele Colonna in 1635 and after that, it was modified in 1660 during the occasion of the changing of its access in the architectural configuration. The content of the figurative representation is the celebration of the temporal power of Pope Urbano VIII Barberini. Animals and characters, such as the man with the telescope and the parrot in the golden cage, are symbolically used and they give the temporal dimension to the pictorial system. The illusory perspective space is the result of a strategy designed by the Cardinal, who wants to transform the room space into a “covered” courtyard through the different techniques of perspective representation and its constructs. The painted structures define multiple depth and spatial articulations that are triggered with the effective architectural system. The authors, therefore, analysed the composition of the painted surfaces, the relationship between the frescoed parts and real architectural parts. Moreover, they grasped the compositional rhythms and the adopted languages , finding figurative references in previous works, such as Villa Malvasia by Antonio Curti, as well as in following ones as the frescoes at Palazzo Pitti in Florence (1637–1641), in which similar spatial configurations are found. Furthermore, through geometric operations of perspective restitution, the true shape of the visual areas which is painted has been given back. This procedure reveals the relationship between real and virtual space once these are related in plan and section with the building’s survey. Moreover, the project has been enriched by a 3D model of the represented spaces, allowing an in-depth study of these virtual spaces and their immersive navigation. The analysis of the perspective paintings on the four walls of the hall revealed important features of the illusionary scenes. The so-called process of perspective restitution, allows to give back the planimetric features of the painted parts of the building, to read the connection elements between the real and the virtual space, to understand the articulation of the distribution system, and, of LAURA FARRONI, MATTEO FLAVIO MANCINI & GIULIA TAREI 79 VIRTUAL ExPERIENCES course, the relationship between the hall and the perspective set. The four walls perspective set have common features, such as the height of the observer, and, two by two, in relation with the actual sizes of the wall, some similar features of the observer’s position. What emerges from the perspective analysis is that the observer of the wall is set out of the hall, in the hallway, 13.10 m distant from the wall. We can find the same setting for the wall 3, the other with bigger sizes. The observer is put in the adjacent room 13.10 m far from the painted wall. The position of the observer of wall 2 is, instead, located into thehall, 10.90 m from the wall itself, and similar to the wall 4 set, with a viewpoint in the hall but a little bit further, again with a 13.10m distance. The Relations between Real and Virtual Spaces Once we deal with the 3D reconstruction of the virtual space, we try to answer two main questions concerning the quadratura by Colonna and Mitelli: a) How does it interact with the actual palace? b) How can we explore and share the virtual space? To answer the first question, we executed a hybrid 3D model, composed by the point cloud of Palazzo Spada survey and the 3D reconstruction of the virtual space. We also chose to adopt the traditional methods of descriptive geometry, such as the perspective and axonometric sections, for this phase of analysis. The virtual space invades part of the central courtyard and takes the places that are occupied by the real galleries along the other sides. At the same time, the architecture of the virtual courtyard, on Figure 2 Perspective analysis of point of view and perspective set 80 the right, fits the depth of the entire body of the palace towards the Vicolo of the Arcaccio. In the sections we can also see other interesting connections between the real and virtual spaces: on the left, the illusory architecture fills the width of the corridor that comes from the main staircase of the palace, which also happens for the private chapel on the opposite side. Once again, the virtual courtyard fits the depth of the real garden [Figure 3]. To explore the virtual space and share this experience with otherusers we experiment three different representation techniques: online spherical rendering, online 3D models and interactive models. The spherical rendering, which is taken from the centre of the room, shows how the virtual space transforms the room of Pompeo into a courtyard. This technique has its pros and cons. The main pros are a high-quality shading and framing since it is generated by traditional rendering software, the existence of free easy sharing platform and that it can easily work on low-end hardware requirement for users . Its main con is the low interaction level for the users that can just turn around the position of the virtual camera. The second technique we experiment is the sharing of the 3D model on an on-line platform. The main pros of this technique are a mid-quality realtime shading, the availability of freeeasy sharing platform and a mid-interactionlevel that we can define as a third person navigation of the model. While its main cons are the mid LAURA FARRONI, MATTEO FLAVIO MANCINI & GIULIA TAREI Figure 3 Sections and axonometries: relationship between realand unreal spaces 81 VIRTUAL ExPERIENCES to high-endhardwarerequirementsfor users and the absence of collisiondetection between the model and the virtual viewer . The third experiment we develop is the construction of an interactive model. What we tried to do is basically the creation of a virtual space that a user can freely explore, choosing where to go and what to see in order to understand the architectonical space of the perspective illusions painted on the walls of the hall. So, as we already told, the 3D model, based on the two-dimensional drawings given back from the perspectives, allows to break the illusion and reveal the real configuration of the illusionary parts of the building. This model, made with NURBS surfaces and curves is the starting point, the starting element of this experimentation that is still in progress. First, we needed to elaborate the mesh model using a rendering software to create an interactive model. The model has then been worked into a rendering engine: here it is possible to set a UV mapping, for texture mapping on the 3D model’s surface, or it is possible to set lights and other rendering features. Thus, the first thing to do, for transforming this model into an interactive model, is to optimize the polygonal mesh for the surface collision and detection, that is the feature that actually allows to interact with this Figure 4 a spheric panorama; b 3D model; c interactive model a b c 82 LAURA FARRONI, MATTEO FLAVIO MANCINI & GIULIA TAREI model, to detect and avoid walls, to go upstairs, or walk on the floor. The way to do that is called voxel modelling. Voxels are essentially 3D pixels, but instead of being squares they are perfect cubes. So, what we did was to transform the mesh model generating a voxel model. The model can be now imported in a game engine, such as Unreal Engine, choosing the first person’s character pre-set that simulates the exploration of the virtual space from a human’s point of view and that allows interaction with the model. Setting the collision detection, the walls, the stairs, and other geometrical elements are ready to be detected. So, what is possible to do is to navigate the virtual scene going wherever the user wants, using a joystick or a Kinect or with the keyboard. The final result let the user go upstairs and walk on the balcony floor, walking in any direction and choosing a viewpoint on the hall or on the virtual space to understand the architectonical features of the painted spaces but also the relationship between these spaces and the Room of Pompeo, the real architecture. We choose to set a first-person character navigation of the virtual space, and for virtual space we mean the painted spaces that we modelled, and it is possible to imagine that this navigation can be made using a VR visor, for example, in order to have an immersive navigation of this 3D model [Figure 4]. Conclusion The illusionary space of Pompeo’s hall invades the real spaces respecting the size, the dimensions and the architectonical features, even if there is not an effective continuity between the two type ofspaces. Exploring the hall standing there physically the user is allowed to appreciate the material quality of the paintings, having a direct experience of the perspective illusion. The virtual explorations, instead, allow to have a clearer perception of the illusionary space and of the way in which it transforms the Pompeo’s hall in a virtual courtyard, perfectly fitting with the whole system of the real courts and gardens of the palace. A continuous and constant switch from 2D and 3D is what allowed us to understand the spatiality and the features of the illusionary space, and lead us to overcome the illusion, to reveal the delusion and to imagine a new way of have experience of what Bernardino Spada minded in 17th century, whit his brilliant and innovative ideas. So, what is possible is also to understand the culture of the project, to deepen the techniques and the theories underlying the project process, and the final results that characterized (and still characterize) the architecture of Palazzo Spada. 83 VIRTUAL ExPERIENCES BERTOCCI, Stefano; FAUZIA, Farneti. 2015. Prospettiva, luce e colore nell’illusionismo architettonico. Quadraturismo e grande decorazione nella pittura di età barocca. Roma: Artemide. CANNATÀ, Roberto. 1992. Palazzo Spada. Arte e storia. Roma: Bonsignori Editori. CANNATÀ, Roberto. 1984. Guida a Palazzo Spada. Roma: Multigrafica Editrice. FARNETI, Fauzia; LENZI, Deanna. 2004, L’architettura dell’inganno. Quadraturismo e grande decorazione nella pittura di età barocca. Firenze: Alinea Editrice. FARRONI, Laura. 2019. L’arte del disegno a Palazzo Spada. Roma: De Luca Editori d’Arte. NEPPI, Lionello. 1975. Palazzo Spada. Roma: Editalia. Bibliography 84 84 AGOSTINO DE ROSA * The Apocalypse of optics, the eyewitness of the Apocalypse: time, space and illusion at Trinità deiMonti ABSTRACT The anamorphic cycles and the catoptric sundials at the Convent of Trinità dei Monti were developed within an experimental process conducted by the Minims friars in the 17th century. The recent surveys on these works have revealed unprecedented connections between them, not only of perspectival nature, but also with a symbolic and mystical character. The visible (and invisible) apparatuses shows how they were part of a project in which the illusory images supported Order’s spiritual life. * Università Iuav di Venezia | dCP 85 TIME, SPACE AND ILLUSION AT TRINITà DEI MONTI Introduction The term ἀναμόρϕωσις (anamorphosis) is a word that derives from Greek. Its etymology in the suffix ἀνά (upwards, backwards, back to) and in the root μορϕή (form)1. According to Jurgis Baltrušaitis2 the word firstly appeared in the treatise by Gaspar Schott (1608–1666), Magia Universalis naturae et artis… (Paris 1657–1659), as confirmed in the Oxford Companyon to Arts. In the art field this term refers to a precise category of planar images or to tridimensional structures which are represented in a strongly deformed perspective. These images aren’t immediately recognizable in their real configuration, but can only be fully understood if observed from a precise point of view usually located on a plane surface. Inother cases, anamorphoses are recognizable due to their reflection on a convex, spherical, cylindrical, conical or pyramidal mirror, called anamorphoscope3. The most important authors or scientific disseminators of the anamorphosis phenomenon were opticians and students who studied perspective belonging to religious orders4, such as the Jesuits and the Minims. During the Baroque period monks used this representation technique to convey messages or hidden allegories using the archaic code of perspectiva secreta. It is in the Seventeenth century in fact that the study of anamorphic genre reached levels of theoretical depth and great graphic virtuosity which had only received a brief look in previous treatises or in artistic achievements. The most precise is La Perspective Curieuse (1638) by the Minim Friar Jean François Niceron that was also published in Latin (1646), edited and integrated by Father Marin Mersenne with the new title of Thaumaturgus opticus after the Friar’s death. This last work must be considered as a partial realization of the editorial project that Niceron had been following for many years. Unfortunately, the commitments of the religious order and his early death prevented him from completing it. The story of direct and indirect anamorphosis develops exactly around the figure of Niceron and his friend Emmanuel Maignan, both living and working in the Roman convent of Trinità dei Monti in the first half of the Seventeenth century5. The Apocalypse of optics, theeyewitness of the Apocalypse The portrait [Figure 1] depicts a young monk outlined by a gaunt face and a barely visible beard, wearing a tunic with the typical cap of the religious Order of Minims6. He is holding the planche of his latest treatise, on which he was still working just before his death on the 22nd of September, 1646. Since Niceron had 86 already passed away before his book was published, the engraving by Michel Lasne (1595–1667) actually appears as a space-time paradox. In fact, although he is represented holding the book, his work will only be published after his death, as mentioned before. Onthe planche that Niceron is holding upright, we can read: “F.Iaon Franciscus Niceron/Delinea Romæ ano Sal. 1642/ Ætatis Suæ 29”. These words give a hint of the period when the first draft was drawn out. At the time, which coincided with the second stay of Niceron in Rome (post January 1641-April 1642), he was writing the Latin edition7, with the relative plates of his La Perspective Curieuse (1638). This treatise unlocked the aberrant secrets of perspective known as anamorphosis. As the treatise was written in French it unabled other European students to read it. Niceron was born in Paris on the 5th of July, 1613; he joined the Order of Minims at the convent of Nigeon-Chaillot (now Passy), where he served as a novice. Onthe 26th of January, 1632, after he had completed his novice, he was admitted to the profession and went to the convent of Place Royale (Paris). He was given a second AGOSTINO DE ROSA Figure 1 M. Lasne, R. P. Joannes Franciscus Niceron ex Ordine Munimorum, egregiis animi dotibus et singulari matheseos peritia celebris, obiit Aquis Sextiis 22 septembris an. Dni 1646, Aetat 33. Engraving. Paris, first half of the 17th century. 87 TIME, SPACE AND ILLUSION AT TRINITà DEI MONTI name Jean after his uncle who was a Minim monk too. In 1631, at the age of 18, during his novitiate, Niceron created his first artistic work, consisting in an anamorphic portrait of Jacques d’Auzolles de Lapeyere (1571–1642), a well-known author of Mercure charitable8. The young Jean François showed a special inclination towards mathematical studies and a remarkable interest in optics, catoptric and dioptric without neglecting his previous studies in theological and philosophical disciplines (inhis first treatise). During the following years the twenty-five year old Niceron published LaPerspective Curieuse, ou magie artificielle des effets mervellieux…in Paris for Pierre Billaine (1638). Niceron, well aware of the level of sophistication that perspective technique had achieved between the Sixteenth and early Seventeenth century, approaches the problem of deformation that nowadays could be defined as ‘projective’ avant la lettre. He actually abandoned the practical expedients widely exploited until then, “…because it is a matter of small weight and for which it is not necessary to have any knowledge ofperspective”9. Figure 2 J.F. Nicéron, Saint John the Evangelist writes the Apocalypse on the island of Pathmos, 1639–40. Color mural painting. Conventual Complex of Trinità dei Monti, Rome. Detail. 94 New visualities João Pombeiro Chicago, 2022 Collage / digital animation 97 João Pombeiro Back to nature, 2017 Collage / digital animation 99 João Pombeiro Wanna be Basquiat, 2019 Collage / digital animation 101 João Pombeiro Kite, 2017 Collage / digital animation 103 110 While the work is striking in its simplicity, there is a larger argument at work here. Much of Warburton’s work engages with and aestheticizes the labor of digital image production, with particular focus on 3D modeling and visualization. In Z Warburton makes a similar gesture, using the depth pass as a kind of readymade. What seems an exceptional object for us, perhaps, is a rather mundane and everyday part of the render process for any CG artist. Nonetheless it produces a kind of “selective vision” that reflects the work’s broader theme, which for Warburton is the production of historical narrative. As the artist notes, “Z is about how we make sense of the clutter of current events, how we create epochs, and how, in an era of intense global change, we are affected by a kind of long term myopia that obscures us to the larger forces at work”7. Depth here is a function not only of vision, but also a means of reflecting on the limits of what can be made sensible in the broadest sense. Depth as Cultural Context This brings me to a third set of objects for the simulation of visual depth, and what is perhaps the most visible and legible set of images for the negotiation of distance through perspective projection. Here I hope to examine a set of cultural practices that both enable new forms of three-dimensional visualization while ultimately transforming more traditional techniques for the production of depth, such that all manner of visual technologies come to mirror the visual claim of computer graphics. It is possible that the eerie scene of Warburton’s short film may seem familiar to anyone who has played a contemporary 3D digital game, if not in content than at the very least in tone and aesthetic. The hazy fog that seems to envelop the scene is not unlike environments found throughout a wide range of modern video games, and indeed this is no coincidence, as the z-buffer is also used for the real time production of distance effects in digital games, which must constantly work to contain and direct the vision of its players in a given landscape. Traditionally this could be done through level design, creating pathways that restrict and direct player movement. In outdoor scenes this becomes more difficult, and so games often restrict what can be accessed and seen through visible or invisible barriers — for example endless oceans that a player cannot cross, or inaccessible mountains too steep to climb. But as the scale and scope of games has grown, developers have had to come to terms with expanded scenes and greater distances. How do we negotiate visibility in the landscape of a game where openness and exploration are central features of the game’s design? The answer is what is commonly referred to as distance fog, that is, the layering of fog in a scene to enhance the perception of JACOB GABOURY 111 ON PERSPECTIVE AS DEPTH SIMULATION distance. This effect, once again, is produced by an interpretation of the depth map, where objects at a certain distance recede into a faint haze that obscures and restricts vision. This allows objects at a distance to be rendered in less detail, part of a ubiquitous but entirely invisible method for accelerating the rendering process known as mipmapping, in which pre-calculated sequences of images, each with a progressively lower resolution, are used to represent objects as they recede into the distance8. What may seem like laziness also serves a particular material function, as this technique is meant to simulate the effect of light scattering or diffraction, which causes distant objects to appear lower in contrast, particularly in outdoor environments. However, it is also a site at which embodied vision must be negotiated with the limitations of a given computational system. Rendering a scene in absolute depth is not only taxing and difficult for most personal computers or modern consoles, but it can also reveal too much of the scene of play, granting users an unwanted advantage by revealing parts of a game not yet accessible. Though more than Figures 3, 4 Screenshot from Assassins Creed: Syndicate (2015) with and without distance fog. 112 JACOB GABOURY anything it often looks unrealistic — perfect clarity at great distance conflicts with our embodied experience, and so in this instance a kind of simulated realism demands less clarity, less vision. This distance fog effect can be seen in almost all games to some extent but is perhaps most interesting for the way it is incorporated as a narrative device or genre effect. For example, in Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate (2015) distance fog adds to the overall atmosphere of the game narrative, which set in Victorian Era London at the height of the so-called London fog, caused by the domestic burning of coal and other pollutants mixing with the mists of the Thames valley. Without the fog the game’s atmosphere is lost, and the player gains visual access to parts of the map that haven’t yet explored [Figure 3 & 4]. We see this again in the smog of Grand Theft Auto V (2013), set in the fictional city of Los Santos, based on the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, and plagued by a smog that blocks distant vistas beyond the playable game space. Once again, were we to strip away this distance effect we could see that the fog hides a simple background texture, and that the illusion of immersive depth that is the hallmark of this open world genre is predicated in part on this unique form of depth simulation. In a sense distance fog — made possible again by the z-buffer and its depth map — serves as the functional horizon line of 3D game spaces, marking the edge of our perception from a given perspective. Again, this is a limit not of human vision but of computational power, and an active restricting of a desire to see beyond that limit. To be sure, there is a great deal more that could be said here about the ways in which computer graphics negotiate the illusion of depth through the simulation of perspective, but my goal here has been to demonstrate how radically dissimilar these simulations have become to what we might think of as classical perspective when viewed through the history and contemporary use of computer graphics, with the z-buffer serving as a kind of medium for the production of distance. Perhaps most significantly, in analyzing the z-buffer and its attendant technologies as historical, material, and cultural objects we can see the various ways in which computer simulation makes sense of the world precisely by excluding that which does not correspond with the limits of its perception, a process that is as much about manufacturing invisibility and restricting vision as it is in reproducing a kind of visual realism or perspectival form. 113 ON PERSPECTIVE AS DEPTH SIMULATION CATMULL, Edwin Earl. 1974. A subdivision algorithm for computer display of curved surfaces. PhD presented to the Department of Computer Science of the University of Utah. ELKINS, James. 1994. The poetics of perspective. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. KITTLER, Friedrich. 2010. Optical Media. Anthony Enns (trans.). New Jersey: Wiley. MERLEAU-PONTY, Maurice. 2002 [1945]. Phenomenology of Perception. C. Smith (trans.). London and New York: Routledge. wILLIAMS, Lance. 1983. “Pyramidal parametrics.” In Proceedings of the 10th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 1–11. 1. Elkins 1994. 2. Kittler 2010, 75. 3. For a detailed discussion of the hidden surface problem, see Gaboury, Jacob. 2021. “Culling Vision: Hidden Surface Algorithms and the Problem of Visibility” in Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 27–54. 4. Merleau-Ponty 2002 [1945], 79. 5. Catmull 1974. 6. See Alan Warburton Z (2012), Video, available at https://alanwarburton.co.uk/ page-z. 7. Warburton, ibid. 8. Williams 1983. Notes Bibliography 114 114 LUÍSA SOL * Domestic Proscenium: Television in the American Postwar Suburban House ABSTRACT This paper intends to analyze the dynamics of the North American suburban house with the television device, taking into account its impact on the paradigm change of the space of representation and the social space in the domestic context. The arise of the American Suburbia and television are simultaneous and mutually influenced by each other. Both, the modern large window house typology and television have allowed the world to enter the house, providing real and hypothetical travel for the spectator. Causing not only changes in the domestic life itself, but also in the way domestic life came to be represented. * CIAUD — Faculdade de Arquitetura da Universidade de Lisboa 115 TELEVISION IN THE AMERICAN POSTWAR SUBURBAN HOUSE Introduction The exodus of the American middle class from the city center to the periphery during the 1950s and 1960s, has coincided with the spread of this new domestic element: the television. The contamination of the domestic space and of the family routines by the television reality led to a “theatricalisation” of the living room. The place of the television should be favored as the social center of the home. Television became the place of the stage, and the sofa became the place of the audience. The relationship between family routines and television is, moreover, a very common theme in films, series and soap operas from the 1970s and 1980s. Television has re-organised the social space of the house introducing significant changes in the dynamics of entertainment and leisure that were progressively incorporated into the home. The typology of these new and modern houses also provided a wide visual reach to the world. The North American periphery, which emerged in the 1950s, inaugurated a new space production based on the dilution of the boundaries between public-private, proximity-distance, domestic-urban. Besides establishing a comfortable relationship with the city, induced by the trivialization of car use, the suburban house enhances a pleasant relationship with the neighborhood, the increase in visual permeability provided by the large and wide window typology, and the integration of television in everyday life. Modern large windows and television have allowed the world to enter the house, providing real and hypothetical travel for the spectator. Causing not only changes in the domestic life itself, but also in the way domestic life came to be represented. ——— Television and suburbs are both engineered spaces, designed and planned by people who are engaged in giving material reality to wider cultural belief systems. In addition, media and suburbs are sites where meanings are produced and created; they are spaces (whether material or electronic) in which people make sense of their social relationship to each other, their communities, their nation, and the world at large1. The American postwar period has witnessed the emergence of a massive built periphery simultaneously with the spread of the Television. The increase of visual permeability was provided by the the application of some principles of modernist architecture and the reduction of distances caused by the banalization of automobile use, which increasingly blurred relations of proximity / distance, inside / outside. 116 Powered by the automobile and motorways, the exodus of the middle class towards the outer city limits represented a conquest based on mobility and on the expansionist idea of unlimited territory where, supposedly, is located the Promised Land. Beyond the establishment of a comfortable relationship of proximity-distance either with the neighborhood either with the city, the suburb carries in itself an illusory personalization of the domestic space reproduced in single-family houses. Through a “modern”, comfortable, house-with-garden and large-garage-for-one-large-car lifestyle, the suburb represents a bittersweet construction of domesticity. On one hand this emphasizes the fulfillment of ambitions and its ostentation, on the other hand gives a new impetus and meaning to consumer culture and masses. In addition to this search for belonging, identity and meaning, the average American middle-class individual faced the possibility of becoming an owner: By purchasing their detached suburban homes, the young couples of the middle class participated in the construction of a new community of values; in magazines, in films, and on the airwaves they became the cultural representatives of the ‘good life’2. The North American periphery, that emerged in the 1950s, was where the American middle class found a harmonious middle ground in the massive configuration of tree-lined streets, delimited by singlefamily houses, all with the same configuration, with a garden, a barbecue and a garage. The post-war suburban villa became the ex-libris of the American Dream. Moving in to the suburbs was a closest representation of what the Declaration of Independence proposed when it enacted the “Right to Freedom and the pursuit of Happiness” as the inalienable right of the American citizen. The North American periphery constituted thus the realization of the promise to live in the “America” project: “American pursuit of happiness degenerated into an obsessive pursuit of pleasure, both indulgent experiences and beautiful things”3. Enforced by modernist architecture principles, the contamination of the inside by the outside and vice versa is provided, in part, by large sliding windows, that also emphasized the modernity of these houses. The Window, in this context, allows this fluidity of space between the domestic and its own neighborhood, which so clearly defines the north-american suburban way of life. The large glazed windows enabled the modern and sophisticated mothers with their well-equipped kitchens to make dinner and other household chores without losing control of their children playing in the garden. This configuration of the home calls upon the mother to play a role that allows her to act before the presence of a particular and eventual set of observers, either for the family members either LUÍSA SOL 117 TELEVISION IN THE AMERICAN POSTWAR SUBURBAN HOUSE for the neighbours: “the fact that […] this audience is indeed at home is not without consequences. The private is, in this sense, now more public than the public”4. The configuration of everyday life in a single-family detached house evokes a genre of privacy that a block of flats does not offer. Atthe same time, it encourages the construction of a healthy life within the community, where ideally the community itself appears as the collective emancipation of a certain homogeneous socio-economic, age and racial range, with very specific intentions and objectives, as “[…] the central preoccupation in the new suburban culture was the construction of a particular discursive space through which the family could mediate the contradictory impulses for a private heaven on the one hand, and community participation on the other”5. This pleasant relationship with the window has fostered the emergence of a prominent place for the element that would reconfigure the entire layout and dynamics of the room and suburban family life: “Given its ability to merge private with public spaces, television was the ideal companion for these suburban homes”6. This co-existence between the window and the television will not only have allowed this permeability between the domestic interior and the exterior of the neighbourhood, but it will also have amplified a performative consciousness inside the house, transforming it into a theatre box where its inhabitants “are both actors and spectators of the family scene involved in, yet, detached from, their own space.The classical distinction between inside and outside, private and public, object and subject, becomes convoluted”7. The contamination of the domestic space and of the family routine by the television reality led to a “theatrification” of the (living) room. The layout of the space should privilege the place of the television as the social center of the home. Television would, from now on, assume the place of the stage, and the sofa would assume the place of the audience, giving the residents a bundle of abstraction and more-than-private space within their own home and their own family. The aesthetics and the reconfiguration of the home as a function of the television set was extensively promoted by magazines, catalogs and advertisement of home and decoration: [P]ostwar home magazines and handbooks on interior decor presented an endless stream of devise on how to make the home into a confortable theatre. In 1949, for example, House Beautiful advised its readers that ‘conventional living room groupings need to be slightly altered because televiewers look in the same direction and not at each other.’ Good Housekeeping seconded the motion in 1951 when it claimed that ‘television is theatre; and to succeed, theatre requires a comfortably placed audience with a clear view of the stage.’ Advertisements for television sets variously referred to the‘chairside theatre’, the ‘video theatre’, the ‘family theatre’, and so forth. Taken to its logical extreme, 118 thistheatricalization of the home transformed domestic space into a private pleasure dome8. It is, however, in the materialistic and resigned strength of the ‘80s that television becomes an institution. Omnipresent, stimulating and absorbing, it has spread in quantity and diversity of technology, channels, television stations, programs, cable companies and mediatic experiences. It is, from 1980 onwards, that CNN (Cable News Network) emerges, the first cable channel with twenty-four hours a day news, MTV (Music Television) or ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Network) offereing spectators an easy and endless world of entertainment, anytime, with a wide choice of channels and specificities, all from the distance of a remote control: During the 1980s, the American media was becoming more fragmented yet concentrated. Even as a niche marketing developed, even as the three-network oligopoly dissolved into the hundred-channel cable galaxy, the center of gravity in the media universe emerged stronger than ever. […] [C]ulture and […] standards demonstrated the power and ubiquity of the modern media.9 The relationship between family dynamics and television became reciprocal. Domestic and family daily life became a frequent theme in the television series and soap operas, particularly from the late 1970s and the 1980s and 1990s. The reversal of the spectator’s place is evident in such series as All in the Family (Norman Lear, Johnny Speight, 1971–79), The Cosby Show (Bill Cosby, Ed. Weinberger and Michael Leeson, 1984–92) or Family Ties (Gary David Goldberg, 1982–89). The camera was placed precisely where the television set was, and in many moments the spectator glimpsed his own portrait: a whole family sitting on the couch, watching each other on the other side. In any case, television plays with the complicity of those who watch it, subverting the place of the Home, which becomes either the stage or the audience. Television has helped to re-build an imaginary of “family”, placing these family ideals at the centre of the television stage, and simultaneously turning it into its most significant spectator. Bearing in mind that “Discourses on television drew upon and magnified the more general obsession with the reconstruction of family life and domestic ideals after World War II. […] [In ’50s] television was typically welcomed as a catalyst for renewed domestic values.”10 In the ’80s, the return to and refuge in the familiar setting are associated with an implied nostalgia for the prosperous, conservative America of the 1950s, resurrected by the Reagan atmosphere: “The Reagan presidency was all about nostalgia. Nostalgia for small town values, revival of traditional virtues — prosperous America of the ’50s — mum and apple pie”11. LUÍSA SOL 119 TELEVISION IN THE AMERICAN POSTWAR SUBURBAN HOUSE Figure 1 American Family watching television, ’50s Figure 2 Mother in an American Suburban kitchen, ’50s Figure 3 “All in the Family”, NormanLear, 1971–79 126 From the idea of “openness” in Roman frescoes to the activation ofmodern underground spaces. The idea of manipulating human perception to make the person believe that he is in a wider or open space even though they are fully inserted in an interior space is not new. The use of this resource was even the differential element of the so-called “Second Style” of mural decoration made from fresco paintings in Roman dwellings in the period between 80 BC and 14 AD. Inthisstyle, for the first time, the walls were used as a support for paintings that create an illusion of openness to the outside world through the design of an architecture that expands the interior space to meet an imaginary landscape using perspective in the drawing to create layers of depth (Davide, undated). Maracajá Daltro (2011) reminds us that to have a simulation or suggestion of an effect in the context of immersive space, its imagery support (and here it does not matter which medium is used) must be illusory rather than mimetic. That is, the illusion may not be related to the context of the space in which it is produced because what matters is to achieve an illusory result on the observer and not the reproduction of reality. In the remodelling of the Croix-Rousse tunnel in the city of Lyon, the forecast for the installation of a road for mild modes (those made by foot or by bicycle) ran into possible reticence regarding its use due to the length of the route of approximately 1.7 km, capable of causing discomfort in some users. Thesolution found was to create a virtual animation composed by the projection of images in video-mapping accompanied by a sound installation2 that modified the inner space of the tunnel, transforming what would be a monotonous crossing into an immersive journey in an oneiric universe [Figure 1]. Similarly, the 24.5 km long Laerdal Tunnel implied problems of stress due to confinement and hypostress due to deficits in attention because of the monotony of the long route. These were mitigated in such a way that the sections of the long tunnel are interspersed with large, intensely lit spaces to generate an (illusory) perception in the user that he is driving towards an open space. The advent of light-emitting diode technology with its wide spectrum of colours, low heat production and low energy consumption has made it possible to overcome a chronic deficiency of underground spaces that are often poorly lit3, which leads to interpretation as unsafe or even claustrophobic places. The use of led lighting has recently diversified into the activation of spaces whose use may prove to be problematic, LUÍS MESTRINHO 127 THE ILLUSION OF OPEN SPACE Figure 1 Croix Rousse Tunnel, Lyon, France. © Clement Saunier (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) Figure 2 Ganzenmarkt underground walkway, Utrecht, NL. © Anneke van Beek (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) asin the case of level crossings for pedestrians. Examples of this requalification tactic are found in the cities of Birmingham, USA; North Lanarkshire, UK; Ringwood, AUS; Uthrech, NL [Figure 2] and Katowice, PL4. In these spaces, taking advantage of an urban acupuncture strategy, it was possible to transform, only through light and colour, urban spaces regarded as “non-places” into spaces designed to impress and, in this way, make their use moreattractive. 128 An opening to the sky: artifices to make the underground space wider and more open. Perhaps one of the best examples of mastery in the field of the technique of deceiving the senses and providing an opening to the sky in closed spaces is the painting made by Andrea Pozzo using the quadratura technique. One of its fundamental characteristics is to promote the continuity of the real architectural space in a fictitious space5 (Silva, 2020), through the painting of architecture on a perspective canvas, to create a structure or a set of these in replacement to the real one (Fillippi, 2002). Just as in the 17th century, the perspective could be useful to the observer who entered a religious space to raise his spirit towards the heavens, in contemporary times, the use of artifices to bring the sky to the underground spaces, or at least the main element associated with it, natural light, can also have important effects on the viewer’s psyche. It has already been mentioned that the disconnection generated by the lack of natural light and the absence of openings to the outside is perceived as a disadvantage in the use of underground space. In addition, the absence of these elements can also generate not only high levels of stress but also, loss of control over the environment (Lee et al, 2016), which leads to a perception of insecurity and even a perception of poor air quality (Collins, 1975 cited in Carmordy & Sterling, 1987). Therefore, combating these effects with the generation of positive stimuli in the built environment may prove to be an unavoidable task in the design of underground spaces intended to have public use to counterbalance various negative psychological impacts that may affect users. Carmordy & Sterling (1987) argue that, among others, light is probably the main criterion to be considered in the design of underground structures. Unlike the first generation of underground urban spaces, it is currently possible to observe that several contemporary projects have incorporated natural light, less intending to provide lighting for such areas (which could be easily done with the aid of passive systems of artificial lighting), and more to serve as a device to establish a relationship between open space and underground. In this context, natural light is intended to illusory reinforce the connectivity between these two worlds, below and above ground, regardless the fact that they are fundamentally different in their configurations and their connection remains very limited. Examples of the use of this feature are London Canary Wharf Underground Station, where the transition between outside and LUÍS MESTRINHO 129 THE ILLUSION OF OPEN SPACE Figure 3 Metro Station Canary Wharf, Londres, UK ©Miguel Souza (CC BY-SA 4.0) Figure 4 Metro Station (Not Identified) © Dan Asaki (CC BY-SA 4.0) underground is smoothed by the ample natural lighting of the entrance hall [Figure 3], Blaak Station in Rotterdam, where light penetrates to the level of the boarding platform, contrasting with its closed environment and, even more broadly, in the renovation project of the Pont de Bondy Metro station in Paris where natural light bathes all levels of the building, reaching the boarding platforms with a play of light and perspective under an arrangement of mezzanines crowned by an immense oculus. 130 LUÍS MESTRINHO However, it is not always possible to make use of natural light and, particularly in deep underground spaces, the challenge in doing so could be technically and economically unfeasible. In these cases, authors (Samwell, 2003) point out that design solutions that use perspective as an instrument of expansion such as the construction in levels, mezzanines and different heights [Figure 4] can be valid to provide amplitude, while others even suggest a more radical form of space manipulation interior through the concept of construction in a “box within a box” arrangement in which it would be possible to provide the space with an “outside” view by playing with the perspective created between two distinct environments (Alkamede, 2003). Conclusion Lee et al. (2017) point out that the main challenge for any underground project in the future is to understand how to identify the psychological characteristics of this underground environment, relate them to its users and design such spaces taking such factors into account. In this work, it was possible to observe that, currently, a series of resources, both at a design and technological levels, are available to be used in the Project of spaces below ground to mitigate possible associations or negative perceptions regarding their use. The selection of the solution to be used may depend on the technical, economic or even social feasibility (in cases of the revitalization of degraded or underutilized spaces) that favour the choice on a case-by-case basis. The repertoire of solutions is diversified and may correspond to low-tech resources that suggest an opening to the outside world through the insertion of illusory resources such as the “windows with views” adopted in some of the metro stations of the city of Stockholm, or simply through Project premises such as construction on different levels, dimensions, or gradients. Likewise, high-tech type resources may also be used. Benefiting from the properties and possibilities arising from cold light technology and, sometimes, from computerized control, these rely predominantly on advanced management of light and colour spectrum that provide, as we would have on the surface, a greater variation in brightness with a relevant contribution to the mitigation of stress levels, arising from the so-called “cave syndrome” (Fairhust, 1976 cited in Hollon et al. 1980). All in all, these tools may promote greater comfort for the users of underground spaces and, as a result, contribute to the suitability of their use. 131 THE ILLUSION OF OPEN SPACE 1. The study of human experience with the built environment has been carried out since the 60s, but only from the 2000s onwards has it expanded with the exploration of the role of the brain in this experience, which gave rise to the new field of knowledge called neuro-architecture. 2. The project is a work of the Skertzö agency, one of the pioneers in the use of video-mapping at the Festival of Lights in the city of Lyon. 3. The difficulty in dissipating the heat generated by incandescent lamps in underground environments partly explains this problem. 4. Respectively the Light Rails installation, the crossing near the Craiglinn roundabout, the Larissa crossing, the Ganzenmarkt tunnel and the Muzyczny tunnel. 5. Pozzo wrote a treatise on the subject, Perspectiva Pictorum et Architectorum, published in 1693. Notes Bibliography ALKAMEDE, Floris. 2003. “Manipulation for Simultaneity”. In MEIJENFELDT, Ernst von, GELUK, Marit (ed.). Below Ground Level: Creating New Spaces for Contemporary Architecture. Basel: Birkhauser. pp.82–87. CARMORDY, John, STERLING, Raymond. 1984. “Design Considerations for Underground Buildings”. In Underground Space. Amsterdam: KeAi, Elsevier, 8. pp.352–362. CARMORDY, John, STERLING, Raymond. 1987. “Design Strategies to Alleviate Negative Psychological and Physiological Effects in Underground Space”. Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2–I. pp.57–67. DAVIDE, Dario. n.d.. The Frescos of Pompeii. Fonte: Pompeii tours — guided tours in Pompeii — Archaeologist in Pompeii — Pompeii ruins. Available at: http://www.pompeii. org.uk/s.php/tour-the-frescos-of-pompeii-pompeii-ruins-en-222-s.htm# FILLIPI, Elena. 2002. L’arte della Prospettiva: L’opera e l’insegnamento di Andrea Pozzo e Ferdinando Galli Bibiena in Piemonte. Firenze: Olschki. HOLLON, SD; KENDALL, P.C.; NORSTED, S. & wATSON, D. 1980 “Psychological Responses to Earth-Sheltered, Multilevel and Above Ground Structures with and without windows.” In Underground Space. Amsterdam: KeAi, Elsevier, 5–3. pp. 171–178. LEE, Eun-Hee, CHRISTOPOULOS, George, KwOK, Kian, ROBERTS, Adam, SOH, Chee-Kiong. 2017. A Psychosocial Approach to Understanding Underground Spaces. Frontiers in Psychology. 8:452, pp. 1–7. MARACAJÁ DALTRO, João. 2011. “Um Estranho Prédio Redondo em Pleno Largo do Paço”. In Anais do 20.º Encontro da Associação Nacional de Pesquisadores em Artes Plásticas. Rio de janeiro: Associação Nacional de Pesquisadores em Artes Plásticas – ANPAP. pp. 1895–1910. SAMwELL, Diederik. 2003. “Perception Underground.” In MEIJENFELDT, Ernst von, GELUK, Marit (ed.) (ed.) Below Ground Level: Creating New Spaces for Contemporary Architecture. Basel: Birkhauser. pp.164–178. SILVA, Mateus Alves. 2020. Perspectiva Pictorum et Architectorum A Perspectiva dos Pintores e dos Arquitetos,de Andrea Pozzo. PhD thesis. Campinas: UNICAMP. SOH, Chee-Kiong, CHRISTOPOULOS, George, ROBERTS, Adam, and LEE, EunHee. 2016. “Human-centered development of underground workspaces.” In Procedia Engineering. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 165, pp. 242–250. VARTANIAN, O. Et al. (2015) “Architectural design and the brain: Effects of ceiling height and perceived enclosure on beauty judgments and approach-avoidance decisions”; Journal of Environmental Psychology 41(2015); pp. 10–18. 132 132 JOSÉ CAPELA * The materiality of ‘materiality depiction’ ABSTRACT Photography is one of the means that allow us to depict things on a stage or other scenic contexts. When used for this purpose, photography, in its condition of 'image', serves as a vehicle between the objects photographed in it (with their own materiality) and the objects that support the printing of the photograph (with a different materiality). This creates a triangular relationship to which one can ascribe expression as a significant part of the work. Iwill address some possibilities for this to happen, illustrating them with some of my own experiments as a set designer. * School of Architecture, Art and Design, University of Minho/Lab2Pt 133 THE MATERIALITY OF ‘MATERIALITY DEPICTION’ Unlike what happens in painting, the images placed on a stage enter a territory of tension between twoand three-dimensionality. This becomes particularly clear when trying to unify painted screens and three-dimensional elements, but even when the “scenarios” were limited to a painted backdrop, that backdrop depended on a three-dimensional space of representation. I believe this tension between twoand three-dimensionality is the distinguishing factor of what is considered to be scenographic in the western context of figurative representation prior to the experiments carried out by historical avant-garde movements. This relationship between twoand three-dimensionality went through changes in the 20th century, namely with regard to the status of images on stage. Caspar Neher was one of the pioneers parting with figurative representations that occupy the entire stage in favour of representations circumscribed to partial areas. Stages became similar to what is common in a cinema or photo studio [Figure 1], where scenarios don’t occupy the space but instead are deployed onthe space. Neher does not dispense with the figuration typical of 19th century scenarios or the elements that compose it1 (despite simplifying them); what he does in fact is adding new ones. Since what is intended is to represent while simultaneously denouncing representation, infrastructures, back surfaces and imperfections are exposed for all to see. Elements that are essential to achieve what is meant to be seen but are usually kept hidden are exposed, including the structures used to support walls, curtains or projection panels; the half-curtain shows the marks of its meticulous folding, similar to those of a starched and pressed shirt; projection surfaces remain on stage even when they’re not being used for this purpose, like billboards without advertisement. All these elements serve, in this way of doing, as support for images. Figure 1 Caspar Neher Desenho preparatório para A Mãe de Bertold Brecht, encenação de EmilBurri, 1932. Técnica mista 134 The media have a body or depend on a body. To that extent, a relationship is always established between the content of the images — a virtual entity — and the material nature of the elements that support or convey that content. Against all theories that tend to separate these two elements, one can raise questions such as: “Where is it possible to use the scalpel in order to separate the image of a lake with water lilies from the materiality of the brushstrokes on the canvas when you are before a painting by Monet?”. It could be argued that this technical issue does not fall within the scope of the material vicissitudes of the medium, but rather within the scope of the artist’s own intentionality. That is certainly true, but in terms of the phenomenology involved in the reception of the work, the object of perception includes the image and the marks of its material support. Such marks are part of the totality of the object, regardless of whether their origin is intentional or circumstantial. Sometimes these marks are considered a problem, and that is why initiatives are taken such as restoring old paintings, but that is a matter of judging the value of the marks, not of the constitution of the perceptive act. It’s possible to construe a purely mental image based on the picture in front of us but the marks of the medium’s materiality will still be an intrinsic and inseparable part of the image. In this sense, there are many artists who use the support of images itself as material for the construction of the work’s nexus. One could refer a work as fascinating as The Back of a Picture, by Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts, dated 1670, as a remote precursor of this approach [Figure 2]. There we find both the virtuosity of the trompe l’oeil — a fight against the evidence of the support’s materiality and of the execution marks — and the barefaced (virtual) exhibition, not merely of the support, but of the backside of the support, the hidden side of the hardware of the painting on canvas2. In a text about trompe l’oeil, Sybille Ebert-Schifferer wrote: It is not accidental that chantourné trompe l’oeils so often include allusions to the painter’s profession and the process of making pictures, for their actual content is the skeptical question about the ontological status of painting: vision or object?3 These observations could be about some of Neher’s scenarios: the scenographer’s profession, the process of making scenarios, and the question “vision or object?”. There are many other examples that could be mentioned involving the adoption of the support of the representation as the theme for works of art. In some cases, the work is emptied of its usual content so that only the support is presented. In other cases, the support is manipulated, or sculptured, as happens with the perforations and cuts that Lucio Fontana makes in monochromatic canvases (which imply the status of the canvas in painting); inthe JOSÉ CAPELA Figure 2 The Back of a Picture, Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts, 1670 135 THE MATERIALITY OF ‘MATERIALITY DEPICTION’ circles cut by Dieter Roth on successive pages of books with images; or in the cuts that Titus Kaphar makes in portraits. On stage, the objectification of images is more complex. In addition to the relationship between image and support, there is also the relationship I referred to earlier between images and the stage’s three-dimensional condition. We are then faced with three types of three-dimensionality: (1) the virtual three-dimensionality of what is represented in the images; (2) the three-dimensionality ofthe objects that serve as support to the images; and (3) the three-dimensionality of the stage’s space. However, even more than in stage design4, the most relevant experiments regarding this theme have occurred in the field of photography. There are multiple examples of photographers who have transcended the internal scope of object-photography in favour of experiments where that object acquires a sculptural dimension and interacts with the space where it is installed. One of the first steps taken to recognize the three-dimensionalization of pictures as the thematic scope of photography was the organization, by Peter C. Bunnell, of the exhibition Photography into Sculpture, open to the public at MoMA from April 5 to July 8, 1970. Inthe press release, Bunnell wrote: […] these photographer/sculptors are seeking a new intricacy of meaning analogous to the complexity of our senses. They are moving from internal meaning or iconography — of sex, the environment, war — to a visual duality in which materials are also incorporated as content and at the same time are used as a way of conceiving actual space.5 In 2016, Mary Statzer edited a book about this exhibition, entitled The Photographic Object 1970. In the book’s introduction, she identifies three basic elements in these photographic practices: […] the interplay between the image or images, the materials, and the sculptural form.6 The “post-internet art” category is recent and still quite unstable, but it seems clear that it allows for experiments in which the universe of digital images is balanced by the materiality of the supports used to present these images. These practices are aimed at expanding the scope of photography into the scope of photographicness, which was already present in Photography into Sculpture but, given the current context of progressive digitalization of images, they acquire an added meaning: they establish a link between the increasingly distant spheres of the virtual and the material. Theyconnect Photoshop to handicraft. Focusing specifically on space representation techniques — the most traditional function of scenarios — I would like to mention Gil Madeira, Sem título, 2021 Dyes, chrome paint and polyurethane on glass 50 × 150 cm 144 144 LIVIA KOECHE * Public Situations: Memory and Distancing ABSTRACT Public Situations: Memory and Distancing is based on the analysis of recent poetic practices originated within the confluence of architecture, urban planning, cinema and projection mapping studies, through which emergent artistic interventions produce tension between existing relations among memory, place, constructed space, territorial identity and experience. Asthe work problematizes the visible — urban form — and the invisible — technical and psychological projection — it is meant to implicate the public to the urban context through an amplification of perspectives in spatial experience. * PPGAV/UFRGS 145 MEMORY AND DISTANCING Introduction This study is realized during the Covid-19 pandemic in a context of social distancing. Bourriaud,1 when dealing with the creation and appropriation of meaning in social construction, stipulates that the “domestic space represents not a site of withdrawal into the self, but a site of confrontation between social scripts and private desires, between received images and projected images. Itis a space of projection” (Bourriaud 2005, 65). As such, projections refer to image displacements. This idea appears as a metaphor in one of the most important texts in the Western world, Plato’s Republic, which contains the Myth of the Cave,2 an analogy to a hermetic world populated by prejudice, as opposed to an external world, of knowledge. In everyday experience, on full moon nights, the human eye is able to see the projection of sunlight onto the lunar surface. Complementarily, from the flame of a candle, where there is an object between light and screen, an enlargement of the forms in their projected silhouettes is conformed through the projection of light. This magnification, which can generate deformations, is geometrically governed, so that the greater the distance between the light source and the screen, the greater the magnitude of the projected image, ina directly proportional relationship. ——— Projective drawing methods are based on projections. Gaspar Monge3’s epure, which allows the representation of three-dimensional objects in a two-dimensional plane, is based on projections. With an observer positioned at an abstract point at infinity, it becomes possible to accurately determine measurements, angles, areas and volumes in their true magnitudes. Isometric perspective is a system of representation of space that allows the arbitrary choice of angles drawn from a base reference line, from which the drawing is structured by maintaining the vertical quantities as parallel line segments, whilst the areas of the horizontal surfaces are distorted. In the military perspective code, the size of the base area of the drawn objects is maintained, while allowing for the distortion of the lateral surfaces. In descriptive geometry, there is the possibility of creating infinite conical perspectives, mathematically generated from a three-dimensional object described in an epure, from the creation of imaginary reference planes and points (cameras) designed on the paper plane. Patrick de Haas, about the relationships at play between “project” and “projection”, refers to the amount of conical expansion of the luminous rays into space as a metaphor for imaginary strings that connects the reality of today to that 146 transformed of tomorrow. The author refers to projection webs, freely tensioned towards the future. The word Project is defined as “action to launch forward, to extend”. Projective drawing methods are based on projections. Gaspar Monge’s orthogonal projection system, that allows for the representation of three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional plane, such as blueprints and elevations, are based in a projection system. Going back to the renaissance, one reaches the conical perspective design conceived by the projection of external light in a darkroom. Vision, as it is known, is based on the same physical principle as the dark chamber, in that it is an optical projection of light that enters the eye, conical, from the outside environment through the iris until it meets the retina as a shield or screen. Theretina is a tissue physiologically in direct contact with the brain, if by anatomical observation it could not be said that the optic nerve is inside the brain itself. Conic perspective drawings allow one, two, or three vanishing points to structure the representation of three-dimensional spaces and objects in the two-dimensional plane of the paper. In the conic perspective method, the vanishing point is an abstract point located at infinity, from which descriptive lines of spaces and objects are conducted. Human ingenuity has already preferred the construction of conical perspectives of only one vanishing point, in which there is usually a frontal (imaginary) plane and all the lines perpendicular to it escape to a point, or from that point. It was the predominant narrative choice for the construction of images during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment historical periods; contexts in which it was important to establish a single viewpoint, contemporaneous with absolutist regimes. The method of two vanishing points lends itself, differently, to describing the internal spaces of environments, or a set of solids whose visual predominance is horizontal, and was a modernist preference for representation. Such predominant choice can be interpreted as the philosophical surpassing of its previous era. Drawing with three or more vanishing points, in turn, is an advent that later became popular, in the language of comics and cinema, in a manner consonant with the representation of skyscrapers and the framing in contraplongée. In this method, there are two vanishing points linked to the plane of the horizon, articulated to a third, located inaplane at perpendicular infinity of vertical orientation. Philosofically, it is my understanding that the singular vanishing point system can be interpreted as representing a single, hegemonic power and path; two-vanishing points refer to dialectical materialism and the encounter between two subjects, two paths, two spaces, two faces; finally, the system with three-vanishing points can be interpreted as a method that comprises two social differences in relation to a third, in a concertation LIVIA KOECHE 147 MEMORY AND DISTANCING of articulated subjectivities linked to a superstructure. Today, representation systems are being developed in which one may draw directly in a three-dimensional space, in 360° surface virtual environments. Such a method seems to me to be consistent with the contemporaneity ethos conformed of multiple relevant and illusory points-of-view (or vanishing points), according to the observation’s orientation, contextualized. A web of multifocal discourses, capable of absorbing the diversity of gazes that build the collective. Based on this knowledge, I understand that perspective in drawing is always a mental projection, used as a resource to read and describe the world. In the scope of experience, the gaze facing a path on the ground is directed to a blurring point in infinity, if there are no obstacles or barriers blocking the view. Even if informally materialized by the trail of human or animal footsteps, on the raw ground, the path insinuates itself in a conical perception of the image. In the vision of paved streets, designed, straight or not, there is the condition of looking towards and from the vanishing point. It is the conical refraction that the eye produces, like a lens, in vision that the drawing mimics. The vanishing point, located in a dimension alien to the scale of the body in space, on a plane as far away as infinity, will always correspond to a situation transcending the current one: it refers to a future, to another place and towards a displacement. In the same line of thought, “perspective”, in Russian, is written “проспект”, which in the Latin alphabet would be “prospect” which means “avenue”. “Prospect” also refers to the future. Thus, we can assume that the “avenue” presupposes a shift in vision, as well as a prospect. Haas deals with the projective space as a perspective space (Haas, 1998, p. 123), by bringing the resident association in the term “sketch” (“esquisse” in French) from the Italian “schizzare”, which means “spouting, blasting foward”. Theauthor also references, in Duchamp’s work, the projection method as a means of thinking about relationships through his descriptions in drawing, without the need to reach the vanishing point, the horizon, which is always unreachable. The author says that “if it is in the region animated by the ‘almost possible today’ that the future can open up, it is that, between the ‘realistic’ project and the ‘utopian’ projection, the world as it is has not yet imposed its choice” (Hass 1998, 123).4 As such, there is, in imaginative design thinking, a social connection between times and spaces generated by the technique. Haas references in three of the most active artists of the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century, whose practices are considered from the pre-cinema era, Theo Van Doesburg5, Moholy-Nagy6 and El Lissitzky7, the interest in projection residing in its association with the notion of project. Haas says that abstract art is not content with recording contemporary problems, but projects a desirable future order (Haas, 1998, p. 122), an imagined world, beyond the world as it is. 148 Notasafictional fantasy, but as a vision project. Perspectives can be thought of as a set of devices in the language of manifesting worldviews. Conceived as discourses, they metaphorize clashing approaches for the description and establishment of the real. The construction of shapes in two-dimensional representation systems is absolutely different from that developed in virtual simulation environments. Some modernists, as I understand it to be the case of the artists of suprematism, worked on distorting perspectives, intending to precisely tension the normative arrangement of these constructions and thus reveal them in their tendency to be inexact, to reveal human desire. Differently, the three-dimensional virtual simulations of objects and spaces developed by contemporary programming allow the acceleration not only of the projected shape development process, but also relegate constructive cognition to the algorithm. Machines, in Mbembe’s thought8, not only perform tasks, but generate complex behaviors in the computational reproduction of reason. The author identifies, in the contemporary technological productive regime, that reason is no longer the exclusive domain of the human species, immersed in a reality built through statistics, metadata and behavior modeling, in a way that passions and, especially, a perverse desire, take over the place of reason as a human domain (Mbembe 2020). In the context of the current pandemic, we humans are all becoming gradually and progressively more audiovisual, miniaturized into technological bodies. Figure 1 Frame record of the video installation Esplanada (2020). Full work accessible at https://liviakoeche. cargo.site/Esplanada. Author’s file. LIVIA KOECHE 149 MEMORY AND DISTANCING When designing a project, images are scaled down. In the projection of a video, the images are enlarged, subject to distortion and loss of sharpness. The sense of the project, figuratively, as seen before itself, is an operation of internal prefiguration in a communication of a mental projection, when passing from a mechanical and geometric sense to a luminous sense, which starts to acquire a mental, temporalized sense and for which it would be the idea, in the transport of consciousness towards a future. In this reasoning, the projection would already be in the order of a continuity of the project. The displacement, both of light and consciousness, present in the projection processes are composed of both material and immaterial elements, internal and external to the human, with subjective and environmental implications. Conclusion As I understand it, the cities in which we live were dreamed, desired and so designed by the people who preceded the now. Onemight think, at the same time, of recent ancestry as the group of modern workers who carried out the formation of urban situations that today are possible to share — and undergo. Projections are image displacements. One understands the shadow through observation of light projection, which generates and amplifies images. Likewise, in psychological processes, a subjective projection is understood as an overlaying of constructed, preconceived ideas about the world, which operates autonomously, as placed onto the world, blurring its perception into sheer interpretation. Technology, as a mediator of our relationship with reality, might also operate as a shapeshifting filter. 150 LIVIA KOECHE 1. Nicolas Bourriaud (1965–) is a French curator and art critic. In his 2002 book Post-Production-Culture As Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World, he uses the vocabulary related to video editing operations to draw a parallel with the phenomena that govern the construction of contemporary forms of culture. 2. In this allegorical fable, a group of people were trapped in a cave since childhood, in chains. On the walls of the cave, shadows of moving shapes from the outside world were projected, so that they towered and appeared to be tenebrous monsters. An imperfect copy of reality, believed to be the truth of knowledge. From these conditions, one of the prisoners manages to break free and comes into contact with the outside world. From there, he would have two options: return to the cave and free the other prisoners, or live his freedom in solitude. The consequence of the first option could result in being labeled disruptive and attacked, but the author believes that it would be a necessary attitude, as it is the fairest thing to do. 3. Gaspar Monge (1746–1818) was a French mathematician, creator of descriptive geometry as a mathematical basis for technical drawing and father of differential geometry. He served during the French Revolution as Minister of the Navy and was involved in reforming the French educational system. His method was once considered a state secret. 4. Author’s translation. In the original: “Si c’est bien dans la région animée par «l’à-peu-près du toujours possible» que l’avenir peut s’ouvrir, c’est que, entre le projet «réaliste» et la projection «utopique», le monde tel qu’il est n’a pas encore imposé don choix…” 5. Theo Van Doesburg (1883–1931) was a Dutch artist, graphic designer, poet and architect associated with Dadaism, concretism and neoplasticism. One of the founders of De Sitjl (later split with the orthodox ideals of Mondriaan), he exerted a great influence on the Bauhaus. 6. László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) was a Hungarian painter, photographer and audiovisual poet, professor at the Bauhaus, greatly influenced by constructivism and a great idealizer of the integration of technology and industry with the arts. 7. Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (1890–1941) was a Russian Jewish artist, designer, photographer, typographer and architect. He was a relevant figure in the formation of suprematism, together with Malevich, exerting a great influence on the school of Bauhaus. 8. Achille Mbembe (1957–) is a Cameroon philosopher and political historian, dedicated to investigating the history of Africa and theoretically structuring post-colonialism in the field of social and political sciences. He proposes a work of acceptance and transcendence of difference, instead of proposing a return to an original, marginal and non-metropolitan status. Achille Mbembe, in Necropolitica (2018), will expand the ideas developed by Agamben to propose a decolonial critique of the management of death in what he will call “the modern terror”, original from the processes of colonization and slavery, prior to the Industrial Revolution. In his thought, he deals with the political project of administration in which power is about killing or letting die (in opposition to Foucault’s biopower, centered on the binomial killing or letting live), in which stereotypes work as fictions for the symbolic legitimization of genocide. Notes 151 MEMORY AND DISTANCING AGAMBEN, Giorgio. 2003. O Estado de Exceção (Trad. Iraci D. Poleti). São Paulo: Boitempo. BOURRIAUD, Nicolas. 2005. Postproduction. Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World. New York: Lukas & Sternberg. HAAS, Patrick de. 1998. “Entre Projectil et Projet” In. Projections: les Transports de l’Image. Le Fresnoy: Studio national des arts contemporains, 323. pp. 95–126. DEBORD, Guy. 1957. Report on the Construction of Situations. And on the International Situationist Tendency’s Conditions of Organization and Action, 1957. The Anarchist Library. Revised and Expanded Edition, 2006. Available at http://www.bopsecrets. org/SI/report.htm Accessed June 29th 2021. MBEMBE, Achille. 2018. Necropolítica: Biopoder, Soberania, Estado de Exceção, Política da Morte (Trad. Renata Santini). São Paulo: n-1 Edições. OLIVEIRA, Livia Koeche de. 2021. Situações Públicas: projeto e projeção. Masters Degree Dissertation. Porto Alegre: PPGAV/UFRGS. PLATO. 2000. A República (Trad. Carlos Alberto Nunes). Belém: EDUFPA. STEYERL, Hito. 2014. Los Condenados de La Pantalla (Trad. Marcelo Expósito). Buenos Aires: Caja Negra. TwAN, Yi Fu. 2001. Space And Place: ThePerspective of Experience (8th edition). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bibliography