Mechanical Eye Week 7
Following last week’s exercises, I start to adjust the point cloud model in Comparecloud and Rhino, here are some screenshots:
By adjusting the background and size of each point, the images express the “ghostly” quality of the building. By seeing through each surface layer of the pantheon, we can easily understand the different geometry principles of the building. I think it provides a foundation for later analysis.
The oculus in the pantheon is the only source of direct sunlight inside the building, it makes the pantheon work as a giant sundial. Visitors to the building could essentially tell time by observing the shaft of light from the oculus, which crosses above or below the entry at noon. Robert Hannah suggested that the beam hovers directly above the door at the March and September equinoxes, both moments of ceremonial importance for ancient Romans because it was then that emperors-many of whom cultivated an association with the Roman sun deity-was considered closest to the heavens and gods.
I’m interested in visualizing the geometry relationship between the sunbeam and the invisible cone in the pantheon.
I have scripted a sunbeam model, and tested it inside the rhino:
The outcome drawings helped me realize the full motion of the sunbeam inside the pantheon and its complex geometry with the “generative cone”. I’m looking forward to experiencing the real scale of these hidden geometries with the Oculus Rift.
Finally, David J. Chalmers’s s article the virtual and the real comes to my view, he has argued: Virtual reality is not a second-class reality. Or at least, virtual reality need not be a second-class reality. It may be a second-level reality, in that it is contained within physical reality and realized by processes in the physical world, but this need not make it less real or less valuable. In the short term, of course, virtual realities may be inferior to physical realities in all sorts of respects (while perhaps beginning to be superior in other respects). But even in the short term, virtual reality may be real, non-illusory, and valuable. In the long term, and in principle, virtual reality may well be on a par with physical reality.
By rendering the invisible phenomenons inside the pantheon, it helps to create a dialogue between site, history, and context. I think this is an important step to make virtual reality well be on a par with physical reality.
Reference
The virtual and the real, David J. Chalmers
Matter and memory, Henry Bergson
