On the efficacy of cinema, or what the visual system did not evolve to do
James E. Cutting · 1991
My topic concerns spatial displays, and a constraint that they do not place on the use of spatial instruments. Much of the work done in visual perception by psychologists and by computer scientists has concerned displays that show the motion of rigid objects. Typically, if one assumes that objects are rigid, one can then proceed to understand how the constant shape of the object can be perceived (or computed) as it moves through space. Many have assumed that a rigidity principle reigns in perception; that is, the visual system prefers to see things as rigid. There are now ample reasons to believe, however, that a rigidity principle is not always followed. Hochberg (1986), for example, has outlined some of the conditions under which a rigid object ought to be seen, but is not. Some of these concern elaborations of some of the demonstrations that Adelbert Ames provided us more than 35 years ago.