New (Ad)ventures in Illusion & Industry

A new set of opportunities is exciting us.

By Josh Wolfe

We have recently backed some unique entrepreneurs at of the emerging intersection of illusion and industry. These companies include Lumenous and Looking Glass, Matterport, Shapeways, Sols and Pinscreen. It feels like a renaissance of talent and the new generation that may yield the next Industrial Light & Magic or Pixar.

These are experts in sophisticated areas requiring obsession with both math and art working on concepts such as visual modeling, projection mapping and volumetric display. They are mastering photons, bits and atoms and will change how we see and communicate with information and each other.

We have been particularly captivated by projection mapping, the inverse of 3D scanning. While the latter takes every nook and cranny and seeks to capture and reproduce reality in pixels, the former seeks to take pixels at ever higher resolution and map them onto every nook and cranny, often not just on flat, but also complex and irregular surfaces.

We were also caught by something said recently by Frank Wilczek, an MIT professor and Nobel Prize winner in Physics who discusses the intersection of math, beauty and technology that first arose in the Italian Renaissance:

Around 1413, Filippo Brunelleschi discovered perspective — the art and science of capturing, in a drawing, the proportions of how things actually look. Contemporary artists including Massaccio, Donatello, and da Vinci took up Brunelleschi’s constructions enthusiastically. Within a few decades, they created masterpieces that people have enjoyed and admired ever since.

Wilczek explains that this discovery introduced to mathematics the field of projective geometry. Today, he writes:

The concepts of projective geometry permeate the most vibrant, advanced parts of contemporary mathematics and computer graphics. The concepts of projective geometry permeate the most vibrant, advanced parts of contemporary mathematics and computer graphics[…]it’s another way into serious thinking and programming — and, of course, into art.

We are excited for the new world that the rebel minds with whom we are investing in are inventing and designing for us all.