Machine Project

7pm Sunday June 24, 2007

SEEING ANEW: A LECTURE BY TREVOR OAKES + RYAN OAKES
Co-hosted by
The Institute For Figuring and Machine Project

It is hard to believe there is anything new to be discovered about perspective drawing. But in 2004 twin artists Trevor and Ryan Oakes made a startling discovery about how to render perspectival images on the inner surface on a sphere. Their discovery is all the more intriguing in the light of recent controversy surrounding David Hockney’s thesis about the use of spherical lenses in the making of perspective drawings in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

In their first public talk the Oakes will discuss their perspectival researchers and will demonstrate their unique spherical rendering technique. The lecture will include a historical account of other optical tools used to depict three-dimensional space – including the concave mirror-lens, the camera obscura, and the camera lucida – by way of introduction to their own method, which explores the interplay between the visual cortex and the human retina using pen and “concave paper.”

Trevor and Ryan Oakes are visual artists in New York City. Their work is characterized by an in-depth investigation of light, vision, and the interplay between the visual cortex and the human retina. Ryan and Trevor graduated from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2004.

The Institute For Figuring is a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science and mathematics.