Assignment 1 (B) Invention or discovery of a perspective?

In order to start a discussion, it is essential to understand the terms.

In the Cambridge dictionary, an “Invention” is interpreted as

- something that has never been made before, or the process of creating something that has never been made before. (Cambridge Dictionaries [Online])

The definition for a “Discovery” is

- the process of finding information, a place, or an object, especially for the first time, or the thing that is found. (Cambridge Dictionaries [Online])

To put it another way, an invention is a process about something that has never existed and discovery is a process about existing things or objects but unknown to a human being.

Graphical perspective (from Latin: perspicere "to see through") in the graphic arts is an approximate representation, generally on a flat surface (such as paper), of an image as it is seen by the eye. (Wikipedia, online)

What’s more, there isn’t the only Graphical perspective but also an aerial or atmospheric perspective, reverse, Panoramic, Elliptic, Spherical, Tonal perspective and Russian Academician B. V. Rauschenbach researched Perceptual perspective when a person perceives depth in connection with the binocularity of vision, the mobility of the point of view and the constancy of the form of the subject in the subconscious. (Б. В. Раушенбах 1986, 17, 102) To that end, perspective is something which changes the objects in the distance but also it is ways of representing the image.

Significantly, “Leon Battista Alberti was the first to present a perspective construction in writing. He did so in 1435 in his De pictura, in which he also introduced a model for perspective representation.”(Andersen, 2007, 1)

So, on the one hand, the information about the perspective (change of the object in a distance in our perception) was created and explained in a way that has never been made before.

On the other hand, we can also say that perspective was discovered. We were collecting information about an object in perspective. We were trying to explain why it is becoming smaller? So we always saw elephants in a distance like small flies, but once someone gave us the information that they are big and very far from us. Here interesting to imagine what would happen if till now we would not have this knowledge.

Kirsti Andersen explained that Sufficient material, above all paintings, has survived to allow us to conclude that perspective was born in quattrocento Italy. Doubtless, the creation was a result of earlier generations’ struggle to organize objects in space, but we have no documents that reveal the individual steps in this development. (Andersen, 2007, 2)

Above all, our eyes have always been seen objects in perspective and it was there but till the 1435 year knowledge about representation was not systemized. In other words, the perspective itself as a physical fact was discovered but the representation of it was invented as new development. For instance, a fire was in the world far before humans have been created matches.

To give an illustration of the invention, for the instance a telephone, a light bulb, internet, vehicle, mirror, glass, Mendeleev’s table, oil colours and many more. In contrast to this fire, solar system, chemicals elements, biological species, gravity, electromagnetic waves were discovered. Also, the key definition of the invention is the fact of creating something new, materialistic. This is the result of human activity expressed materially through the approach, system, theory or object.

In Conditions of Patentability in the Handbook of The World Intellectual Property Organization (2018) mentioned that “an invention must … be industrially applicable (useful), it must be new (novel), it must exhibit a sufficient “inventive step” (be non-obvious)…” but also written that “Examples of fields of technology which may be excluded … - scientific theories or mathematical methods;…”. In light of the above, for an invention, a patent would be applicable and for the discovery not. It is also mean that in terms of discovery everyone can have access to the object or information which we discover as it is a heritage of mankind but in case of the invention it will be defined by creator if this object of information will be available for mass usage.

Having said that, it is interesting to mention that what we have discussed above was about figurative, representative art. But if we put this question in an abstract field, or we try to find invention or discovery of perspective in Russian Icons or Chinese scrolls? In these arts, there are no rules for perspective. Abstract art is devoid of any representativeness. In ancient icons, the reverse perspective is used, which makes the centre of the vanishing of all lines in the viewer. Or Chinese drawings where melancholy and unity with nature bring, for example, mountains to the forefront, and men simply fit into the drawing without taking into account "European" understanding of perspective.

As a conclusion, to understand the consequences of both statements (invention or discovery) about the perspective it is important to identify if we speak about the fact, or about the representation of it. At this point, I would assume that once a perspective as phenomena was discovered by someone which now we cannot identify and a perspective as a way of representation on a flat surface first time was invented by Leon Battista Alberti in 1435. Nevertheless, there are different implications of this statement of invention or discovery of perspective because it simply doesn’t work in particular arias of art for example.

Bibliography and references

1. Cambridge Dictionaries [Online]) Available from: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/invention [Accessed 01/07/18])

2. Cambridge Dictionaries [Online] Available from: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/discovery [Accessed 01/07/18]

3. Wikipedia [Online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_(graphical) [Accessed 01/07/18]).

4. Cambridge Dictionaries [Online] Available from: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/perspective [Accessed 02/07/18]

5. Раушенберг Б.В. 1986, Системы перспективы в изобразительном искусстве. Общая теория перспективы. Москва «Наука»

6. Kirsti Andersen (2007) The Geometry of an Art: The History of the Mathematical Theory of Perspective from Alberti to Monge New York Springer

7. WIPO [Online] Available from: http://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/intproperty/489/wipo_pub_489.pdf [Accessed 02/07/18]