Will Powers is the alias of Lynn Goldsmith, who released a self affirming album titled “Dancing for Mental Health” in 1983. “Adventures in Success” was actually co-written by Sting (yes Sting of The Police, there’s only one) and the accompanying music video was the first ever to feature CGI computer graphics. Dancing for Mental Health is a highly regarded album and Adventures in Success is considered a classic cut, I can assure you that I’ve held down many a dance floor to this tune in my 20+ year secondary “career” as a club kid in NYC. Check it out below..
Lynn Goldsmith is very much a modern day renascence woman who contributed to the history of Stereoscopy in more ways then one (I have an upcoming post about an anaglyph album cover she created) and I am writing up a post on this video for a number of reasons. First, the CGI are very much “3D” polygon-ic graphics. Although the video is not stereoscopic, it could have been made to be had it been ported to a proper stereoscopic display device. In fact, the majority of early 3D polygon graphics potentially could have been made stereoscopic and they do have their place in the history of Stereoscopy, even though they were not displayed as such.
Secondly, this video beautifully illustrates what’s called the “mask illusion”. It is when a hollow mask, when properly lit and viewed from the front or the back, becomes an indecipherable object to the brain, and confusion arises about what the eye sees and how the brain processes it.
A concave and a convex shape can take on identical forms and the confusion in understanding which form is concave and which is convex is the base of the illusion.
The mask illusion has more to do with the psychology of understanding how stereoscopic vision works, rather then being an outright example of a stereoscopic image.
I will be making another post about the work of Lynn Goldsmith very soon, so make sure to come back soon!
Thank you very much for your time, attention & interest.
-ilicia a.k.a. Mad Shifty
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