Markus Wintersberger · medienwerkstatt006
“To rectify it, the sheet must be laid flat on a tabletop and viewed from the lower edge.”Stift Göttweig catalogue · X. Optical illusion: puzzle picture and anamorphosis · on Christoph Weigel’s knight (c. 1672)
The print collection of Stift Göttweig holds three sheets that refuse the first glance: Christoph Weigel’s stretched knight, who only becomes a rider when laid flat and viewed from the lower edge; Johann Martin Will’s landscape head, which shows a face after a quarter turn; and Johannes Tröschel’s engraving after Simon Vouet in which satyrs marvel at a mirror cylinder – above them the banderole Format et illustrat: it forms and illuminates.
FORMAT ET ILLVSTRAT takes this motto as a method. Not a restoration but an experiment: anamorphosis – the image that only succeeds from a single standpoint – becomes the operator through which the baroque sheets and the AI image worlds of GöttwAIg are translated into one another. Length, cylinder, point, colour and puzzle anamorphoses are rebuilt with mathematical precision and extended by a sixth: the time anamorphosis, in which every ring of the image shows a different moment.
The thesis: the AI image is an anamorphosis too – a distorted projection of its dataset, legible only from the standpoint of a prompt. Thing and non-thing in the same grasp.
Parts
◆ AV video long version 4:38 · 16:9 · 4K · mp4
◆ AV video trailer 2:54 · independent cut
◆ SPECULUM CYLINDRICUM · reconstructed animated 3D scene (GLB) and 3D animation 2:40
◆ PUNCTUM · a game about the right point of view · web and exhibition app
◆ Lab · four anamorphoses to rectify yourself
Sound: synthetic – the engravings are made audible as spectrograms; stretching the image also stretches the sound (acoustic anamorphosis).
GöttwAIg – Wunderkammer(21) is an art & science project exploring and presenting the connection between the baroque – through the cabinet of curiosities of Stift Göttweig – and digital AI aesthetics. The fragmentary Göttweig Wunderkammer becomes, by means of AI, a cabinet of the cabinet: contemporary art as a test lab for translations and AI plausibilities.
Initiated by Markus Wintersberger (USTP St. Pölten) and Viola Rühse (UWK Krems), accompanied by transdisciplinary research and questions of sustainability. As in Duchamp’s “La Boîte-en-valise”, the collection becomes a portable new constellation – “The world is everything that is the case.”
AI collage from the GöttwAIg cycle – material for section IV · LATENCY and the game.
Oblique length anamorphosis, engraving and etching, Jena, c. 1672. Seen upright a tangle of stretched lines – laid flat and viewed from the lower edge, a rider. Possibly made in connection with illustrations for Erhard Weigel (1625–1699), professor of mathematics in Jena.
Engraving from a series of anthropomorphic landscapes, Augsburg (no. 45). Ruins, mountains, trees – a quarter turn clockwise and the landscape becomes a bearded head. Will (1727–1806) carried Arcimboldo’s tradition of composite heads into the 18th century.
Engraving, c. 1625: satyrs crowd round a table and marvel at the image of an elephant appearing in the mirror cylinder – optical illusion as curiosity and as a serious instrument for teaching optics and perspective. Above: FORMAT ET ILLVSTRAT.
Five movements – PUNCTUM · SPECULUM · VEXIER · LATENCY · coda – with opening and closing credits. Weigel’s plate rises, Tröschel’s sheet bends into a ring, Will’s landscape turns into a head; AI fragments come together in space, time becomes rings, colour becomes depth.
Independent cut with different material, camera paths and its own rhythm – Through the AI Wunderkammer as time anamorphosis, chromatic anamorphosis from a second AI collage.
Camera flight through the reconstructed cabinet: six puncta, each reached exactly – floor title, Weigel’s plate, mirror cylinder, puzzle relief, fragment cloud, light layers.
An octagonal cabinet – recalling the tower room in the imperial wing – with five stations and a floor title. Each is computed for a single eye point; the puncta are stored in the model as named nodes with eye point and target (glTF extras).
Speculum: the ring plate was computed backwards ray by ray – from the eye via the mirror cylinder onto the tabletop. In the viewer and the game the reflection is recomputed exactly in a shader: Will’s head appears in the cylinder.
Animations in the GLB: FILM_Kamerafahrt_160s (camera + puzzle rotation, breathing fragment cloud, sliding light layers) and LOOP_Vexier_Latenz_20s. Lights as KHR_lights_punctual.
Six images lie scattered in the cabinet – stretched, bent, shattered, turned. A brass ring on the floor shows roughly where; eye height and direction are up to you. A coherence bar and a tone whose beating closes into unison show how near the punctum is. Once found, the camera glides into the exact eye point and a card tells the story of the sheet.
After all puncta the method reverses: with the projector you cast an image into the room from your own point of view – your own anamorphosis, which falls apart as soon as you step aside.
ATELIER – your own images: uploaded images are computed as exact anamorphoses – as a ring plate for the mirror cylinder, as a length anamorphosis after Weigel or as a floor anamorphosis – and made legible in the room. Export as JPG print template with instructions (cylinder circle, eye point), as JPG view and as AV video with a camera move from dissolution to coherence.
Controls: mouse/keyboard, touch (joystick + drag to look), gamepad. Exhibition mode: attract tour when idle, reset, no cursor, staff shortcuts. Standalone as macOS app (Electron, arm64 and Intel).
| Engine | Web | Standalone / exhibition | Assessment for PUNCTUM |
|---|---|---|---|
| three.js (r186) + Electron | native, light, ES modules, first-class glTF | Electron app, kiosk, offline | chosen – custom shader for the exact mirror cylinder, one GLB for film, web and app, no build chain, ~3 MB runtime |
| Babylon.js 8 | very good, WebGPU, inspector | Electron/Tauri | equal alternative, larger runtime |
| PlayCanvas | very good, cloud editor | via web wrapper | editor lock-in, less needed for a single piece |
| Godot 4.5 | WebAssembly export, larger size and start-up | strong: native apps | good for pure installations, web secondary |
| Unity 6 / Unreal 5 | heavy WebGL/WebGPU or pixel streaming | very strong | oversized, licence and hardware overhead |
Usability guidelines: one goal per station (the point of view), continuous feedback instead of riddle text (bar, beating, ring), eye height as its own axis (children, wheelchair, crouching), instant start without account, tour as attractor, reset after inactivity, bilingual, large controls, reduced motion respected.
Lay the stretched sheet flat: tilt it until the knight stands.
Choose a sheet or upload your own image – and bend it into a cylinder anamorphosis. With mirror on, the cylinder shows the image back. Save as JPG and try it with a shiny can – or export the transformation as a video. The exactly computed version with print instructions is in the ATELIER of the game PUNCTUM.
Drag the image or the slider: at a quarter turn the head appears.
Red, green and blue lie at different depths. Move the pointer into the ring – only there does the light add up to the whole image.
