Image – action – space : situating the screen in visual practice

Abstract

With the improved capability of imaging, sensor and display technology, screens have become mobile or touchable and, most recently, transparent. While a visualization on-screen is not necessarily related to the spatial context beyond the screen, transparent displays allow users to see simultaneously the physical space behind the display and a visualization on-screen. The two observers on the cover of this volume look at a future construction site through the transparent display of a head-mounted device that superimposes an architectural model on their view (fig. 1). Its rendering coincides with the scale of the actual building, and the visualization adapts to the observer’s point-of-view in real time. While a juxtaposition of building and model on a separate screen would require continuous comparison between image and object, the head-mounted display combines them in a joint perceptual space. The missing offset between image and object puts forward a new practice of interacting with spatially related information: users can navigate through space by superimposing a transparent mobile interface onto their field of view.