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i3D is an iPhone and iPad app that demonstrates how a face tracking system can be used to create animated perspective views that adjust as you view the screen from different angles, creating a realistic illusion of 3D depth. The system creates a monocular view, using the front facing camera of the phone or tablet for facetracking. It does not rely on the accelerometer or gyroscope. There is potential for the system to be developed in conjunction with stereoscopic technology to create more sophisticated interactive perspective images. i3D has been developed by Jeremie Francone and Laurence Nigay at the Engineering Human-Computer Interaction (EHCI) Research Group of the Grenoble Infomatics Laboratory (LIG), University Joseph Fourier in Switzerland. The app can be downloaded from the Apple App Store here . Videos and further information about the project can be found on the EHCI website .

Stenopes have created a new pinhole room... Further images can be found on their website . There is also a video... " Stenop.es is an experimental visual project using a primitive technique: The Camera Obscura. Applied to an original scale, the project is based on projection from the outside to the inside. Two layers are merging while the landscapes takes place in the interior’s intimacy. " For more work by Stenopes (Romain Alary and Antione Levi), see my previous post on their pinhole camera projects in Paris and Ghat. (Image and video © stenop.es)

Fast/Slow was an installation by Rob Lee at Prism 11, which took place in Sheffield in March 2012. "Rob Lee's wall paintings exploit the specificity of perspective. Cohesively viewed from only one location, elsewhere his words appear as distended and distorted shapes. Fast/Slow reacts to changing temporalities; as the world moves to a pace in which action, reaction and information seem to be processed almost instantly, the act of viewing these words requires work adjustment and articulation." (description taken from the exhibition leaflet) (photos © copyright Russell Light) For more details see: Rob Lee's  website Prism 11 page and Prism website

The camera lucida is generally considered to have been invented by the English chemist W. H. Wollaston in 1806-07, although there is some speculation that it is a reinvention of a device described by Kepler some 200 years earlier. The term camera lucida means 'light room' and it indicates that the device didn't require the darkened space that had been necessary for the earlier camera obscura. There is no projected image and it is based on very different optical principles. A camera lucida consists of a simple prism and lens that allow an artist to see the scene that they depicting superimposed over the paper that they are drawing on, so that they can simply trace around the image. The rest of the device comprises of a clamp and extendable arm, with which it can be securely fixed in position to one side of the artist's drawing board or sketch pad with the prism set at a convenient height. A French camera lucida or 'Chambre Claire Universelle', made by Breveté S.G...

Stenop.es is a project by Romain Alary and Antione Levi, creating videos from time-lapse images taken within a camera obscura. " An apartment is completely darkened. A hole is made in a window, letting lights from outside coming in. Projections are taking place everywhere inside. ‬" Literally translated, the Italian term 'camera obscura' means a dark room. Early camera obscura were used by artists as a means to create accurate perspective images. More portable devices became known as pinhole cameras and share the same optical principles as modern cameras. stenop.es  on Vimeo . Ghat  on Vimeo . (Image and videos © stenop.es) Romain and Antione are currently looking for other locations for movies. Make suggestions here .

The world's largest 3D painting is unveiled at Canary Wharf. Joe Hill's anamorphic pavement painting covers 1,160 square metres. Part 2 can be found here . Photo gallery of 3D street art on the Guardian website. More of Joe Hill's pavement art can be seen on his website . See also my other blog entries on anamorphic art by the Brothers Quay ,  Erik Johansson ,  Ross McBride   and  Yoichi Yamamoto

The current Vermeer exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge has reopened the debate about the significance of perspective in the construction of paintings. The Music Lesson, 1662  (source: Wikimedia Commons) The role of perspective and more specifically the use of a camera obscura in the work of Johannes Vermeer has been explored in recent years by a number of authors. Dubery and Willats (1983) demonstrated that the accurate perspective constructions that underlay Vermeer's paintings made it possible to work backwards from the finished painting and reconstruct the architectural space in three dimensions, using Leonardo's distant point method. In 2001, David Hockney and Philip Steadman both proposed convincing arguments that indicated that this accuracy was based not on a geometrically constructed perspectival space, but was instead derived from the use of a camera obscura. The camera obscura (literally a 'dark room') is based on the optical principles of lenses ...

Swedish photographer Erik Johansson has just posted videos showing his latest perspective illusions at Stockholm Central Station. Lindex illusion Designtorget illusion Further information and other illusions by Erik Johansson can be found on his website .

The Ames room was developed by Adelbert Ames Jr as part of his research into optics and perception during the 1930s and 40s. After an early career as a painter, Ames began to explore the relationship between visual art and the scientific study of vision. He studied opthalmology at Clark University, Massachusetts and became a professor of physiological optics, developing an interest optical illusions. As part of his research, he conducted a series of experiments that he called 'the distorted room demonstrations'. When viewed from the correct position, an Ames room gives the illusion of a standard orthogonal room. It is actually a trapezoid shaped space, which means that people standing in different corners at the back of the room and who appear to be the same distance from the viewer, look as if they are completely different sizes. The optical illusion is so convincing that someone walking across the back of the room appears to increase or decrease in scale as they move from one...

Yoichi Yamamoto's project for an Issey Miyake store in Tokyo mixes real chair backs with painted anamorphic images to create an illusionary window display on which garments can be placed. The project, which is called 2D/3D chairs, makes effective use of a small space and uses simple means to create a powerful illusionary perspective. Yoichi Yamamoto describes the illusion and the intention behind it... " If you look at the installation from one point in front of the shop window, the back of the chairs, which are three-dimensional objects, and the legs of the chairs, which are two-dimensional drawings, meet and create a single figure ". " We expressed Issey Miyake’s “from 2D cloth to 3D dress” philosophy in our installation ". Photo taken from the correct perspective viewpoint A different view that reveals the illusion Plan, showing painted 2D surface and viewpoint Section, showing viewpoint and 3D chair backs Diagram, indicating the perspective construction unde...

This year there has been a very strong standard of drawings at the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield, including many good perspective drawings. A selection of the best are shown here... Claire Burnham - Centre for International Students , BA, Year 2, Marcus Humphrey-Gaskin Prize Corina Angheloiu - Hotel for the Disillusioned , BA, Year 3 Joseph Dimery - Mushroom Farm , BA, Year 3 Michael Horswill - Airship Transport Terminal , BA, Year 3 Holly Lang - Honeybee Conservation Centre , BA, Year 3, Stephen Welsh Prize in Draughtsmanship Wenhao Sun - Street Island - Local Life , MAAD course Ruizhao Zhang - The Street/Border , MAAD course Dan Hall - Castlegate Market Silver Service Tea House , MArch, Year 5 Marianne Howard - Reclamation/Revaluation Centre , MArch, Year 5 Tim Butcher - Open Wharf-Fair , MArch, Year 6 Philip Etchells - Repairing Utopia , MArch, Year 6, Dr Brian Wragg Prize in Architectural Draughtsmanship Tom Hudson - Re Collections of Berlin , MArch, Year ...

The V&A and RIBA have created an online exhibition of drawings of the work of Charles Holden from the RIBA drawings collection, based on the exhibition that took place at the Architecture Gallery of the V&A from October 2010 to February 2011. Holden's designs for London Underground stations in the 1920's and 30's were an integral part of the visual identity of the organisation that developed at the time, along with the iconic tube map, posters and Johnston's fonts. The online exhibition includes numerous perspective images by Holden and others. The exhibition is on the RIBA website . A downloadable PDF brochure is also available. New offices of the London Electric Railway Company, Broadway, London. Drawn by David Muirhead Bone, 1927 (image © copyright RIBA Drawings and Archive Collection)

I have added a 3D SketchUp model of the perspective construction used in the 'How to...' section.  This is not in order to demonstrate an alternative method of setting up a perspective drawing, but to help explain more clearly the geometry that underlies any perspective view, whether constructed in the traditional way or via a 3D CAD model. (images © copyright Russell Light) Clearly, a CAD model has many advantages in that it can be used as a basis for a whole series of drawings and different perspective views. However, it is still useful to develop an understanding of the basic principles of perspective by constructing a drawing manually, as this can help with composition and selecting a view, as well as being useful for sketches in the field or when a computer isn't to hand. The SketchUp model can be downloaded from the Google 3D Warehouse .