3D: Double Vision

3D: Double Vision was the first North American exhibition to survey a full range of artworks that produce the illusion of 3D. Combining artifacts of mass culture with historic and contemporary art dating from 1838 to the present, the exhibition addressed the nature of perception, the allure of illusionism, and our relationship to accompanying technologies and apparatuses.

The optical principle underlying all 3D media is binocular vision—the process by which our brains synthesize the information received by our two eyes into a single, volumetric image. More than 60 artworks featured in the exhibition activated this process by means of mirrors, lenses, filters, or movement—requiring active participation on the part of spectators to complete the illusion. Many 3D media were included in the exhibition—from stereoscopic photography, film, video, anaglyph printing, and computer animation, to the glasses-free formats of holography and lenticular—alongside 2D works that generate 3D effects by other means. The creators of these works were equally diverse: some noted artists, others being primarily considered scientists, engineers, directors, or designers, and unknown makers.

Part of The Hyundai Project: Art + Technology at LACMA, 3D: Double Vision was organized in five thematic sections to trace the generational cycles of 3D, inviting visitors to participate along the way. An introductory section focused on the optics of binocular vision, as demonstrated by the earliest inventors of the stereoscope and by subsequent artists who wanted to explore not what we see, but how we see. The second and third sections addressed two peak periods of 3D popularity: the Victorian era and the 1950s, when education and entertainment were closely intertwined in thriving mass-market visual cultures. The fourth section turned to the 1960s and ’70s, when art and technology partnerships resulted in a range of experimental film, performance, installation, and objects that stimulate altered perception. Finally, the exhibition looked at a sampling of 3D art from the late 1980s to the present, an era of appropriation, quotation, and reflection on the capacities of human vision and cognition.