Understanding Images

cross-disciplinary perspectives of its participants. For example, Marc de Mey, a psychologist, used threedimensional computer graphic ren­ dering to reconstruct Masaccio's Trinity, in order to understand this early Renaissance painter's use of perspective; Thomas Hubbard, a photo journalist, engaged the entire audience in interactive image analysis; or Robert Williams, a computer scientist and musician, who performed Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition on a com­ puter assisted classical guitar, demonstrating a guitarist's ability to translate simple gestures for enhanced sonic expression. Each paper in this proceedings is a point on the perceptual hori­ zon. Together they form a Gestalt that organizes the visual land­ scape, highlighting reconverging paths of art, science, and technology toward a future Renaissance. Just as the fifteenth century Renais­ sance painter reinvented the technology of perspective to organize and represent images, future Renaissance communicators will rein­ vent computer technology to help us better understand visual reality. This conference would have not been successful without support from a few dedicated individuals. Specifically, I would like to thank Jean Coppola (conference coordinator), the NYC ACM SIGGRAPH board of directors, Dr. Carol Wolf (Chair, Computer Science Depart­ ment), Kenneth Norz (Assistant Dean), Dr. Susan Merritt ( Dean, School of Computer Science and Information Systems), and the di­ rector and staff of Pace University's Downtown Theater. 1.1 REFERENCES [1] Barlow, H., Blackmore,C. , and Weston-Smith, M. (Eds.) (1990). Images and Understanding. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.