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Abstract: |
The hands
and mind of an artist are intimately involved in the creative
process of image formation, intrinsically making paintings complex
to analyze. In spite of this difficulty, several years ago the
artist David Hockney and I identified optical evidence within a
number of paintings that demonstrated artists began using optical
projections as early as c1425 — over 150 years before Galileo — as
aids for producing portions of their images. Looking for even
earlier evidence led us to the 11th century scholar Ibn al-Haytham
(Latinized as Alhazen or Alhacen), who wrote nearly one hundred
works on topics as diverse as poetry and politics. Today al-Haytham
is primarily known for "Alhazen's problem," his treatment of a
particular geometry of reflection from flat and curved surfaces.
However, as I will discuss, with his landmark seven-volume Kitāb al-Manāzir
[Book of Optics], published 1028~1038, al-Haytham made intellectual
contributions that subsequently were incorporated throughout the
core of post-Medieval Western culture. In the course of this work,
Hockney and I developed insights that I have been applying to a new
approach to computerized image analysis. One direct result was to
identify from Impressionist paintings by Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and
others the precise locations the artists stood when making a number
of their paintings. Indirect results have been the development of a
high resolution infrared camera, and a project to produce filters
for a multispectral camera presently scheduled to begin capturing
images from Jupiter's moon Europa in 2026. Acknowledgments: I am
grateful to David Hockney for the many invaluable insights into
imaging gained from him in our collaboration, and to the support of
ARO and DARPA. |