VSC Meeting, June 2025

Sunday, June 8 at 2:00 pm EDT / 8:00 pm CEST

Join us for a unique evening of dis­cov­ery, where his­to­ry meets cre­ative technology.

Pas­cal Mar­t­iné will present a new­ly dis­cov­ered auto­graph by Jules Richard, inven­tor of the Veras­cope offer­ing fresh, first-hand insight into ear­ly stereo pho­tog­ra­phy. Chris Casady presents “A.I. Riff­ing on Vic­to­ri­an Owl View­ers,” show­cas­ing sur­re­al 3D images cre­at­ed by AI and inspired by antique opti­cal devices — with a nod to Sir Bri­an May.

Don’t miss this dou­ble fea­ture of rare archival insight and play­ful visu­al invention.

History

What is the Verascope? – A New Jules Richard Autograph

Pas­cal Martiné

Many sources allow thor­ough research into his­tor­i­cal stereo cameras. 

But what the inven­tors of the time them­selves con­sid­ered par­tic­u­lar­ly remark­able can usu­al­ly only be recon­struct­ed — because they them­selves do not speak to us. Or do they?

Between 1993 and 2001, the French­man Jacques Perin pub­lished three remark­able vol­umes about one of the pio­neers of stereo pho­tog­ra­phy: Jules Richard, the inven­tor of the Veras­cope and Tax­iphote. The first vol­ume con­tains a com­plete tran­scrip­tion of an exten­sive auto­graph in which Jules Richard him­self writes about his inven­tion. He was 72 years old at the time.

It is thanks to chance that a fur­ther, pre­vi­ous­ly unknown auto­graph has now emerged, short­er indeed, but con­sid­er­ably old­er and with a dif­fer­ent focus. This will be pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic for the first time dur­ing the lecture. 

3D Trends

A.I. Riffing on Victorian Owl Viewers

Chris Casady

They were con­vert­ed to 3D with anoth­er AI tool Lumi­nos­i­ty for­mer­ly LeiaPix and hand work was done on each depth map in Pho­to­shop to per­fect the 3D and cor­rect errors. Beyond that Chris cred­its only an intel­li­gence more arti­fi­cial than his.

When AI meets 19th-cen­tu­ry opti­cal design, the results can be unex­pect­ed­ly delight­ful. Chris Casady explains: “When I asked the AI image gen­er­a­tor DALL-E3 to com­bine the motifs of 19th cen­tu­ry opti­cal devices with stere­o­scopes and owls (in hon­or of Bri­an May) it can up with some very cre­ative and fun jux­ta­po­si­tions worth shar­ing. The results take the form of vin­tage still life tableaus as you might expect from still life paint­ing of that era, but with strange owl look­ing opti­cal devices.”

Meeting Info

At the meet­ing time, click the red but­ton on vsc3d.com. Please use a nick­name cor­re­spond­ing with your sub­scrip­tion so that we can iden­ti­fy you in the wait­ing room. If you should expe­ri­ence prob­lems access­ing the meet­ing page, just send us a short mes­sage to contact@vsc3d.com and we will send you the direct link for the cur­rent meeting.

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