[ænamo.rfosis. [a. Gr. anamorfwsij transformation, n. of action f. anamorfoein to transform, f. ana back, again + morfo-ein to form, f. morfh form. Still by some pronounced anamorpho.sis, after the Gr. w. Cf. metamorphosis.]
1. A distorted projection or drawing of anything, so made that when viewed from a particular point, or by reflection from a suitable mirror, it appears regular and properly proportioned; a deformation.]

Perspective, Histories, "Modernities"

Methods: art and science

Week Two Anamorphosis and the logic of virtuality:

Anamorphic literature: the poetics of a shifting self

The role of anamorphosis in New Media

Methods: theory and text

Week Three

Making anamorphic multi-media projects

Projects

Week Four

Gallery of Projects

Projects

(images from the Art of Anamorphosis)

Technically, "the illusional art of anamorphosis, [is] a method of visual distortion whereby an image is presented in a confused or hidden form. When looked at from a different angle or in a curved mirror, the distorted image appears in normal proportions" (from the introduction to The Brothers Quay, De Artificiali Perspectiva). Anamorphic images make subversive play of the mathematical rules of perspective, presenting a scene or image that has embedded within it a separate geometrical frame. When the same image or painting is viewed from an oblique angle, or through a viewing tube or cylinder, an entirely new object, image, or scene appears.  The visual schemata that form the mathematical and conceptual foundation of anamorphosis express delight in transversing the boundaries of mathematical physics, aesthetics, and embodiment.

Yet the applications and influence of anamorphosis extend well beyond visual trickery. Leonardo da Vinci used anamorphosis in his scientific and artistic projects to breach the limits of Euclidean geometry.  In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, anamorphosis became a near cultural obsession, challenging the assumptions of geometrical mathesis and the mechanical perspectives out of which a modern scientific worldview would emerge.  The figure of anamorphosis was equally important to the very philosophical theories that would inform scientific rationalism. Indeed,  optical anamorphosis was a direct influence on Rene Descartes' construction of a cogito that stands beside itself while looking out at the world.

The afterlives of anamorphic technique have assumed fascinating and varied incarnations. The Czechoslovakian experimental art of the 1960s, so influential on later social and political movements, made prolific use of anamorphosis.  During the student protests in Tiananmen Square in the 1980s, the technique was deployed theoretically and performatively as way of engaging participants with the concomitant danger and power to the logic of concealment.

More contemporary uses of anamorphosis include its role in the technology of film projection and the principles and techniques of virtuality. Virtual new media, in particular, has adopted anamorphic technologies, software, symbols, and conceptual frames in defining the multi-sensorial shape shifting and ambiguity to artificial perspective in cyber and web environments. Two recent art and film exhibits -- The Getty Museum's The Geometry of Seeing: Perspective and the Dawn of Virtual Space and the e-phos Athens International Film and New Media Festival: BODY KINESIS/ BODY ANAMORPHOSIS -- are indicative of a renewed fascination with a technological aesthetic that carries transformative expression across genres.

This course will explore anamorphosis as a practice and theory that reveals the creative depth to interdisciplinary projects that work simultaneously at the surface of representation and the techno-scientific sub terrain of media and embodied cognition.  

The first two weeks of the course will trace the history of perspective and anamorphosis from the early Renaissance to the age of new media, examining along the way examples of anamorphic art, film, science, literature, and interactive exhibits. The final two weeks of the course will provide students with an opportunity to construct their own anamorphic projects in a variety of single or combined media.