Caution -- Objects Are Closer Than They Appear: Perspectively Inverted Pseudoscopic Images behind Accelerated Space

Perspective inversion reverses the flow of naturalistic pictorial space, creating a disorienting, anti-naturalistic sense of space. Inverted perspective's subversive power appears limited, however, given that no arthistorical examples depict fully inverted objects in systematically inverted "unlimited spaces," such as landscapes. The author addresses this limitation through analysis of "converse" and "pseudoscopic" 3D images—Charles Wheatstone's two paradigms for inverting binocular depth. Wheatstone's inverted imagery proves geometrically identical to 3D art-historical precedents that conceal their perspective inversion: namely, relief sculpture, set design and architecture employing three-dimensionally "forced" perspective. As hinted by depth-inverted stereograms, linear perspective employed together with reversed overlapping cues systematically inverts unlimited space in both 2D and 3D pictures.