Light & Engineering Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 40-45, 2015 Svetotekhnika No. 6, 2014, pp. 15-19 LIGHT AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR CREATING VIRTUAL IMAGES IN ARCHITECTURE Larisa V. Savelieva MArhI (the Moscow Architectural Institute) (State Academy), Moscow E-mail: savelievalarisa@yandex.ru ABSTRACT Light as a construction “material” has been used for a long time as the main component of a visual image. <...> The architectural music, set in stone, can be only seen in the presence of light. <...> But light does not only make the real world visible, it can also simulate a virtual world. <...> This use of light was fi rst explored four hundred years ago, during the baroque era, when devices like the microscope, telescope and magic lantern were fi rst invented, and images were fi rst projected by means of the latter. <...> Today we can create static and dynamic illusory images in architecture, which are capable of beginning a visual dialogue with the observers. <...> The key characteristics of such illusory spaces are their temporal nature, multi-variance and sense of spectacle. <...> Keywords: light, architecture, virtual space, visual illusions, illusory images, epoch of the baroque, innovations in architecture, light design, 3 D video-mapping, media facade, holography Architecture, as an art form, has always kept up with technological progress. <...> Modern computer and light technologies make it possible to introduce static and dynamic virtual images into a physical space, which can begin a visual dialogue with the observers. <...> It becomes especially interesting to track the origin and development of methods for simulating 40 virtual space in architecture, which use light as their main instrument and material. <...> A well-known statement from the outstanding architect Konstantin Melnikov says: an architect should be able to use the features of a human eye, “to play on the eye of a spectator as on an instrument”, just as a composer accounts for the peculiarities of a human ear – “plays on ear”. <...> Euclid postulated that a person feels objects, when linear rays emitting from them converge on the eye, and consequently that the system for sight rays can be imagined as a pyramid, the vertex of which is located in the eye, and the objects observed as its <...>