Geometry of Vision Exhibition 2025
Vijay Ravikumar highlights learnings from the course he offered at the University, where mathematics came alive through drawings, computer graphics, artistic explorations, optical illusions, and more.
Campus
Bengaluru
About Geometry of Vision
‘The Geometry of Vision’ course explores how one of our senses — our sense of sight — relies on our brain’s almost hardwired understanding of a fascinating geometric space, known as the ‘projective plane’. Students study this ‘projective geometry’ primarily through perspective drawing, and in the process build an intuition and rigorous understanding of its geometric structure, which has profound real-world implications.
Although we typically approach the study of mathematics through the language of mathematical formalism, certain mathematical truths can also be accessed more directly through our physical senses.
“The course taught me that vision is not only a simple act but a complex process involving geometry, science, and perception. This new awareness has made normal tasks, like walking on the road or looking at buildings, more interesting for me.”
Geometry of Vision Exhibition
Recently, at Azim Premji University’s Bengaluru campus, students presented their learnings ranging from computer graphics, artistic explorations, optical illusions, to more abstract mathematical investigations.
Several students explored different approaches to the curvilinear perspective, which attempts to capture a larger field of view by representing lines as circular arcs. Several others created anamorphic illusions, in which a two dimensional drawing appears three dimensional, as seen in the chair illusion.
Mathematical explorations included a flip book animation which showed how an ancient theorem of projective geometry, known as Pappus’s Theorem, is actually a special case of a modern one known as Pascal’s Theorem. On the coding end, several students explored ray tracing, ray marching, and gravitational lensing created by a black hole!
Students from different colleges/universities who attended the exhibition were eager to try their hand at creating anamorphic illusions, curvilinear perspective drawing, and even some of the coding explorations that began as final projects for the course.
“A philosophy, literature or humanities major who may have zero background in maths will get something out of Geometry of Vision course, and so will somebody very interested in maths.”
About Vijay
Vijay Ravikumar is a faculty member at Azim Premji University. He grew up in the US and completed his undergraduate studies at Amherst College. After completing his PhD in 2013 from Rutgers University, he moved to India. Over the last decade, he has worked as a research mathematician, a teacher, and a freelance artist. He may be contacted at vijay.ravikumar@apu.edu.in