3-D stereo pixel: a soft white damn?

[P3D <Al_Razutis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

One of my favorite sayings comes from e.e.cummings: "the snow
doesn't give a soft white damn on who it falls..."  The computer-
graphic pixel doesn't either.  It has no 'self-consciousnes' of what it
represents.  It is a display element which is becoming more and
more complex in its bandwidth and dissemination.  It is only
photographic in so far as our need to 'view' images.  Stereoscopic
computer-3D is only a subset of a more general set: multi-
dimensional computer networking of various forms of digital
information and algorithms.

To create a 'virtual object' via computer graphics in 3-D stereo - an
object that can be perceived as...'an object in space' (which looks
'very real') is a wonderful achievement.  Space and its various
Euclidean (and non-Euclidean) geometries becomes a matter of
SYNTHETIC proportions.  Then these 'objects' get networked via
VRML into other inter-active spaces!  And the viewers/participants of
this cyberworld partake in something that is uniquely 'un-natural' to
the photo-realist who can't see the forest for the trees and (perhaps)
resents this adventure into the unknown of trans-photographic
renderings.

Objections as to resolution, bandwidth, and 'incorrect' stereo
depictions (on the part of photo-realists) sometimes only betray their
own attempts to muzzle experimentation.  A computer-generated
stereo image, a computer-generated hologram, a VRML site, (etc.)
redefine the notion of what "photo 3-D" is capable beyond the
archaic confines of a focal-plane oriented imaging technology.

And let's not forget the fact that every viewer has differentiated
'receptor capabilities' and that any fixed-viewing field display system
(from stereo-viewers to screens) will ultimately act in variance with
the normal (scanning eye, memory of features) ocular perception of
binocular vision in a world of objects and things.

I think some of the readers (outspoken in their opposition to
computer 3-D and welcoming every opportunity to point out its
present-day 'flaws') could welcome the inter-media environment that
stereoscopy now finds itself rather than set up walls between
disciplines.  The discussion-group focus on photographic
representation I understand/accept as the pragmatic doctrine of the
administrators.  But now that we can "photograph" or video-capture
holographic, interferometric,  and computer-generated imagery
means that these forms are 'integral' to any present/future
discussion of photo-3D rendering. (Or are 'natural scenes' the only
allowed subject matter?  Only documentary or can it include fiction?
Realist or Socialist?  Modernist or Classical?  etc.)  These holo-
digital mediums (as subject, as translation device)exist on equal
footing with 'photographic 3-D' depictions of landscape and human
form/structures.  And the developments of stereoscopy via
integration with these new imaging technologies will have a greater
impact on the future of spatial-imaging in the 21st-century culture
than recitations of historical archives.

Al Razutis


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