Selected readings on science and art

CS 48N - The Science of Art
Winter Quarter, 2009
Marc Levoy
Handout #2

I have made an attempt to group these readings into categories. Some of these categories correspond to course topics, while others are more general. Many readings fall into more than one category, and their categorization is consequently somewhat arbitrary.

Many of these books are available in the general books section of the Campus Bookstore, and of course all of them are available in one or more of the Stanford libraries. The starred items (*) have been placed on reserve in the Math/CS library. In addition, all of them are in my personal library. You are welcome to borrow these books overnight. A signout system will be instituted to keep track of borrowed books.

History of science

• Boyer, C.B., Merzbach, U.C., A History of Mathematics, second edition, Wiley, 1989.
• Butterfield, H., The Origins of Modern Science, revised edition, The Free Press, 1957.
• Kuhn, T.S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, third edition, University of Chicago Press, 1996.

History of art

• Clark, K., Leonardo Da Vinci, revised by M. Kemp, Penguin Books, 1988.
• Gardner, H., Art Through the Ages, eleventh edition, Harcourt Brace, 2001. (*)
• Gombrich, E.H., The Story of Art, sixteenth edition, Phaidon, 1995.
• Hibbard, H., Michelangelo, second edition, Harper and Row, 1974.
• Vasari, G., Lives of the Artists.

Visual perception

Textbooks

• Gibson, J.J., The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Houghton Mifflon, 1979.
• Marr, D., Vision, W.H. Freeman, 1982.
• Wandell, B.A., Foundations of Vision, Sinauer Associates, 1995.

History and relation to art

• Gombrich, E.H., Art and Illusion, Princeton University Press, 1960.
• Lindberg, D.C., Theories of Vision from Al-Kindl to Kepler, University of Chicago Press, 1976.
• Park, D., The Fire within the Eye Princeton University Press, 1997.
• Solso, R.L., Cognition and the Visual Arts, The MIT Press, 1994.

Perspective

Textbooks

• Cole, A., Perspective, Dorling Kindersley, 1992.
• D'Amelio, J., Perspective Drawing Handbook, Tudor, 1964.
• Montague, J., Basic Perspective Drawing: A Visual Approach, van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993.
• Smith, R., An Introduction to Perspective, Dorling Kindersley, 1995.

History and relation to art

• Field, J.V., The Invention of Infinity, Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Gregory, R.L., editor, The Artful Eye, Oxford University Press, 1995.
• Kemp, M., The Science of Art, Yale University Press, 1990. (*)
• Dubery, F., Willats, J., Perspective and other drawing systems, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1972, 1983.

Light and shadow

• Baxandall, M., Shadows and Enlightenment, Yale University Press, 1995.
• Gombrich, E.H., Shadows: the Depiction of Cast Shadows in Western Art, National Gallery Publications, London, 1995.
• Zajonc, A., Catching the Light, Oxford University Press, 1993.

Color

Textbooks

• Minnaert, M.G.J., Light and Color in the Outdoors, translated and revised by L. Seymour, Springer-Verlag, 1993. (*)
• Nassau, K., The Physics and Chemistry of Color: The Fifteen Causes of Color, Wiley, 1983.
• Wyszecki, G. and Stiles, W.S., Color Science: Concepts and Methods, Quantitative Data and Formulae, second edition, Wiley, 1982.

History and relation to art

• Brusatin, M., A History of Colors, translated by R.H.Hopcke and P. Schwartz, Shambhala Publications, 1991.
• Lamb, T. and Bourriau, J., Colour: Art and Science, Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Scientific illustration

Historical

• Baigrie, B., editor, Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science, University of Toronto Press, 1996.
• Baynes, K., Pugh, F., The Art of the Engineer, Lutterworth Press, 1981.
• Ford, B.J., Images of Science: A History of Scientific Illustration, Oxford University Press, 1993.
• Robin, H., The Scientific Image: From Cave to Computer, W.H. Freeman, 1992.
• Stafford, B.M., Artful Science, The MIT Press, 1994.

Modern

• Bertin, J., The Semiology of Graphics, translated by J. Bert, University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.
• Tufte, E.R., The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press, 1983.
• Tufte, E.R., Envisioning Information, Graphics Press, 1990.
• Tufte, E.R., Visual Explanations, Graphics Press, 1997.

Writings by artists

• Leonardo Da Vinci, Leonardo on Painting, translated by M. Kemp and M. Walker, Yale University Press, 1989. (*)
• Leonardo Da Vinci, The Notebooks of Neonardo Da Vinci (two volumes), edited by J.P. Richter, Dover Publications, 1970.
• Leonardo Da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci on the Human Body, translated by C.D. O'Malley and J.B. de C.M. Saunders, Dover Publications, 1952.

Writings by scientists

• Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, translated by P. Urbach and J. Gibson, Open Court Publishing, 1994.
• Herman von Helmholtz, "The Relation of Optics to Painting", in Science and Culture: popular and philosophical essays, edited by D. Cahan, University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Art in the age of technology

Philosphical essays

• Benjamin, W., "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," In Illuminations, Harcourt Brace, 1968.
• Hughes, A. and Ranfft, E., eds., Sculpture and Its Reproduction, Reaktion Books, 1997.
• Mumford, L., Art and Technics, Columbia University Press, 1952.

Technical essays

• Cowan, W., "Rendering with Limited Means," manuscript, 1995.
• Donath, J.S., "Structured Video and the Construction of Space," Proceedings of the IS&T/SPIE Symposium on Electronic Imaging, San Jose, CA, February 1995.
• Mitchell, W.J., The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era, The MIT Press, 1992.

Computer graphics techniques

• Gooch, B., Gooch, A., Non-Photorealistic Rendering, A.K. Peters, 2001.
• Haeberli, P., "Paint By Numbers: Abstract Image Representations," Proc. SIGGRAPH '90, ACM, 1990.
• Meyer, B.J., "Painterly Rendering for Animation," Proc. SIGGRAPH '96, ACM, 1996.
• Salisbury, M.P., Anderson, S.E., Barzel, R., Salesin, D.H., "Interactive Pen-and-Ink Illustration," Proc. SIGGRAPH '94, ACM, 1994.
• Winkenbach, G. and Salesin, D.H., "Computer-Generated Pen-and-Ink Illustration," Proc. SIGGRAPH '94, ACM, 1994.