Perceiving material qualities from moving contours (opens in new tab)

While research on the perception of line drawings has long demonstrated the importance of contours in object recognition, recent work shows that contours can also convey material properties. For example, even simple 2D shapes with varying contours have been shown to evoke vivid impressions of different materials. However, such static representations capture only a single moment in time. When a material moves, its contours shift, evolve, or deform over time, creating contour motion. Does this ...