Chapter 9: Finding Your Equation

Qi Yi felt he needed to find Yan Yan for "an explanation."

He wasn't quite sure whether Yan Yan hoped he, the person concerned, would see her blog post when she wrote it.

And him?

If he had understood three years ago why Yan Yan wanted to break up with him,

what choices might he have made when he was preparing to go to Stanford University for an exchange at that time?

"If," these two words have always been the most pale.

Three years had passed, had the person who wrote "Tombstone Inscription" already started a new life?

Had the two of them already missed their chance?

Qi Yi didn't have Yan Yan's current contact information, and even if he did, he only wanted to check up on her without leaving a trace.

He was indecisive; he hadn't made up his mind.

He feared that if he didn't reappear, Yan Yan would start a new life.

He was even more afraid that his sudden reappearance would disturb the new life Yan Yan might have already started.

Two weeks after reading "Tombstone Inscription," Qi Yi obtained an Australian visa and printed the photo of the scenery outside Yan Yan's window that accompanied her third short blog post.

That photo was the only clue Qi Yi had to find the present Yan Yan.

Holding the clue, Qi Yi came to Melbourne, to the Southbank in Melbourne recorded by Yan Yan's camera.

...............

The space-time we live in is three-dimensional, while photos are two-dimensional.

The conversion of three-dimensional space into two-dimensional images inherently produces distortions.

Such distortions were Qi Yi's only reliance on unraveling the equation to find Yan Yan.

Seeing isn't always believing.

A snapshot is not proof.

The world people see is never real, whether seen with eyes or captured with a camera.

In our three-dimensional reality, the sea and the sky exist as two parallel lines, so the sea could never truly embrace the sky.

Yet the boundless sea horizon always intersects with the sky at the end of human vision.

The fusion of sea and sky is not reality, but an optical illusion.

Examples of such are countless.

Your eyes deceive your heart every day.

The world of two-dimensional pictures and the world of three-dimensional reality are two completely different worlds.

Solid geometry is the link connecting these two worlds.

The eyes can see the sea and sky meet, see people in the distance as smaller than those near, and see two straight train tracks intersecting at the horizon.

But these are all illusions; if the tracks really met, trains would derail every day, and high-speed rails would go off the rails daily.

The visual errors caused by distortions work both ways.

In recent years, anaglyphic street paintings have become quite popular, leveraging the reverse utilization of visual errors.

Changing lines and shadows makes it possible to create three-dimensional illusions visible to the naked eye on a two-dimensional plane.

Walking on these anaglyphs, people feel as if they have fallen into a canyon or are standing on a cliff.

But no matter how three-dimensional the sensation or how lifelike the experience, it's always just a painting on a two-dimensional surface.

Standing on an anaglyph, even if one can't help but feel alarmed, people are still clearly aware it's just an illusion.

Even more so, it is an illusion easier to understand than the fusion of sea and sky or the intersection of train tracks.

The transition from flat painting to three-dimensional painting involves more mathematical elements than art elements.

Mastering solid geometry allows control over the projection rules of three-dimensional paintings.

The most important aspect of creating three-dimensional paintings is the ability to imagine space.

Mathematically speaking, there are two interpretations of parallel lines.

The first is that parallel lines are two straight lines that will never intersect.

The second interpretation is that parallel lines are two straight lines that will meet at a point at infinity.

Due to "errors" in visual perception, parallel lines like the sea and sky that would meet only at infinity in real life can easily find their intersection point by extending in a two-dimensional image.

That is, a point "at infinity" in three-dimensional space can become seemingly within reach in a distorted two-dimensional image.

What Qi Yi needed to do first was to find real-life parallel lines in the two-dimensional photo.

Such parallel lines could be the edges of windows on different floors of a high-rise building captured in the photo.

These windows, parallel in real life, would have a convergence point not far away if extended in the photo.

The convergence point, in imaging terms, can be described by the technical term "vanishing point."

Another, more vivid name for the "vanishing point" is "vanishing point."

By finding two sets of parallel lines from different categories in the photo, such as the extended lines of the bottom of windows from Building A and the bottom of balconies from Building B, you can find two different "vanishing points."

Connecting these two vanishing points gives a straight line.

The line created by the two "vanishing points" becomes the "horizon."

Of course, the horizon derived in this way does not refer to the ground but to the height from which the photograph was taken.

Although the building where Yan Yan lived did not appear in the photo she took, the position where this horizon line crosses allows one to know the floor level from which Yan Yan took the photo.

Additionally, as Qi Yi had come to Melbourne, to the "scene within the photo."

Under such circumstances, the possibility that Qi Yi's equation to find Yan Yan had a solution greatly increased.

Qi Yi observed for ten minutes on the Yarra River pedestrian bridge.

He took note of the surrounding buildings.

Then, Qi Yi began to draw extension lines on the only clue photo he had in his hand to find the "vanishing points."

Because of his hesitation and fear of an insoluble equation, Qi Yi did not draw the "horizon" immediately after obtaining the photo. Instead, he chose to come to the "scene," feeling more confident in solving the problem, before starting to draw.

In this way, the efficiency of solving the problem was greatly improved.

Drawing a few extension lines and finding two vanishing points was something Qi Yi could do in less than a minute.

He wasn't in a rush about it at all.

But after the drawing was complete, the equation, which was supposed to have a greatly increased chance of a solution because of his presence at the scene, was undoubtedly unsolvable.

It wasn't that Qi Yi couldn't find the horizon. Instead, the "horizon" arrogantly appeared in the sky of the photo.

None of the scenery in the photo could serve as a reference.

Without any knowns, without any problem-solving conditions, an equation that consisted entirely of unknowns from start to finish; from where could the solution come?

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Was today's chapter a bit mathematical?

I really want to post a diagram about finding vanishing points, but unfortunately, it seems that images can't be added to the main text or comments in QiDian.

If you're curious about "vanishing points" and the "horizon," why not try it with a photo that includes several buildings?