Take a closer look

I found this picture really interesting as it involves the use of negative space and also is an optical illusion. What do you see when you look at it? A man looking over his shoulder?
  Look closer at the lines that make this up and you will see a joker and a ninja. From a distance it's a portrait but when you focus on it and allow your brain to process what it is seeing, the real message is moved back and forth and you see what is really there.

DIY OP ART

I'm experimenting with lines to make my own optical art.

I drew lines where they weren't supposed to be,
so pardon the tipex marks

I have yet to add colour to bring in the chromatic tension.

To be an Optical Illusion

I made myself an optical illusion. Are you seeing double? Or is your brain processing what it sees and assumes the image is moving so you see double......:)

Playing With Space

Pardon the crappiness of the top one, but you
get the general idea of neg. space.

I experimented myself with negative space, drawing with black on a white background, and then inverting that and drawing with white on a black background. The white on black background picture isn't very good quality, it's out of proportion, but it was just a play with space to get the general idea of negative space and the optical illusion. which is the background and which is the the subject...the black? or the white? The old optical illusion that has being around for years, the vase? or two faces? I played around with that. I did it on black paper with white paint and on white paper with black paint.

A vase? two men? black background? white background?

Negative Space

I became side tracked there for awhile, and I ended up at a dead end, I didn't really have much further to go with brain etc because it was second hand information, so I went back to my mind maps and returned to Op Art and the illusions and found a different path, I felt like I'd lost time, and had not much to show for myself after a month here, but then again all the work I did was part of the journey. Trial and Error

  So after my tangent into the brain and its ways, I returned to optical illusions again and found another path here, playing with negative space and after images and the different types of visual movement regarding optical art.

Visual illusions occur due to properties of the visual areas of the brain as they receive and process information.  An illusion is a phenomenon in which our subjective perception doesn't match the physical reality of the world. These sentences, I think, link everything I've been saying so far, the hallucinations, the processing of the brain, pareidolia and the movement across the plane of op art whilst trying to process what you see.

Negative Space:
in art is the space around and between the subjects of the image. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject and not the subject itself forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape and such space is occasionally used to artistic effect as the 'real' subject of the image. The use of negative space is a key element in artistic composition. 

In a two tone, black and white image a subject is normally depicted in black and the space around it is left blank, thereby forming a silhouette of the subject. reversing the tones so that the space around the subject itself is left blank causes the negative space to be apparent as it form shapes around the subject.

Noma Bar 'Negative Space'

Mind Altering

I linked optical illusions with pareidolia because it's something we see one way but process another way. I began to think about other ways our mind works, how it works under mind altering substances and the link between optical illusions and hallucinations.

 Drugs like LSD, effect the brain by causing hallucinations, you sense a stimulus and this message is moved through by sensory neurons but it isn't processed correctly because the LSD has effected your system, so what you are seeing, hearing, feeling or smelling is altered in your mind and the message is perceived in a different way. In a way hallucinations are an optical illusion in itself. Your vision is morphed, things are moving in your mind, that in reality are not at all.
 Another linkage between the LSD and my initial idea of movement and the brain and movement in the brain, was the effect of LSD on your cells. You take it into your system and then it travels to your serotonin cells and it acts upon these cells, the message of LSD is moved through your cells the same way everything else moves through your cells and your CNS.

'Over and Out' Jen Stark

'Alpha and Omega' Jen Stark

I looked up art on LSD, art regarding LSD and other types of art that made me think of hallucinations and the effects of LSD. I found and artist called Jen Stark, a paper sculpture. Stark created incredibly trippy and colourful pieces from tonnes and tonnes of paper. The colour scheme in her pieces and the depth illusion of some of her work combined, made me think of the effets of LSD and the hallucinations one would have.
Jen Stark's worked really popped out at me regarding the optical illusion side of things. Her work has a perception of depth that isn't really there. Her use of colour and lines form gaping holes and crevasses in her work that really grabs you.

My visual response to hallucinations.

 Hallucinations interested me regarding movement and motion because I figured the movement and motion of your normal world is distorted by the message you sensed being disrupted in your brain and the optical illusion that is happening around you in these hallucinations. I liked the idea of art on LSD, imagining the morphed world and the distorted movement around you.

Brainworks III

I came across Rorschach's Inkblot Tests and found this interesting whilst I was studying the brain. It is a method of psychological evaluation. Psychologists use this test to try to examine the personality characteristics and emotional functioning of their patients. There are ten official inkblot, 5 are black ink on white paper, 2 are blank and red ink on white paper and 3 are muticoloured. These are shown to teh patients and the examine processes and analyses their responses. I made a few of my own inkblots by playing with ink on paper.

Add caption

During this research I came across Pareidolia, a psychological phenomenon involving vague and random stimulus being perceived as significant. Common examples are faces in clouds, Jesus in the wood and eyes in cars headlights. I took photos of things I saw that made me see something that wasn't there. Facial patterns in the curtains, faces in car lights and on houses.

Examples of pareidolia

Example of pareidolia. 2 eyes and a nose

 The Rorscach Ink blot Test uses pareidolia in an attempt to gain insight into a persons mental state. It is a projective test, as it intentionally elicits the thoughts or feelings of the respondent, which are projected into the ambiguous inkblot images.

Projection in this instance is a form of directed pareidolia because the cards have been deliberately designed not to resemble anything in particular.  

This sentence led me to link the optical illusions with pareidolia and the inkblot tests because they trick you into seeing something that isn't there, something that shouldn't be made sense of, but is.

Brainworks II

The idea if the brain always moving and all inter-connected made me think of cogs and gears. If one part of the brain were to stop working, the whole thing would also stop.


 Thinking of the brain and all the nerves, and the electro-chemical conduction, reminded me of electrical wires, and like a light bulb circuit, its a continuous flow of electric current, a bit like the continuous blood flow in our brains. The system of wires connecting the whole brain like a web, then, made me think of the root system of a tree. Similar to your brain, you have the tree on top, where all the magic happens, and underneath, hidden away, is the root system, working all the time, pumping nutrients around, keeping the tree alive, the same way our veins are always pumping a constant blood flow to keep us alive.

Brainworks I

Before I continued on with movement in optical illusions, I sidetracked onto how we process these illusions. The use of our eyes and brain and CNS to gather the messages of what we see and carry them to the mind to be recognized. I saw movement here because the messages that recorded what we saw were constantly moving, from stimulus to receptor by sensory neurons to the CNS and back by motor neurons.

There is a constant path of movement here because our brain is always working and always moving. Brains process everything we see. Optical illusions must be processed here. We see something and our brain works very hard to try and understand it, and with a lot of optical illusions there is no real answer so our brain produces visual movement even though it isn't there.

Playing with the idea of nerve cells and synapses and dendrites.

I began taking a closer look at the brain itself, and how it works. I looked at nerve cells and all the different parts of the Central Nervous System because here, is where the movement of the world is recorded and processed and this brain is what controls our own movement and where we go and how we go and why we go. So I began more interested in the movement of the brain. All the movement in the brain is based on electro-chemical conduction ( transfer of particles).

A typical nerve cell

 I thought about the idea of the dendrites which connect the nerve cells together, and how they look similar to a web, branching off, all interconnected, which led me to think about the brain as a web, all the parts are connected so I made a spiders web from string and labeled it, mapping out the different parts of the brain.

Moving on to optical illusions.

Whilst dealing with movement in art, I began to focus on Optical Illusions. Op art is comprised of illusion, and often appears to the human eye, to be moving or breathing due to its precise , mathematically based composition. Op art exists to fool the eye. Compositions create a sort of visual tension, in the viewers mind, that gives the work the illusion of movement.
  When I thought of movement, Op art came to mind because it's ability to trick our eyes into thinking there's movement when there isn't. It's a movement that exploited the fallibility of the eye through the use of optical illusions, which are made through the use of perceptive illusion and chromatic tension.

I researched optical illusions in art through the years and found M.C Escher, 'The Father of Impossible Figures', Victor Vaserly, the leader of the Op Art movement, Bridget Riley, Josepf Albers and many more.

M.C Escher

I found the impossible figure very interesting. A 2D figure which is instantly and subconsciously interpreted by the visual system as representing a projection of a 3D object, although it is not actually possible for such an object to exist. M.C Escher explored this idea and experimented with the impossible
I played around with the Penrose triangle and staircase. There is constant movement in these, as your eye is following and following the stairs expecting to come to an end but it keeps circulating. I found a template for the impossible triangle 3D online and printed it out and put it together. At the right angle when photographed it looks like a 3D model of the impossible triangle.

Victor Vaserly

 

Use of Escher's impossible staircase in todays world.

Victor Vaserly experiemnted with the optical illusion in 3D, as seen in the photo to the right.

Rileys paintings really portrayed movement, she found a way of subverting the insistence of the column or line by introducing a form that interlocks, extends and by the way in which it's coloured, recedes and advances as if its breathing.

'Movement in Squares' Bridget Riley

After images are another type of optical illusion, the phenomenom of after images may be closely related to persistence of vision, which allows a rapid series of pictures to portray motion.

Movement&Motion

We began our project 'Movement and Motion' early September. I began my mind maps and I brainstormed through the ideas of patterns of repetition, that give the idea of movement on the page, art in motion, dance, how we move, where we move, what makes and helps us and our bodies move, our internal organs which are constantly moving.

My initial mindmap

  I then focused on movement in art, visually. Movement in art is the path our eyes follow when we look at the plane. How the formal elements combined in a piece can make our eyes move across the piece.
  The use of repetition to create movement occurs when elements which have something in common are repeated regularly or irregularly sometimes creating visual rhythm. Rhythm is the result of repetition which leads the eye from one area to another in direct, periodic or by regular alteration of one or more lines or forms.

  Henry Matisse is a great example of rhythm and movement in art. 'Dance' drags our eyes in a circular motion around the plane by the 5 dancing figures holding hands. Their individual dances form rhythm which implies movement. Also Marcel Ducamph's 'Nude Descending a staircase'.

  I researched the different types of movement in art, under the classic graphic design theory 'The Principle of Design', a way of combining the elements of art to produce the look of action. 

•  Anticipated Movement: Live figures portrayed in unstable body positions cause the idea that motion is imminent. We know that some kind of movement will occur. It heightens the feeling of motion. eg. A swimmer before a dive on the platform, Adrien de Vies 'Juggling Man'.
•  Fuzzy outlines: When figures move past us at a very high speed, we perceive that figure as somewhat blurry, therefore conveying movement. eg. When you set a camera on low exposure on a tripod and capture cars driving very fast or a runner.
• Multiple image: Similarly, showing multiple overlapping images gives us the impression of motion, we can see that person has moved through a series of poses.
• Optical Illusion: Certain optical illusion based in the reception of geometric form will cause our eye to produce movement where none is present.

Another good example of art, where movement is really sensed in the painting is Van Gogh's 'Starry Night'.  Theres visual movement across this plane, the general direction is left to right. The motion moves our eyes across this. The paintings directional lines are sweeping and swirling shapes that are out of shape, giving form to create an actual landscape. the movement of the wind and the clouds is visible because of the repetition and rhythm of the lines.