The Eye Beguiled
Monday, June 29th, 2009
The title of this post is taken from Bruno Ernst’s book, chronicling a series of optical illusions by the likes of M. C. Escher. To fully appreciate the image right, you’ll need to click to get a full view of the apparently moving serpent pattern. This image was produced by Akiyoshi Kitaoka who has an astonishing collection of optical illusions on his website.
Put simply, the explanation for this visual tricky is that we cannot wholly trust what we see. The retina in our eyes, the visual cortex and our brain all play a part in interpreting information and filling in gaps. The result is that perceived hue, saturation, contrast, luminance etc, often differs from the original image upon which we cast our gaze. Context has a considerable effect on perceived colours and patterns. This was already known by the end of the nineteenth century as artists such as Georges Seurat experimented with Pointillism and Divisionism. Seurat juxtaposed contrasting colours, causing vibrations of color to the viewer.
Kitaoka’s website demonstrates a number of techniques on how colours and patterns can be combined to create a variety of illusions. As designers we would want to be aware of these techniques so that we can exploit and avoid them:
Moving Patterns 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
(particularly noticeable when scrolling browser window)
Rotating Patterns 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
