3D of the 1970’s

The "1970s in 3D" exhibition shows the polygraphic technology of using the Fresnel lens in a museum for the very first time. More than thirty photographic or pictorial cards and plates displayed at the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow recall a three-dimensional world familiar from our childhood. The Fresnel picture is the predecessor of photography. It was widely known even in the Mannerist and Baroque periods: in those days the possibility of viewing the same work of art as two different images when seen from different angles seemed miraculous. In fact this graphic principle appeared long ago, in shamanic societies. Masks made by American Indians in the Northwest territories reveal that the miracle of transformation was understood by animists in a literal sense, as transformation from one entity to another. The concept has now gained widespread popularity due to the inventions of the industrial era. Modern 3D colour print technology is based on a discovery almost contemporaneous with photography. The French physicist Fresnel studied the principles of dividing light and created his first multi-part lenses in the 1920s. These allowed images to appear voluminous or animated to the viewer. In the 1950s this technology was applied to advertising. Calendars, posters and even billboards that looked "alive" came on the market. In the 1970s these "living pictures" flooded the Soviet Union, both legally and illegally. A winking Jesus and a Japanese girl who strips off her clothes. The hare fleeing from the wolf in the popular Russian cartoon "Well, Just You Wait!", or a three-dimensional Lenin statue in front of the Palace of Congresses. These images were manufactured in the USSR and beyond its borders to be sold in every stationery store, or secretly and unofficially distributed in the flea market outside the Melodiya shop. The visual miracle that lay at the heart of this technology enlivened our grey Soviet existence with the bright colours of kitsch. Techno-shamanism is gaining ground. In recent years this technology has reached new heights: we now see "living pictures" among the advertisements in Moscow Metro carriages, and even on the cover of glamour magazines. On the Internet you can buy Chinese televisions with a Fresnel-lens screen that gives the picture increased volume. The pictures we remember from childhood have returned to life.