This is a link to an article that I contributed to a page called "Utsanga" in December 2020.
https://www.utsanga.it/mido-works-how-we-look-at-things/
Mido | Works: how we look at things?
Works: how we look at things?
by Nobuhiro Mido
Now that I have the opportunity, I would like to introduce two things that I often think about seeing.
The first is how we look at things.
The commonly said explanation is as follows.
“Light that has passed through the cornea and lens of the eye is projected as an image on the retina by adjusting the thickness of the cornea and lens, the size of the iris, etc. The nerve tissue that can be called more than 100 million sensors in the retina we are looking at things, transmitting signals to the brain in response to the light of the projected image. ”
A digital camera is similar to this, projecting light introduced through a camera lens onto a sensor and recording it in sequence on a recording device. When outputting to a photograph or a cathode ray tube, the signal is blinked in the same order. What is projected on the sensor and what is output to the photograph or cathode ray tube is an image, but what is on the recording device is a signal (data), not the image itself.
Returning to about ours, I wrote that we are seeing the signals we get with our eyes. That is, we would be seeing (recognizing) the signal not the image obtained from the retina. This is the first thing I would like to tell everyone who read this. It’s just that the signal is recognized by the brain, but you can see things vaguely (including unnecessary things) as if you had a TV monitor in front of you. Isn’t an image unnecessary for signal recognition only? I’m wondering this. I always think that I will do the work of copying exactly what I see on paper or canvas.
The second is almost the opposite.
This is the case of “optical illusion” where it is clear that the signal is being processed in the brain obviously.
Examples of famous illusions are the Hermann illusion, in which thin spots appear at the intersections of the checkerboard pattern when a white checkerboard pattern is placed on a black background and Zöllner illusion in which horizon line appears to be tilted when a short diagonal cross line is placed in a horizontally drawn straight line, also there are things of the same length look different in length, or the same color looks different. According to experts, optical illusions occur because the brain instantly interprets what it sees. It is able to consider that it is one of these illusions make black-and-white images look three-dimensional depending on the shade and shape. Unlike the first thing, the optical illusion is an example of the result of data processing of the signal sent to the brain.
These illusions may be related to the fact that when you are making a picture, the appearance suddenly changes and becomes realistic, or the tension increases with just one line. I would like to continue to consider the meaning and effects of optical illusions as matters related to the technique and interpretation of pictorial expression, of course, including the TV image that spreads in front of us.