October 24, 2007
The beauty of false depth:
The image is one of many beautiful street art images from artist and architect Kurt Wenner who uses false perspective to give the images an impression of a 3D structure when viewed from a certain angle.
Wenner uses the same optical manipulation as Julian Beever, whose work we covered previously on Mind Hacks.
It takes advantage of the fact that we use visual features such as relative sizes to infer the depths of objects in the visual field.
When this is manipulated, we can be fooled into thinking that a depth is present in spatial dimensions where it can't possibly exist - like in this case, where it seems as if the paintings represent 'holes' in the floor.
However, because in reality, these are flat images, the effect is lost when viewed from an alternative angle.
There are many more stunning images on Wenner's website.
Link to Kurt Wenner's street art portfolio (thanks Ceny!).
Link to previous post on Julian Beever's optical street art.
