STEFAN ARTENI

Perspective as Form and Medium

and
the Interplay of Proportion Systems
and Perspective

VIII

SolInvictus Press 2006

Organization and Structure
Emergence is the process whereby by means of a small number of simple rules - such as first organizing the
surface into abstract areas with the help of the Golden Section and then constructing local-area networks
within these areas - one creates new unpredictable and surprising structures. The organization is realized
through structure…Form-ing is selectively contingent... relationship of parts to whole and of self-similarity.
Robert Rosen defines a formal system as syntax, symbols (in the Peircean sense), and rules of symbol
manipulation. It is a matter of mereotopological (parthood and connectedness) contingency: speaking about
areas (the two-dimensional regions or continua), the transformations allowed before the space is changed;
speaking about the image, the transformations of an image conceived as a diagram that may gain or lose parts
and yet preserve its identity. The flexibility of structure is the basis for the complexity of parts, wholes,
boundaries, interpositions and overlappings, nested regions, contact, separation, and transition (passage). But
what of inner boundaries combined with passages, a device used by El Greco? In this case of intrinsic
vagueness, there is a degree of arbitrariness about any particular choice resulting in trapping regions as inner
boundaries – a sort of inner vectorial graph - and creating indeterminate outer boundaries. Such an influence is
visible also in Villon’s and in other Western artists’ work, a fact showing that to remain in the background,
which is the case for the procedural memory of Byzantine practices, is not synonymous with unimportance.
Procedural memory is also known as tacit or implicit knowledge.

Figurative synthesis is responsible for the genesis of a determinate representation. ‘Schematism’ specifies the
conditions for recognition as well as the topological invariant within the abstract building…

Deleuze formulates the image as a “mobile assemblage”. This allows for shifting conglomerations of elements
– each image is contingent and evolving. Any figurative elements - re-cognizable configurational elements – are
grouped in clusters within the variable layout of the abstract areas that fit together like pieces of a puzzle. By
means of color-scheme, placement, and linking, natural spatial and dynamic categories are destabilized.
Emerging patterns convert image data into pictorial equivalents - fiat entities, that is, created entities - and
construct a pattern of configured non-emptiness and voids, an intense simultaneity.

Stefan Arteni
[http://www.stefanarteni.net/writings/Emergence/Emergence.html]
Serge Poliakoff
Serge Poliakoff
Nicolas de Staël
Nicolas de Staël
Milton Avery
Milton Avery
Milton Avery
Milton Avery
Russian Icons
Tver Icons
Anonymous, 13th century
Juan Gris (Jose Victoriano Gonzalez}
 Structure

Computer aided design and

visual pattern recognition use
and thus reveal the underlying artifice,
the ancient studio processes and
devices (from Latin dividere, to divide
distinguish, invent).
Topology is a qualitative study of shapes and other mathematical
objects. It has evolved from features of geometry in order to
formalize concepts such as convergence, connectedness and
continuity.

Topology is the mathematical study of the properties that are

preserved through deformations, twistings, and stretchings of
objects. Topology can be used to abstract the inherent connectivity
of objects while ignoring their detailed form.

Standard introductions to the basic concepts of topology take as

their starting point the notion of transformation. We can transform a
spatial body such as a sheet of rubber in various ways which do not
involve cutting or tearing. We can invert it, stretch or compress it,
move it, bend it, twist it, or otherwise knead it out of shape. Certain
properties of the body will in general be invariant under such
transformations – which is to say under transformations which are
neutral as to shape, size, motion and orientation…
Let us use the term ‘topological spatial properties’ to refer to those
spatial properties of bodies which are invariant under such
transformations (broadly: transformations which do not affect the
integrity of the body – or other sort of spatial structure…)

Barry Smith
[from Shunji Murai: www.profc.udec.cl/~gabriel/tutoriales/giswb/vol1/cp2/cp2-4.htm]
[from Shunji Murai: www.profc.udec.cl/~gabriel/tutoriales/giswb/vol1/cp2/cp2-4.htm
Vector field Vector
[from mathworld.wolfram.com/VectorField.html] [from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vecab.png]
Topology could be described as qualitative
geometry. Region-based qualitative geometry
points to contour and surface geometry and
illusory contour.

Mereology (from the Greek µερος, ‘part’) is the

theory of parthood relations: of the relations of
part to whole and the relations of part to part
within a whole.

[from plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology]

Mereotopology is a formal theory, combining

mereology and topology, of the topological
relationships among wholes, parts, and the
boundaries between parts.

[from www.answers.com/topic/mereotopology]

One may view mereotopology as consisting of

two independent but mutually related
components: a mereological component,
concerned with the concept of parthood (or
overlap), and a topological component,
concerned with the concept of wholeness (or
connection).

Achille C. Varzi Nicolas de Staël

Visual topology

1.Prototype formation
2.Morphing

Can generate morph sequences for shape that are not very dissimilar

[from www.lems.brown.edu/vision/researchAreas/CurveMatching/applications.html]

Robustness to Visual Transformations:

1. Boundary Noise
2. Articulation and Deformation of Parts
3. Viewpoint Variations
4. Segmentation Variations, e.g., due to Illumination Variation
5. Partial occlusion
Occluder blends with the shape
Occluder blends with the background
[from www.lems.brown.edu/vision/researchAreas/ShockMatching/results.html]
Through various sequences of transformations, edge-based and/or region-based
visual fragments are grouped in various configurations to form object hypotheses,
and are related to stored models

1. A translation is a
correspondence between
points and their image points
so that each image is the same
distance in the same direction
from the original point.

[from www.beva.org/
math323/asgn5/oct31.htm]

By Yuki Yoshinaga

2. A rotation is a correspondence
between points and their image
points where one point is fixed and
the image points are transformed at
a new angle position. The example
shows 5 rotations of the original
shape around the center point.
[from www.beva.org/math323/asgn5/oct31.htm]
4. A glide reflection is a
3. A reflection is a
correspondence between points and
correspondence between
their image points where the image
points and their image
points are the product of a reflection
points so that each image is
and a translation parallel to the fixed
transformed as a mirror
line of reflection. This is often used in
image over a horizontal
ornamental patterns - seen especially
(vertical or other) line.
in the Alhambra in Grenada, Spain.
Transformational geometry
[rotations; translations, or
slides; and reflections, or flips,
are geometric transformations
that change an object's position
or orientation] deals with
transformations and their
properties; it considers
transformations as things in
their own right, and asks how
they can be combined and
altered.

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos),

translation and reflection
Dilation -
proportional
scaling being a
particular case of
dilation - lets us
make images
larger or smaller.

Gino Severini,
squared up
studies
prepared for
enlargement
Stefan Arteni,
squared up studies
Stereometric diagrams and
planar transformation of the
human head: studies by Albrecht
Dürer
Albrecht Dürer, De Symmetria
 Topology compression - a compression which
preserves the complete topology

[from wwwcg.in.tum.de/Teaching/WS2004/HauptSem]

Mesh simplification
[from www.cse.ucsc.edu]
Jacques Villon
Jacques Villon
Jacques Villon
Marino Marini
Marino Marini
Marino Marini
Marino Marini
Marino Marini
Marino Marini
André Lhote
Mario
Sironi
Mario
Sironi
Mario
Sironi
 A projective transformation is related to mapping, in which
a three-dimensional form may be projected onto a two-
dimensional surface.

Projective transformation Affine transformation

[from www.mathworks.nl/access/helpdesk_r13/help/toolbox/images/registr6.html]
Related to the tool of linear
perspective is the branch of
geometry known as descriptive
geometry.

A modern exercise in descriptive geometry, first done by Albrecht Dürer.

 Aegean wall painting

Gold ring
from grave,
Mycenae
Persian miniatures
Romanesque miniature

Byzantine miniature
Ottonian
miniature
Ottonian miniatures
Medieval miniature
Pietro Cavallini
Pietro Cavallini
Lorenzo Monaco
Giovanni
di Paolo
Bernardo Daddi
Cimabue
(Cenni di Pepo)
Mario Sironi
Alberto Giacometti
Pierre
Bonnard
Pierre
Bonnard
Juan Gris (Jose Victoriano Gonzalez)
Juan Gris (Jose Victoriano Gonzalez)
We naturally see objects
as being composed out of
parts. Instead of
perceiving indivisable
objects, we perceive
objects in terms of their
labelled or categorized
parts. We break objects
into parts that we have
learned are relevant or
important.

Edge-based segmentation:
borders between regions

Region-based
segmentation: direct
construction of regions

[from/www.icaen.uiowa.edu/~dip/LECTURE/Segmentation3.html]
Edouard Vuillard
Milton Avery
Milton Avery
Skeletonization [medial axis transform]:
the skeleton of the pattern, i.e., the thinnest
representation of the original pattern that
preserves the topology.

Hawaii petroglyph
Alberto
Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti
André Derain

Marino Marini
The geon model of perception

Irving Biederman notes that certain properties of visual features remain

invariant to perspective transformation through small angles. For example
a straight edge appears straight, while a curved edge appears curved,
through a wide range of rotations of the object, although the exact angle or
curvature of that edge changes with rotation. Biederman thus proposes the
Geon Theory, a representation of visual form in terms of these relatively
invariant features.
Steven Lehar
[http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/pcave/biederman.html]

[from www.psych.utah.edu/psych3120-classroom/psy3120_2005F.html]
The geon model of perception

Geons and Interrelations

Spatial Organization of Components

Invariance

Importance of Components: Altered Geons

[from Kimberly Kirkpatrick, Department of Psychology, University of York]

David Marr's model
Computational Theory of Visual Perception
http://www.doc.gold.ac.uk/~ffl/MSC101/Vision/Marr.html

David Marr’s 3D Model

Principle:

Describe shapes and their organization

using a modular and hierarchical
organization of volumetric and surface
primitives.

From David Marr's book: Vision, 1982.

Indian sculpture
Cycladic sculpture

Arturo Martini
Constantin Brancusi
Woman from Ostrava
Petrkovice, Ossip Zadkine
Czech Republic,
ca. 23,000 B.C.E.
Ossip Zadkine
Mario Sironi
Mario Sironi
Henri Matisse
André Derain
Fernand Leger
Marino Marini
Massimo Campigli
Massimo Campigli
Mnemotechnic geometric schemata

Marie-Thérèse Zenner, "Villard de Honnecourt and Euclidean Geometry,"

Nexus Network Journal, vol. 4, no. 2 (Autumn 2002): 65-78,
http://www.nexusjournal.com/Zenner.html
Milton Avery

Villard de Honnecourt,
The Wheel of Fortune
Medieval miniature

Villard de Honnecourt
Mnemotechnic geometric schemata
Villard de Honnecourt,
Mnemotechnic geometric schemata
Trypilia and Cucuteni culture
Cycladic sculptures
Aegean sculpture

Amedeo Modigliani
Marino Marini
Milton Avery
Henri Matisse
Morphing: Transformation of one
image to another by the gradual
distortion of corresponding
points/change of shape

Giorgio Morandi
Henri Matisse

Illuminated initial S
Massimo Campigli
Massimo Campigli