BAOKLIST
is: CLYDECAID y
The following offers are open to Clyde
Card holders only. STEVE
CROSSMAN Two tickets for the price of one for Steve Crossman at the Glasgow International Jan Festival at The Old Frultrnarket, Candleriggs on 9 July at 7.30pm. Tickets from Ticket Centre, 041 227 5511 and all Tlcketlink outlets.
ALFIE
Two tickets for the price of one for Adam Faith in
Alfie at the King’s Theatre on 23 July at 3pm. Allie runs from
all Ticketllnk outlets.
TITANIC
Two tickets for the price
The Sinking Of The Titanic at The Old Fruitmarket, Candleriggs from 20—30 July at 7pm (art show) and 8pm (theatre performance). Tickets from Ticket Centre, 041 221 5511 and all Tlcketlink outlets.
of one for XpressMunich’s ¢ performance of Enzenberger‘s ‘
19—23July.Ticketsfrom Ticket ? Centre, 041 227 5511 and j
STEP SLIM Your first Step Reebok class free (normally £3.50) plus free Weigh In and record card for Step Slim at a large number of classes throughout the city and throughout the week. For further information telephone 041 423 5052.
STEP AEROBICS
Free membership (normally £5) plus £1 off your first class for Step Aerobics at Pollokshaws Burgh llall on Mondays and Wednesdays at 5.30pm. For further information telephone 041 638 3579.
To take up one of these offers present your Clyde Card to the venue box office. All offers subject to
availability. CLYDE
film .9.
1 1 5 2 A M listen to Clyde 1 and Clyde 2 for further details.
You can apply for a Clyde Card by credit card, in person or by post from: The Ticket Centre,
Candleriggs,
Glasgow 01 1ll0.
Tel: 041 227 5511.
Each Clyde Card costs £7.50.
Thom Dibdin puts on a
; squint, stares deeply into a
picture and sees something that isn’t there. Is he on substances? No. He’s looking at an autostereogram.
Japan, the States and now the UK. The mania for those 3-D image pictures has swept the globe. in Japan alone. fifteen books have been published — including two volumes of pornography. If you‘re able to see the three dimensional image in the picture above you‘ll understand the craze. lfnot and you're wondering what all the fuss is about then persist. as the moment when you can make the 3-D image swim into focus out of a picture that looks like Jackson Pollok on a bad day is genuinely breath— taking.
The man behind the mania is one-time hippie bus operator Tom Baccei. whose company N E Thing Enterprises is responsible for most of the images entrancing the crowds in shopping centres around the world. He set up the company in 1991 after an advert using the technique got more enquiries about the advert itself than the product it was
selling. The hippie ideals are long gone.
however. and company talk is all about ‘horizontal gluts‘ in the market place and taking the ‘manufacturing- distribution route‘.
While the ‘Wow! It really is in 3-D' attraction of the pictures is undeniable, the question is whether they have the staying power to turn from a fad into an art form. ‘What is a fad? What is an
MAGIC EYE
anforrn?‘ asks Clint Baker, marketing VP at N E Thing. ‘You take Seurat. he had an approach. but not all artists picked up on pointillism. so what do you call an artform?‘
Something artists can use to create images that go beyond the sheer
banality of the current pictures perhaps;
one problem is there are only so many Bambis. butterflies and abstract
geometric shapes you can take before the novelty wears off. This deficiency
isn‘t helped by Magic Eye — The Video.
also put out by N E Thing. It might be stupendous to look at fora while. but any movement consists of pan and scan techniques. Bambi never steps forward. the butterfly doesn‘t flap its wings. let alone stamp. and the geometric patterns which could move so effectively. remain stubbomly stationary.
The technology is waiting to catch tip with the ideas. as the video‘s producer John Blake explains. ‘()nc of the things that makes it difficult in the animation side is that these images take up so much space on a computer.’ he says. ‘We get about fifteen to twenty images per gigabite of memory. When you do animation you need 29 images per second. so you can see the computer space that would be required.‘ For the non-computer literate. a gigabite of memory is equivalent to about 1000 floppy disks.
With two Magic liye books topping the best seller lists. one video out. a second more challenging one promised and countless adverts using the technique. it seems that 3-D pictures will be exciting our eyes for a while yet. The potential for the technique is vast. with programmes available for home computers to churn out 3-D
images. but while technology can only cope with the most basic of shapes containing neither surface texture nor colour. the fad will never get further than being a gimmick.
Magic Ifyr’ / and Mugit‘ If)? 2 — the banks are published by Mir/me! Joseph (hardback £10.99). Magic Eye — The Video is amt/able on sell-through (Lumiere £9. ()9).
HOW IT WORKS
The principle of the pictures, more properly known as autostereograms, is very simple and has been around for as long as people have had two eyes. When you look at your face in a mirror you see a three dimensional image because each of your eyes sees your reflection from a slightly different angle. This effect was used in the last century to create stereoscopic pictures, you look through a device which super-imposes two photos of the same subject — usually the pyramids or a scantily clad woman - shot from slightly different angles. In the 19505 it was discovered that a 3-0 effect could be created using two separate patterns of dots instead of photographs.
For an autostereogram these two slightly different images of the subject, made up of patterns of dots, are first created in a computer. The computer then builds up a single image by super-imposing one dot pattern on the other. When you look at the resulting image with your eyes aiming at a point slightly behind the picture — but keeping the picture in focus — your brain separates the two images out and imagines that they must be in 3-0. Simple really.
84 The List 15-28 July 1994