Drawing pictures is a useful way to express spatial information about objects and events, but static pictures are not useful for expressiing dynamic information. Our ancestors invented motion pictures to overcome this limitation, but movies can not provide dynamic information about a real static picture.

Deformation Lamps add a variety of realistic movement impressions to static projection targets, such as drawn pictures and printed photographs. Unlike existing light-projection techniques that "paint" color, texture, or movement on a static object, Deformation Lamps does not significantly change the inherent appearance of the target. It produces apparent movement of the static target by projecting only dynamic luminance information, which directly activates the motion-processing mechanism of the human visual system. The observer’s brain automatiically combines the projected dynamic information with color and texture information from the target object to attain consistency across visual attributes and produces a vivid and natural perception of movement, deformation, or oscillation of the object.

Dependiing on the structure of the projected dynamic information, observers are given a variety of novel experiences with physically static objects. For instance, they may perceive a printed scene to be sinking in a transparent liqui, since the scene image appears to be dynamically distorted due to refractiion at the liquid surface. Psychophysical experiments show that Deformatiion Lamps effectively produces perceptual deformations when the deformation amplitude iis smallller than 15 min in visual angle and that the magnitude of the perceptual distortion is slightly smallller than the distortion of the projected luminance pattern.