IDAT211 - Perception project

For this first term we have to create a 60 second film demonstrating a small area of our perception in the Immersive Vision Theatre(IVT), a dome projection building in the university that enables better immersion.  Today we looked at a range of different videos that have been created for the dome to gain some idea of the different possibilities that can be used in the dome.  In particular I found vection quite interesting, where the viewer percieves themselves, or the area they are in, to be moving when actually they are not.  The immersive quality of the dome allows for vection to occur very easily, and it is in many ways the most unusual potential the dome has to offer.  The concept of vection does not occur very often in normal perception although it does happen, and very rarely on any other visual viewing platform e.g cinema, TV etc. which means this project would be a great opportunity to work with a element of perception that is rarely dealt with.  However working with vection does require some control as too much can have adverse effects on the viewers e.g dizziness and sickness. However as long as vection is used wisely within the dome in a balanced way, it is definitely key to using the domes full potential. Vection is in itself an optical illusion and I intend to use it as best as possible to enhance my project.
In terms of the rest of the content there are a number of things I would like to consider.  Perception is a very wide topic and has many different elements that could be encorporated into the video, as well as being misrepresented to create illusions. The perception of size, alongside depth, for example is commonly used to form visual illusions.  The Persil advert below shows a great demonstration of this:



This advert uses size and distance perception to create an illusion which symbolises the main point of the advert enhancing the viewers understanding and the effectiveness of the imagery.  This also shows there are a lot of different possibilities in using these particular elements of perception, although this will not necessarily work all that well with vection.
Perception is based on the way in which we obtain meaning from the images we recieve around us.  A lot of this is therefore knowledge based and so would be quite easy to include.  For example I could use morphing elements to change between shapes in a way that emphasises the points at which a person's perception of an object becomes clear, and therefore would demonstrate what characteristics the perception is based upon.