This article argues that the analysis of a threedimensional image demanded a three-dimensional approach. The authors realise that discussions of images and image processing inveterately conceptualise representation as being flat, static, and finite. The authors recognise the need for a fresh acuteness to three-dimensionality as a meaningful – although problematic – element of visual sources. Two dramatically different examples are used to expose the shortcomings of an ingrained two-dimensional approach and to facilitate a demonstration of how modern (digital) techniques could sanction new historical/anthropological perspectives on subjects that have become all too familiar. Each example could not be more different in their temporal and geographical location, their cultural resonance, and their historiography. However, in both these visual spectacles meaning is polysemic. It is dependent upon the viewer's spatial relationship to the artifice as well as the spirito-intellectual viewer within the community. The authors postulate that the multi- faceted and multi-layered arrangement of meaning in a complex image could be assessed by working beyond the limitations of the two-dimensional methodological paradigm and by using methods and media that accommodated this type of interconnectivity and representation.
A three-dimensional approach for contact detection between realistic wheel and rail surfaces for improved railway dynamic analysis