Exploring Lorenz Stöer’s Imaginary Space Using Augmented Reality: Geometria et Perspectiva

Abstract

Augmented Reality, as well as an instrument to communicate cultural heritage able to arouse interest and involve a vast audience, it can also become an important methodological instrument to expand knowledge. The ongoing research aims at exploring the potentialities of AR in this dual function, utilizing it as a tool for understanding and as a mean for the dissemination of the collection of woodcuts created by Lorenz Stöer (ca. 1530–after 1621) in his book Geometria et Perspectiva (1567). The work constitutes a component of the brief spurt of creative experimentation of perspective representation of regular and irregular geometric solids, involving various personalities between Nuremberg and Augsburg. In the prints by Stöer, geometry and perspective fuse in a particular manner: regular solids are presented within an imaginary landscape, in which, next to the remains of architectural ruins, there are fanciful geometric compositions. Stöer may have either constructed the images by drawing directly on the plane, by applying rules of perspective, or by using a perspective instrument. In a multi-media exhibition of the eleven prints, AR would offer its contribution in investigating these two hypotheses on the creation of the images and would permit the visitor to explore the possible worlds that are concealed past the drawing.