Teaching
Last year I redesigned and taught Brown’s perception lab course, called Visualizing Vision (CPLS-1590, Spring 2011). This course provides students with hands-on experience of about twenty key papers in the field of visual perception. To achieve this, students use a 3D modeling software to recreate some the experimental conditions of these papers and then discuss each paper in light of their experiences with the stimuli. Students found this course very interesting and effective, with 86% of the class rating the course as effective or very effective. I look forward to teach this course sometime soon again.
Below are 4 movies as developed by former students using Art of Illusion. These movies illustrate biological motion, a phenomenon originally investigated by Gunnar Johansson. Some of his original movies can be downloaded from http://www.psyk.uu.se/organisation/historia/
Figure moving along a walkway.
Figure moving along a walkway as a point light display—with only five or three points visible.
Below are two nearly identical movies movies. One has no ground plane, while the other has a ground plane to visualize catch shadows of both balls. First look at the top one and judge which ball moves to the viewpoint, and which one just inflates in place.