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Vol. 5, No. 6 - April 17, 2006
Phillips Collaborates on New Version of Classic Perception Text
Look at the book's images through the cardboard 3-D glasses tucked into its back cover and something magical happens: The color dots turn sharply black and white, and distinct shapes — squares, diamonds, triangles — seem to emerge, lift off the pages and float above them. Working with early digital computers at Bell Labs, Julesz generated these random-dot images to serve as "novel tools" to analyze how the human brain combines the separate images received from each of our two eyes (hence Cyclops-like) to produce depth perception. "This mode of visual stimulus became a paradigm for research in vision and perception," says Phillips. Published in 1971, Foundations was named to a list of the most influential cognitive-science books of the 20th century and critically hailed for its "breadth, lucidity, technical virtuosity, and ... breathtaking beauty." But it was out of print and hard to find — used copies cost hundreds of dollars — when Phillips and Rutgers University colleague Thomas Papathomas decided to publish a facsimile edition, with the cooperation of Julesz, a Rutgers professor emeritus. The project took six years — "longer than my dissertation," jokes Phillips — but this March, the small, square book was republished by MIT Press in its original award-winning design. Getting it done was a Herculean task. For starters, Julesz's original artwork and manuscript were long lost, so Phillips digitally recreated the nearly 50 color images and some black-and-whites. To duplicate the text, he sliced up two mint copies of rare originals (at $350 a pop) and scanned each page. When new cellophanes ordered for the glasses' red and green lenses didn't precisely match the originals, new inks had to be custom-mixed, and the images' colors tweaked to reproduce the original optical effects. Phillips met with ink-makers and commiserated with pressmen bemused, he says, by "the first job they've ever done where you don't want the colors to register." And because Julesz had developed the book while working at Bell Labs, the reprint had to be vetted by AT&T lawyers concerned with intellectual-property rights. Julesz died in 2003, before that two-year process was completed. The reprinted Foundations sports a red cover, to distinguish it from the black-jacketed original. It sells for $120, a price at which "libraries can reacquire the hardcover," says Phillips. But for Phillips and Papathomas, the book is primarily a labor of love; proceeds from its sales will help endow a Rutgers University speaker series in Julesz's memory. Forché to Receive Creeley Poetry Award April 25
Creeley was a major contemporary poet who was born in Arlington, Mass., and grew up in West Acton. He attended Harvard University from 1943 to 1946, taking time out to work one year for the American Field Service in Burma and India. In 1946 he published his first poem, in the Harvard magazine Wake. Creeley eventually published more than 60 books of poetry in the United States and abroad. A former New York State Poet Laureate (1989-91) Creeley received the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the Frost Medal, the Shelley Memorial Award, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation. He was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1999. At his death in last March, Creeley was a distinguished professor of English at Brown University. Currently director of creative writing at Skidmore, Forché is the author of four books of poetry and editor of the anthology Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness. Her articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and other national publications. Her honors include three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, The Los Angeles Times Book Award for Angel of History, and the Morris Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture Award in recognition of her work on behalf of human rights and the preservation of memory and culture. Sponsored by the Acton Memorial Library, the Creeley celebration honoring Forché begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Faulkner Room of the Acton Town Hall. Admission is free but tickets are required and available at Acton Memorial, Citizens and Sargent Libraries, Willow Books, the Concord Bookshop, West Acton Market, and Porter Square Books. Parking is limited. Zankel Lecture April 18 In a departure from typical lecture etiquette, cell phones, BlackBerries and laptops will be welcome at a this year's Zankel Lecture Tuesday, April 18, when listeners will learn more about the new "Digital City." More Coburn Lecture April 19 Anthropologist Sarah Hrdy will tell what factors contribute to maternal love when she gives this year's Karen Levin Coburn '63 Lecture in Women's Studies Wednesday, April 19. Perlow Events to Consider Transformative Memorials to the Holocaust A weeklong look at the power of art and music to transcend oppression will be explored and celebrated in an array of events starting April 23 on campus. Holocaust music scholar Mark Ludwig, a violist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Skidmore's 2005-06 Sterne Virtuoso Artist-in-Residence, will anchor the Jacob Perlow Series of events. More Skidmore Intercom |
The image at left looks like it's out of focus, but it's actually a perfectly registered illustration from Bela Julesz's Foundations of Cyclopean Perception, a classic scientific work about visual perception recently republished by Skidmore psychologist Flip Phillips. 
Professor of English Carolyn Forché will give a reading of her work Tuesday, April 25, at Acton (Mass.) Town Hall as part of a program celebrating the sixth awarding of the annual Robert Creeley Poetry Award, which she will receive that evening.