Dr Brook Taylor’s method of perspective made easy
both in theory and practice
an entertaining study for any gentleman who shall choose so polite an amusement
John Joshua Kirby, 1754
Every visible body emits or reflects inconceivably frail particles of matter from each point of its surface
which issue from it continuously
not unlike sparks from a coal…
but it’s the way that they find the eye. How they bounce and they bend
distort, contort any object
For the artist, the hardest part is to see pictures as numbers turn numbers into pictures
a system of falsities to show reality
(spoken) Whoever makes a design without the knowledge of perspective
will be liable to such absurdities as are shown in this–
[indistinct speech, overlapping]
I could hear a deep bass thumping across the streets.
It must have been 2am already but I don't know for sure
the battery was down on my phone
So you were out with Tom and that lot?
Yeah, but I lost them when it started to rain
Tom had a trick for dodging the raindrops
I watched him walking in this special way,
like how children won't step on cracks in the pavement - and he stayed dry as dirt
Tom’s so mental…
Yeah, so, I watched them walk a few feet in front of me following Tom's weird stay-dry dance
then they slipped through a crack and just vanished
(Reader) It's so easy to lose people on a Saturday night… (Raver) Yeah
(Raver) but you meet people just as easily.
I found a girl who said she was a witch I thought she meant her costume but she was serious. She said,
‘tonight the walls between the worlds are thinner’.
She led me to the back of a building. We could hear a deep bass thumping from within. There were crowds on the other side.
This guy said he’d waited for five hours. God, don't people have something better to do on a Saturday night, than queue for five hours?
So yeah, the witch girl led me to a locked door and said, turn sideways.
I did; and everything shifted. I realised that from this angle I could walk through the crack in the door. How did I not see that before?
The crack got smaller as I got closer, but the vibration of the music inside shook it open, and I slid through
Inside was a mess of sound and light.
I can’t believe so many people fitted in that small space. I felt like I was pulled in all directions.
The witch girl disappeared into the madness –
(Reader) It's so easy to lose people in a place like that…
(Raver) I pushed through the crowded room, climbed up onto the stage to look for her. The higher up I got the less I saw.
I must have danced for hours on the stage, moving with the bodies and the beat
Some hand found mine across the empty space and dragged me to the dance floor; he was mad.
He danced to rhythms that I couldn’t hear and it was the best kiss I ever had.
But I lost him too in what came next. The cops had knocked the door off its hinges.
They stormed the stage and shut off the DJ and all the lights came on.
(Spoken) 'You can't fit this many people in such a small space', they said.
It wasn't just the law it broke. Apparently it ‘defied the laws of physics’; and 'light can't travel like that' one said, raisin
I slipped away in all of the confusion. It was getting light outside
I saw, as the sun came up, that the building didn’t cast a shadow, as if nothing could get in the way of the light.
I suppose the cops were right. It can't work this way all the time. Who'll know if it's day or night?
(Mathematician) Can I start by saying my heart, by saying that my heartbeat, Can I start by saying that my heartbeat is faster. My heart beats faster – (joining) (Reader) It's to easy to lose people
(joining) (Raver) The crack got smaller. I slid through, day or night? The crack got smaller. I slid through, day or night?(joining) (Barista) Sunday, the whole café has a hangover...
(Barista) Coffee cures the lack of sleep. There’s a haze. Sunday, coffee cures the lack of sleep.
(Barista) On Sunday the whole café has a hangover. Coffee cures the lack of sleep.
There is a haze over everything. Like the air around a jet engine and our regulars are in.
(Raver) I’ve been here a couple of times and I’m sure I’ve seen that guy sitting in that exact place on his own, in his own worl
(spoken) I barely hear a word from him. He rarely orders anything, just does his maths on all of our napkins.
He builds a wall of books around himself, nurses a single cup of something cheap until it’s down to nothing but a heap of cold black granules.
I give him refills, for free, often of much better coffee; he never says thank you.
It’s not that he’s discourteous,
he’s just oblivious.
Sundays are infectious: if I haven’t had my coffee yet I start my tasks with a bleary head
I’ll notice the light bouncing off the soap suds, or start thinking about the cross currents I make in the water
As I slide them over the counter, chase them with a rag of paper
but I snap out of it and get back to work
There are cups to wash:
If you switch on the tap, but turn the cup rotating the handle to a certain angle. The water flows up, so there’s still a dirty cup no matter how long you run the tap
and if you push the cup further up, the water flows right through and into the sink.
But, if you time it right and adjust your line of sight, you can fill a cup from the other side of the café.
Voila – Ecco qua!
(Mathematician) Can I start by saying my heart beats faster when I see you
or your memory brushes against my thoughts,
which is another way of saying that the speed of all things reduces relative to my heartbeat
and - and - surmise that the distance increased while the time remained the same which is the same as to say that the time decreased while the distance remained the same
and-and-and this is why I write my love letters in algebraic equations –
(Reader) He keeps looking at me
I feel like I know him
it’s that strange sort of familiar-ness
You know when you see someone and you’re sure it’s for the first time
but you know, just as surely, that you’ve seen them before
maybe just the eyes or the bridge of the nose
the point where the forehead meets the hairline
belong to someone that you saw this morning
(Mathematician) This morning thinking of you, registering the increase of my heartbeat’s rate
I experimentally crossed the room while counting my heartbeats
then stood still just counting the beats
and -and realised the walls were rushing toward me -
each step was repositioning the universe rather than my place within the universe
(Reader) The universe might work this way... (Mathematician) The two are algebraically the same
(Reader) things that haven’t happened could already be there as memories or something
Who was it that said, time present and time past are both present in time future and the future contained in the past?
(Mathematician) once the wall had reached me I thought of you and my heart skipped a beat and the wall stopped
and I found myself back on the other side of the room and then (Reader) then again, I could have dreamed it
I read that the Senoi people of Malaysia train themselves to dream useful dreams, dreams that give them new ideas
tell them about the things they’ll do or remind them of the things they already did
(Mathematician) did I put my hand out in front of the window, press down on the distant horizon, lifting up my body?
or did the horizon rise up to meet my hand? (Reader) and it makes me wonder how much the world around me is changed by the way I
or even made by the way I see it.
I heard about this word, souzou. You can spell it in both directions. One means ‘create’, one means ‘imagine’, as if the two were closely linked.
it’s Japanese I think... (Mathematician) I think I clawed my fingernails around the horizon, lifted myself onto it
carrying my whole weight with one hand, then found that I was falling (Reader) The Senoi think that falling dreams are the most important
as if dreams talked to dreamers using gravity (Mathematician) shrinking with a rush of gravity until the café towered above me.
(Both) This café (Reader) is where I’ve fallen to (Mathematician) where my lips curve into a smile
As yours purse in the distance, my heart beat separates itself into vast echoing thuds (Reader) and it feels like an echo, like a memory
(Mathematician) yours or mine (Reader) I can’t tell the difference
(Mathematician) the two are algebraically the same. (Reader) between
(Reader) The past and the future (Mathematician) these quantities of thickness and thinness shape themselves around the possibility of contact
(Reader) Between the past and future (Mathematician) and the distance between us is the same as no distance
(Mathematician) The two are algebraically the same.
(Professor) ‘The interposition of some opaque object stops the progress of rays of light. They leave a space unilluminated’
and like light, the idea is blocked, leaving a gap in the mind, a space of unknowing
Like light, the idea is paused, not ended years pass like turning pages
but the eye stops the passing page rests on certain words. Reads, absorbs, moves on
and like an afterglow on the retina the picture remains in the frame
The idea leaves its mark in the brain
Like a shadow. Like an echo.
Like a stain.