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Author Spotlight: Developing Cost-Effective and Customizable Balloon Tags for Fish Passage Studies

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The art of the float.

Emily A Cooper^1,2, Roberto Casati^3,4, Hany Farid^1,5

¹University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Journal of Vision

|August 16, 2023

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Artists historically used cast shadows to anchor objects. However, without shadows, artists relied on surface support cues to prevent objects from appearing to float, a technique confirmed by experimental findings.

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Area of Science:

Visual perception
Art history
Psychology

Background:

Artists have used cast shadows for over 2000 years to depict object positioning.
A 1000-year period in art lacks cast shadows, raising questions about how object placement was conveyed.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how artists depicted object anchoring without cast shadows.
To test the principles of surface attraction and support in visual perception.

Main Methods:

Surveyed artistic techniques for anchoring objects with and without cast shadows.
Conducted experiments using a wooden box on different surfaces (tiled floor, 1/f noise) with and without cast shadows.

Main Results:

Objects were seen as resting on surfaces providing ground orientation and support, even without shadows.
Ambiguous surfaces led to objects appearing to float without shadows.
Cast shadows consistently anchored objects, regardless of surface definition.
Both shadows and surface support improved detection of object tilt.

Conclusions:

Artists historically utilized surface support cues to anchor objects in the absence of cast shadows.
Visual perception relies on both cast shadows and surface support information for object grounding.