Spat. & Vis. Cult. - Illusions - Stereoscopes

I first came across the medium during an art and design project in year 12 and found the whole technique and culture behind it fascinating. Also I couldn’t believe how easy it was to do, using red and grebe/blue glasses, it was so simple. Basically the technique was to take an image and move the RGB layers in Photoshop until the overall image viewed through 3D glasses looked perspectively correct. So I was then surprised to find them at the Eyes, Lies & Illusions exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, but in an older form, the form big wooden stereoscopes. For me I really like the shear simplicity of the process of making a flat image into 3D and I can only imagine what kind of impact it must have had on an audience of 150 years ago.

You see created during the 19th Century stereoscopes were as common as televisions are today in the homes of the families of the 1800’s. They offered real views of distance lands and wild animals, people could never see in real life due to lack of long distance, rapid transportation. They were popular as Victorian travel guides, story tellers, educators and even pornography.

Stereoscopic pictures are pictures taken by a camera with two lenses. These pictures are then set 2.5 inches apart (the distance between the eyes of an adult.) The pictures although different may not appear different to the naked eye but when viewed through the viewer, they blend to form the illusion of a three dimensional image.

It was Sir Charles Wheatstone a physicist who in 1833 invented the first stereoscopic viewer. It worked by using pairs of reversed images and mirrors, allowing even large images to be viewed successfully. Since at the time photography hadn’t been invented, illustrations were used instead. In 1850 however stereoscopes with glass images were made available, although the quality of the image was low and price was high stereoscopes started to take off.

Photography gave the medium a massive boost has did the advent of a handheld viewer for users. You see before this stereoscopes were massive table mounted objects that needed a lot of space as well as money.


Spat. & Vis. Cult. - Illusions - Stereoscopes
Originally uploaded by James Wellock.

The Brewster

The portable market exploded in 1859 as inventers such as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Sir David Brewster started producing better and smaller devices. One such example is the one below, it’s called “The Brewster” and has a transparent piece of glass in the back viewer to allow light to pass through, allowing the viewer to see the glass and tissue pictures that were still popular among users.

Unfortunately though by the 1920’s the popularity had died down and stereoscopes fell out of favour with the public has a popular form of entertainment, but during the 1950’s it was reincarnated in the from of 3D glasses. These glasses using red and green/blue filters over each eye, shown below, worked in roughly the same way, but the two images being printed or projected were tinted in either a red or green/blue tint. This then allowed the eyes to naturally put the two images together to form an individual three dimensional image. This technique was used in comic books, posters and films and was common during the 1950’s, sone such example is It Came From Outer Space, but sadly due to complaints of migraines and other health problems, was dropped as a mass form of entertainment yet again. Although it has started to raise its head again in both the theme park ride area, in the from of Terminator 2 and the child movie industry in the form of Spy Kids 3D Game Over. So the medium may not be quite dead and buried just yet.

Heres a link for a free pair of 3D Glasses and some cool images to view them with below.

The Sun
Edison
Fighter Jet
Spacemen