Public Lecture Abstract

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 • 7:30 PM • James A. Little Theater, New Mexico School for the Deaf

Charles Falco Chair of Condensed Matter Physics and Professor of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona

Art, Optics and Human Vision

The hand and mind as well as the eye of a painter are intimately involved in the creative process making paintings intrinsically complex images. Although tracing projected images was well known by the 19th century, use of optics for this purpose prior to 1600 had not been previously recognized. Falco—working with painter David Hockney--has identified a variety of optical evidence within a number of paintings demonstrating artists as early as Jan van Eyck used optical projections as aids for producing portions of their images. While making these discoveries, they developed a new understanding about how more recent artists (e.g., Monet, Pissarro, and others) have created some of their iconic images, as well as gaining fundamentally new insights into imaging. Falco is now extending this work to problems in computerized image display and analysis.

This lecture is underwritten by Gerald Peters Gallery