Thesis Updates, New Ideas

I made a quick draft of the vertical bars idea in Processing and concluded that the illusion is not extreme enough to create different patterns. The concept works, but the illusion is very subtle and I unfortunately don’t think my idea will work.

I have been reading The Intelligent Eye, another book by R.L. Gregory which focuses on stereoscopic vision and find the topic very interesting. Two new ideas came out of this:

1. Now that 3D TVs have been announced by all the major manufacturers, the next step is to bring the ability to create 3D content to the everyday person. I thought of building a 2-camera rig which would allow the creation of stereoscopic content. I could open-source the whole process and create a step-by-step tutorial online, so that anyone who is interested can build his own rig.
2. In the book, Gregory mentions an anaglyph drawing machine which works by drawing a red and blue stroke simultaneously on the page as you move your stylus. The further apart the lines are, the closer the shape appears to the viewer (when wearing anaglyph filter glasses). His machine was not explained in detail, but it appeared to set depth based on the vertical position of the stylus. I am thinking of building my own stereoscopic drawing machine, which would use a mechanism similar to that of a bicycle brake to set how close the red and blue strokes are to each other. I am thinking something along the lines of Rhonda, but as a physical device instead of software.