TRANSPARENT DRAWING in a growing world of visualization

Guest Author – Jim Barnes (James David Barnes) — 11th April 20201

James Barnes is a practicing architect living in Dallas, TX. He has written extensively on representation, how we see, the perspective, etc. Please visit his website, 7 Ladders, where you will find his publications. I have enjoyed immensely my e-mail correspondence with James. I hope you enjoy his perspective, pardon the pun, on the essence of our mission.

 "Transparent Drawing" defines a new class of illustrations -- a new family of drawings -- which Kurt Ofer has identified and described.  As a newly identified "species" of visualization, it fits into a larger pattern of visual development.
  At the beginning of the 20th Century Modern Art rode in on a wave of anti-perspective sentiment and theory.  Dependence on perspective geometries to construct paintings was swept aside by Modernism's advancing tide of color and abstraction.  Such innovative freeform expression and description continues today in the Fine Arts, but (it appears to me) the anti-Perspective culture reached its peak around 1955.  Like a long-dormant volcano, Perspective then came back to life – spewing out a number of separate new visual inventions.  A list of these new visualizations follows.
   In the late 1950s it was realized that the visualization used in the theory of Special Relativity for the past fifty years was incorrect. Properly derived perspective illustrations then started to appear, giving a new appearance to objects moving at speeds approaching the speed-of-light.   In the General Theory of Relativity, new imagery of "gravitational lens" effects and "black holes" started to be developed.
   Quantum Mechanics is based on an understanding that particles nearly as small as photons of light cannot be imaged by traditional microscopes or photographs.  Nevertheless these tiny new worlds may be illustrated by perspective drawing conventions, or seen by using smaller-sized surrogates, instead of light, to create pictorial visualizations – such as electron microscopes.   We now routinely run into illustrations of deadly virus cells, of nano-technology materials, and a host of pictures portraying various molecular, atomic, and sub-atomic structures.
  "Curvilinear Perspective" was the name given in the 1960s to a large new family of wide-angle views.  Both in photography and in hand-drawn pictures, we are becoming accustomed to seeing such "fish eye" pictures of fields of vision broader than the traditional perspective drawing system can portray.
  "Glide Projection" was the name given in the 1980s to another new family of images constructed using a moving (gliding) point-of-view – rather than a single fixed position for eyesight.  
 "Non-Euclidean Perspective" pictures were made feasible by computers and started to appear in the late 1980s.  The perspective drawing program is so incredibly simple and basic that it can be applied in every form of geometry – anything that has geometry can be visualized in perspective.  
  With the assistance of computers, many forms of mathematics are being visualized by various methods.  "Descriptive Geometry" is the term used for the different mathematical methods of pictorial illustration. Perspective is the method deemed most realistic.  Kurt's "Transparent Drawing" ideas work in every form of Descriptive Geometry.        
  "3-D pictures" and "holograms" have been around for many years -- providing three dimensional illustrations.  It is interesting though that, so far, these seemingly more realistic pictures have not become more commonly use – apparently their additional expense is unnecessary to match the sense of realism provided by our imaginations' view of 2-dimensional images.
   It would be impossible here to list all of the inventions made during the last sixty-five years to enhance methods of fabricating perspective drawings, especially by cameras, motion-picture photography, computer imagery and animation. 
"Perceptual Psychology" continues to study our brains' sense of vision.  Yet today the exact neurological mechanics of human eyesight remain mostly a scientific mystery. As our understanding of eyesight expands, it will probably provide new visualization method possibilities. 
   Contrary to the death of perspective predicted by Modern Art a century ago, today we find thriving growth and development.  Perspective remains our simple scientific Ideal Theory describing human vision at the same time it provides geometric structure for a wide range of imaginary views.  "Sonograms", and a host of other new medical observation equipment, give us precise visualizations of otherwise invisible anatomical interiors.  Radar and sonar give us precise visualizations of weather, as well as to underground and underwater forms. Kurt's "Transparent Drawing" gives classification and understanding to one particular type of illustration in our still expanding world of visualization.