Concept

Continuity — where it appears

Whether a map has no jumps in it, as distinct from whether it is smooth. An anamorph across a fold or a doorway is continuous and not smooth — every design point has a mark and neighbouring marks are neighbours — while its scale jumps by a factor at the join.

Named by 3 essays across 2 fields — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

1234correct from 15 cm, at 160 mm widefour moments · 8.5e-14 px

The same person, twice on one panel

A panel showing one figure at four moments is geometrically the least strange thing in this field — one camera, one floor, and every pair of copies meeting the horizon to 8.5 × 10⁻¹⁴ px. What the picture withholds is the order, and four copies admit twenty-four readings, and a reading convention supplies 4.6 bits from outside the marks. Enlarge one figure by six per cent and the horizon test that passed the panel catches it at 36 px.

conventions · Narrative
wallthe intended picturethe joineyecontinuous across the cornerand 3.88× the scale on one side

The anamorph that crosses a corner

Cast one design onto a floor and the wall at the end of it, from one eye. Each plane gets a collineation of its own; the two agree on the line where the planes meet, exactly, because a point of that line is a point of both. What they do not agree about is scale — the design runs 7.8 times its own size along the floor and 2.0 times up the wall, and the jump at the join is a factor of 3.9.

viewing · Anamorph
horizoncorrect from 21 cm, at 160 mm wide6/7 faces · 99% of the surface

A design that lands in two rooms

Cast a design down a corridor with a doorway in it and four per cent of the picture goes through the opening and lands on a wall three metres beyond, at 9.4 metres from the eye against the end wall's 6.4. The picture is continuous across the edge of the doorway and its scale jumps by half again, which is a corner anamorph's discontinuity with a gap in the middle of it instead of a fold.

viewing · Anamorphmap

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

AnamorphosisForeshorteningGround planePiecewise mapCollineationdegrees of freedomDepth scalingDihedralDrawing conventionFree parameterGrazing incidenceHomology

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