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Talk to Explore Anamorphic Art
Physicist looks at links with Shakespeare
BY LORI BONA HUNT
What does anamorphic art — distorted images that appear normal only when viewed from the correct angle or with the aid of curved mirrors — have to do with William Shakespeare? Come find out Feb. 13 when Jim Hunt, professor emeritus in the Department of Physics, gives a public talk at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre (MSAC) as part of the “Shakespeare — Made in Canada” speaker series. He will discuss “Anamorphic Art in the Time of Shakespeare” at noon.
Anamorphic art often looks like what you might see in a funhouse mirror: long, distorted, curvy images. It was a popular form of both serious art and visual entertainment from its beginnings in the 16th century. Among the earliest known anamorphs is a child's face drawn by Leonardo da Vinci.
“Shakespeare lived in the exact period when anamorphic art was developing into a mature art,” says Hunt, adding that the Bard refers to anamorphic effects in plays. “It must have been part of common knowledge to the broad class of patrons who attended the theatre at that time.”
Today, traffic directions and symbols that are painted on roadways are often distorted anamorphically and are reconstructed properly because you observe them at a low angle from the driver's seat in your car, he says.
People also see anamorphic images every time they attend the movies and see a wide-screen film. A special anamorphic lens records an anamorphically compressed image on film, and an anamorphic lens in the projector uncompresses it.
Hunt became interested in anamorphic art in the late 1970s after reading a magazine article on the subject. “I immediately wondered if anything had ever been done about the mathematics of the transformations involved. I never pursued it until I retired, but it was always there in the back of my mind.”
After he retired in 1998, Hunt blended his research scientific interests in light and optics and mathematics with his affinity to art and started studying and lecturing about anamorphic art. He teamed up with physics professor Bernie Nickel to help him work out the complicated equations for plane, conical and cylindrical anamorphs.
“With the equations worked out, it was natural to use them to analyze real art, which I have been doing,” says Hunt.
The mathematics allowed him to analyse 17th-century construction methods that used tricks of perspective. He has also created simple anamorphic images of his own.
He notes that, with the introduction of the fast computer, there's interest in exact analytical solutions to the various types of anamorphic transformation. Sometimes the analytical solutions are simple. “Some however, are not obvious or simple and have only recently been derived.”
In his talk, Hunt will discuss the history of the art form, introduce the concept of extreme perspective and touch on eye-brain interaction and the origin of some illusions.
In addition to his talk, Hunt has created an exhibit on anamorphic art for the “Shakespeare — Made in Canada: Contemporary Canadian Adaptations in Theatre, Pop Media and Visual Arts” exhibition that is on at MSAC until June 10 as part of the regional Shakespeare festival.
Other festival events coming up in February include:
- Feb. 1 to 3, All My Sins Remembered, Grinder Productions, Fergus Grand Theatre.
- Feb. 3, “Eat, Drink and Be Merry,” a culinary feast at the River Run Centre.
- Feb. 9 to April 29: “A Visual Feast,” Guelph Civic Museum.
- Feb. 11, International Film Festival, “Richard III Times Three,” U of G Library.
- Feb. 16, Bell, Book and Candle, Touchmark Theatre, River Run Centre.
- Feb. 18, Musick of Shakespeare, Guelph Symphony Orchestra, River Run Centre.
For a complete list of festival events on and off campus, visit www.shakespearemadeincanada.ca.