Dr Andrew Watson, from the NASA Ames Research Center, will give this year’s annual Richard Gregory Memorial Lecture, held in memory of the great interdisciplinary thinker and University of Bristol academic, Professor Richard Gregory. The lecture, entitled The windows of visibility: limits to human vision and their application to visual technology, will take place on Monday 10 November at 6 pm in Lecture Room 1, School of Chemistry, Cantock’s Close, Bristol. The event is organised by the Bristol Vision Institute (BVI).
Dr Watson has been a pioneer in vision science, enhancing our understanding of how we perceive the world and he has applied this to film and television formats as well as to space exploration. His talk will focus on this work, taking the audience on a journey around our vision system and explaining how, through this greater understanding, we can engineer better solutions to vision-related problems. He will explain how, remarkably, understanding these limitations is key to designing better visual display technology and he will demonstrate this idea with examples from video compression, display inspection and high frame-rate movies.
Dr Watson is the author of over 100 scientific papers on human vision, visual neuroscience, image quality, digital imaging and display technology. He has five patents in image compression, video quality, and detection of artefacts in display manufacturing.
Dr Watson said: “We do not see the world as it is but only as fragments provided by our sensory apparatus. During my talk I will explore the many narrow “Windows of Visibility” through which we view the visual world. Through these limitations, the eye reduces the infinitely complex whirring, buzzing confusion of reality to a finite sample of information that our brain can manage.”
Professor David Bull, Director of BVI and Professor of Signal Processing in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, added: “Many technology developments in the modern world are driven by visual interactions and consumption. In order to produce the most efficient designs we must better understand the perceptual processes that underpin them. Andrew’s work has led the way in this field.”
Dr Watson will join an exciting list of speakers to have delivered this prestigious lecture in previous years, including Vilayanur Ramachandran, from the University of California – one of the world’s leading visual neuroscientists; David Sproxton, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Aardman Animations and the BBC Controller of Research and Development, Matthew Postgate.
Admission is free but advance booking is essential at Eventbrite. For further information about the lecture contact Jen Hawkins at j.hawkins@bristol.ac.uk or tel 0117 331 5759.