A post at Futility Closet, [url]http://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/10/10/art-appreciation/[/url], got me thinking about this. Greg writes: "If we stand immediately below a painting in a gallery, it appears foreshortened. But if we stand on the other side of the room, it appears small. Somewhere between these two points must be the optimum viewing position, where the painting fills the widest possible angle in our vision. How can we find it?"
There's only an optimal point if the art is above our eyeline. Otherwise, apparent angle just gets closer to 180 degrees the closer we get. It turns out we only have a field of view of about 135 degrees vertically, so there is a closest point we can see the whole thing.
I made a model because I thought it would be interesting to think about it from both the where to view art and where to hang art perspectives. It would be excellent to combine this with an experiment where learners found where they like to stand and think about the angles.
This got me interested in field of view, and there's another sketch about horizontal field of view and eye placement: [url]http://www.geogebratube.org/material/show/id/52524[/url]
