by Ray Zone
Former SCSC President and Program Director Tony Alderson, who passed away October 22, 2002, is now resting beneath the World’s First Freevision Headstone etched with stereo art designed to be viewed with binocular freevision. The freevision headstone is located at the Double Buttes Cemetery in Tempe, Arizona and was set in place in December, 2002. It depicts a side-by-side cartoon stereo pair that is a self-caricature of Alderson in the act of creating a stereo conversion for a 3-D comic book. The stereo pair is rendered for parallel freevision. Alderson produced many stereo conversions designed to be viewed in binocular freevision and wrote one of the most comprehensive explanations of the process with an article titled Everyone’s Guide to Freevision for the November/December 1988 issue of Stereo World (Vol. 15, No. 5) published by the National Stereoscopic Association (NSA).”Every 3-D enthusiast eventually confronts the problem of stereoscopically viewing an interesting pair when there is no stereoscope handy,” wrote Alderson. “At this moment one realizes that the necessity of a viewing device, while one of the central charms of the three-dimensional art, is at the same time one of its great handicaps. Fortunately there are a simple set of techniques that will enable about anyone with reasonably normal eyes to fuse certain common stereo pairs without any external aids. This unaided stereoscopic fusion is called “freevision.”"It is fitting that a great proponent of binocular freevision should rest beneath a permanent stereo pair of his own creation.
–Ray Zone |
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