Hacking human vision, controlling material appearance

This talk addresses an unsolved but important question, “how do human observers perceive nonrigid materials such as liquid, smoke, and jelly?” In the first part of this talk, I show the finding indicating that the human visual system utilizes the dynamic pattern of image deformation to see these materials. Based on the finding, our research group developed a light projection technique called Hen-Gen-Tou, which can make static objects perceptually dynamic. In the latter part, I talk how useful the new light projection technique is in order to give the visual impression of nonrigid materials to real rigid objects.