Robot Writes

Todays lesson is on anamorphosis, and is divided into 2 parts. the first part consists of research and a gathering of all things to do with eye trickery. the second part will show how our practical experiments of last thursday went.

Anamorphosis is the fancy name for using forced perspective to create ‘tromp l’oeuil’ illusions of an image. Well it’s easier seen than explained, as this page proves, which goes a bit deep into the maths for me. Fortunately the maths can be done for us by computers, if you want to go that far. if not, check out this gallery of real world anamorphosis. (incidentally, anamorphosis.com led me on to the site of Andrew Crompton, which has many fascinating tesselations, optical illusions and other brain bending stuff)

so, explanations out of the way, lets do a name check:

Holbein – a “one-off” who developed his own style and seemed able to turn his hand to almost anything, be it designing tableware or portraiture. however that skull looks photoshopped to me, what do you reckon?

The Ambassadors

Erhard Schon – Slightly more famous for hiding Charles V, Ferdinand I, Pope Paul III and Francis I in a painting, this one has a slighly more risqué theme:

Was siehst du ?

George Rousse – Paints geometric shapes that coalesce when you stand at a particular point in the room/building (A dedicated flickr stream is a good indicator of an artists popularity.) George is currently embroiled in this (warning: over-exuberant web design ahead), however on my inter-travels I found this video on a french art site, in which George is featured about halfway through. I mention it here because it also mentions Richard Serra, of Tilted Arc fame, which is relevant to our current ’site’ brief – i digress. George Rousse work looks like this:

Seoul, 2000

Mac Adams – Occaisionally makes sculpture that uses negative space or the interplay of shadow and light to create the illusion of form. like this:

Sculpture 2, 1999

Tim Noble and Sue Webster -Again, interplay of light and shadow transform an otherwise seemingly ordinary pile of rubbish. Particularly clever way of upcycling waste into art, (so familiar territory for the saatchis then):

Dirty White Trash (with gulls)

Shigeo Fukuda – Also in a similar vein to Noble and Webster but far more diverse, Fukuda is expert at illusion, anamorphosis and transformations. there are some very informative videos here or check out this wild piano:

Mirror Piano

Samuel Van Hoogstraten – Dutch painter, studied under rembrandt and went through a series of styles in trying to find his own. Experimented with tromp l’oeil effects and illusion, for instance with his perspective boxes which confined the viewers vision so as to make the sensory deception more convincing:

A Peepshow

Istvan Orosz -Another multi-talented individual. occaisionally uses the pseudonym ‘Utisz‘ (‘no-one’) – “Utisz – It was the Homeric hero Odysseus, who fought the Cyclops, had used this name, and had put out the monster’s eye. I imagine that poster is nothing else but an Odysseus’ gesture: some kind of attack upon the eye”. So prepare to have your eye attacked:

Crossroads

Jean Francois Niceron – Mathematician who authored ‘la perspective curieuse’ which is probably the most significant work on anamorphosis. He developed geometric rules in order to formalise the process mathematically:

plotting anamorphosis

Julian Beever – probably the most well known anamorphic artist on the net.

Batman

also in a similar vein:

Anthony Gormley – Generous technical description of creation of ‘Quantum Cloud’

also, from the legendary somethingawful.com ‘not photoshopped’ thread (Warning: off colour banter, off-topic posts, naughty words etc) this:

Eyes Lies and Illusion Hayward Gallery 2004

Well, i’m starting to see things that actually are there, which means it must be time for bed. Join us next post as we get all ‘ker-azy’ with electrical tape