The existing layout of “404 Apartment” stretches from the front to the back of the building, with windows and balconies on the north and south ends. The common spaces like the living room, dining area, and kitchen are arranged along one side, with the private bedrooms and bathrooms on the other side. There was no way to physically enlarge the apartment, so optical illusions had to suffice.

Color plays an important role in this kind of expansion. The architects painted both the floor and ceiling a medium shade of gray and used cherry blossom pink for the walls on either side. “By visually lowering the ceiling, the aspect ratio of the perceived space is crushed horizontally to 16:9, further emphasizing the lateral expansion of the space,” they explain. “The aspect ratio of 16:9 is used for movie screens and television monitors, and is a familiar frame image for most people.”

Since we don’t view the real world through angle-limiting frames, the architects applied the 16:9 ratio view of the space from just one end of the room. The placement of all elements, including furniture, counters, and doors, is optimized so there’s more to look at horizontally than vertically, with the gray ceiling “crushing” the interiors. Nearly every piece of furniture is built in, with just a narrow table and bench along the center.

The pink wall panels are another visual trick. Some of these panels are actual doors to the bedrooms, bathrooms, cabinets, or closets, while others are just in place to make it seem like there’s more to the space than there really is, kind of like a movie set. The pink shimmers and catches the light, further guiding the eye along that horizontal line.

The team adds that “each of the cherry-red walls lies about its own role. They are not only walls, but also fixtures, wall decorations, and furniture. In short, a single component has multiple roles, but since they are all composed of the same details, finishes, and modules, it is sometimes difficult to tell which is a wall and which is a fixture. If we recognize it as a piece of furniture, we feel that even a mere wall is somehow intimate.”

If the space feels a little bit futuristic or reminiscent of a sci-fi movie, that’s also intentional. “This room, with its slight eeriness and discomfort in the midst of everyday life, is perceived as more expansive than reality,” they say.

Sugurufukuda’s 16:9 aspect ratio follows common advice to use eye-catching, reflective materials in the center of the space and darker contrasting colors above and below to change how narrow or wide the space is perceived. If you have plenty of horizontal space but the ceiling is lower than you’d like, just flip those colors, with the lighter, more reflective shade on the ceiling. It’ll catch the light coming in through the windows and make the whole area brighter.

The post Movie Studio Tricks Visually Expand Tokyo’s Tiny 404 Apartment first appeared on Dornob.

First conceived in South Korea with the 2017 opening of Café Yeonnam-dong 239-20, these tea and coffee houses use optical illusions to trick visitors into seeing flat scenes instead of their normal 3D world. Completely white furniture, walls, and floors are outlined in black comic book-style lines and shadows. Flat curtains and flowers add to the visual deception. Even cups, utensils, and take-out bags look like flat-line drawings.

The concept was apparently inspired by the hit South Korean TV show W, where the characters wrestle between the real world and an alternate universe located inside a webtoon.

The original 2D café became a viral phenomenon thanks to guests posting photos of the mind-bending decor, eliminating advertising costs for the owner and spawning copycats all over in places like Japan, Russia, Singapore, Malaysia, and most recently, Chicago.

Escapism is the name of the game for these dramatic two-dimensional eateries and tea houses. Visitors can imagine themselves in their most beloved manga, or even on set for A-ha’s 1985 “Take on Me” music video. For the Paris-themed 2D Chicago café, which opened its doors in February 2022, the owners cite its raison d’être as a healing diversion from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The post-pandemic dining experience is very different from before,” said Kevin Yu, who co-founded the 2D Restaurant with his wife Vanessa Thanh Vu, adding that “people want a special and unique experience to help them forget the hardship of the past few years. We have one mission, and that’s to bring joy to our community.”

In Russia, the owner actually used the 2D decor scheme to save money. Looking for an eye-catching way to start a business without many resources, he found that the monochromatic design required some paint but minimized the need for more expensive ornamentation.

Each café is independently owned and provides its own unique fare. In Korea, patrons can sample iced oat lattes and tiramisu, while in Japan one might order strawberry shaved ice and a brown sugar assam black tea. The 2D Malaysian version sticks to boba tea and boxed bento lunches, while Singapore’s Café Monochrome provides a full menu of savory dishes including an asparagus and wagyu donburi rice bowl and chili crab fries. The Russian Café Bw keeps it simple with its tried and true coffee, and the Chicago eatery currently offers individually-made Vietnamese phin coffee and colorful mochi doughnuts, though they plan to add Asian-inspired crispy chicken sandwiches soon.

No matter the cuisine, the black-and-white theme of each restaurant provides a theatrical backdrop, allowing the colors of the food and drinks to really pop. The brilliant reds of cherry tomatoes, buttery yellows of breakfast muffins, and perky pinks of pastry glazes really come alive in front of the monochromatic field of view.

This immersive atmosphere of animated imagination is attracting more business owners as well, with companies in London, the Philippines, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates all signing on for 2D-style cafés in the near future.

The post Mind-Blowing 2D Cafés Let Customers Escape to Cartoon Coffee Worlds first appeared on Dornob.

Using special probe lenses and high-resolution cameras, the artist peers into the cavities of a Steinway and Fazioli piano, a 14-karat gold flute, a 240-year-old flute, and even an Australian didgeridoo. But what makes this collection so breathtaking isn’t just the fact that it offers a view into typically unseeable spaces, but that it has been manipulated into brilliant, eye-dazzling art.

“I use a special technique called focus stacking, which has the effect of making these small spaces seem vast,” Brooks, a New Zealand native, says on his website. “This is a simple optical illusion. Our brains are wired to expect close-up macro shots to have a shallow depth of field. By combining dozens, sometimes hundreds, of shots, I ensure that the photo is sharp from front to back. This tricks the mind into believing that the image is of something much larger than reality.”

Indeed, his photos of the insides of a 1780 Lockey Hill cello look “vast and cavernous,” with the instrument’s f-holes casting light and shadows around what appears to be an underground chamber.

Brooks’ picture of the “sublime action” inside a Fazioli grand piano, considered by many to be the finest piano ever made, feels like it could be in the hallway of some glorious manufacturing plant with its gleaming, larger-than-life metal tubes and rivets. He revels in exposing a part of the instrument that is usually “familiar only to technicians.” With such an up-close view, even the smallest markings and imperfections are visible.

In other photos, the interior of a golden flute creates a seemingly infinite corridor of reflective circles, while the hollow of a saxophone bell gives the illusion of hidden moonlit caves.

The project turned up some surprises for Brooks. For instance, when examining the innards of a didgeridoo, he was amazed to find that “these ancient instruments are not carved by hand but are hollowed out by termites. The resulting grooves and channels give each instrument a unique sound.”

One photo even pays homage to the humble dust bunny. Introducing the viewer to “Fritz the dust mouse,” a cluster of microscopic dirt found inside a century-old Hopf violin, Brooks says such creatures exist in most string instruments. “When they are cleaned or restored, many musicians will ask for the dust bunny to be left in place for luck!”

Brooks spent 20 years as a preeminent orchestral cellist, playing principal positions in places like China, Australia, Brazil, and Chile. During his musical career, he took advantage of his world travels to hone his photography skills, getting noticed by National Geographic in 2011. His nature shots and portraits of famous musicians later earned him an affiliation with Panasonic Lumix in 2018.

More of Brook’s “Architecture in Music” photos, as well as his other works, can be found on his online shop and Instagram profile.

The post Photos Reveal the Inner Architecture of Musical Instruments first appeared on Dornob.

That’s what Cavejastudio and Denara have pulled off with the restoration and renovation of a historic apartment in Cesena, Emilia Romagna, Italy. The home measures a modest 1400 square feet (about 130 square meters), but feels almost palatial in scale thanks to visual tricks cooked up by the designers. Take cues from what they’ve done here, and you might be able to do the same with a much tinier space.

The designers wanted to preserve the historical elements of the flat, which is named “Lelefante.” They maintained the original envelope with its cross-shaped wall system and 12-foot ceilings, but in addition to adding a loft (one of our favorite space-saving design tricks), they also brought in a plethora of mirrored surfaces that manipulate the viewer’s sense of where rooms start and end, “an attempt in the wake of the best Baroque tradition to capture the infinite,” as Cavejastudio explains.

The star of the show is a “technical piece of furniture,” a new built-in element that contains a walk-in closet and pantry and provides the basis for the loft. This element is “covered with mirrored panels interspersed with regular joints that dematerialize their presence, making it light and mysterious, but at the same time capable of reflecting light in the space less naturally illuminated by the sun throughout the floor.”

Even in photos, the effect is remarkable. Despite taking some of the living room area away to create the new closet and pantry, the space feels enormous, visually expanded by the mirrored panels. The room’s most beautiful elements like the gorgeous hand-painted doors are thus multiplied. You almost can’t tell which ones are the real doors and which ones are an illusion.

The black frames of the mirrors in the living room are visually repeated in the glass wall separating the bathroom from the bedroom. In the kitchen, frameless cabinetry painted a muted gold achieves a similar minimalist and graphic effect that contrasts beautifully with the soft ornamentation of the original tray ceilings.

“Both in the living room and in the respective bedrooms, it is the furniture itself that becomes the spatial regulating devices; in particular, the position of the kitchen block on the platform emphasizes the entrance-living room axis typical of the noble floors, while the wardrobe for the daughters’ bedroom is modeled on the ceiling beams, becoming a divider of the intimate space,” the designers say.

“The chrome plating of the furnishings follows a palette derived from the colors of the existing frescoes, in order to establish a dialogue with them; [this] relationship is taken from the spotlight lighting system which, by illuminating from the bottom upwards, emphasizes and enhances its presence.”

The post Mirrors and Spatial Illusions Make a Historic Italian Apartment Look Bigger Than It Really Is first appeared on Dornob.

As Ferraro explains on his website, the optical phenomenon of bright shapes that are projected when illuminating a transparent object is called “caustics.” The photons that don’t pass directly through the object form the object’s shadow, while the others can be bent in different directions by slight variations in the surface flatness of an object. Sometimes these photons overlap, making certain areas brighter. To mimic this effect in order to produce a particular image, Ferraro distributed just the right amount of concavity and convexity onto the surface of acrylic.

“To gain some intuition for how it is done, consider a traditional convex lens. This lens forms the simplest possible caustic. If all the incoming light is from a single, very distant light source like the Sun, this lens focuses all of its incoming light into a single point. The caustic image from this lens is dark everywhere with one very bright spot in the center.”

Being the aerospace engineer and software engineer that he is, Ferraro goes into a lot more detail to lay out exactly how this happens using mathematical equations. If you aren’t a math genius, it probably sounds like gibberish, but suffice to say it’s all about careful control of incoming light using the thickness of the acrylic slab. He created a “height map” of an image of his cat to define the gradients of darkness and light. You can think of the cells of the lens as pixels in an image, whereby enlarging or contracting them bends the light in different ways. The height map forms the back surface of the Magic Window, while the front surface is flat.

Once he had his image mapped out, Ferraro translated it to a physical object using Fusion360 computer software, which sets up a roughing tool path for a CNC router or mill. The machine carves the surface finish, which is then wet-sanded and polished so all the fine details can literally shine. The result is a startlingly three-dimensional hologram that changes shape according to the angle from which you hold it in front of a light source. Can’t you already imagine large-scale Magic Windows installed in buildings, creating all kinds of incredible holograms all around us? No doubt, somebody is going to figure out how to turn this code into a program that makes it easy for designers to do just that.

If you’re interested in reading the full scientific explanation of how all of this light-bending works, Godspeed. It involves vectors, Snell’s Law, velocity potential ,and Poisson’s Equation. If you know what any of that means, check it out on Ferraro’s website. And if you’re interested in making a Magic Window yourself, Ferraro has shared his code under the MIT license, meaning you can use it for anything you want, including hobbyist, educational, and business uses. He only asks that if you use it to make something, you share the results with him.

The post Invisible Images Hidden in Windows Reveal Themselves When the Sun Shines first appeared on Dornob.

Titled “Heisenberg Objects,” the collection features six objects – two shoes, a camera, a black box, a clock, and a tape recorder – that the Swiss artist cut apart and pieced back together on acrylic rods for absolutely explosive results.

Oefner based this series on Werner Heisenberg’s quantum physics uncertainty principle, which states that the momentum and position of a particle cannot both be precisely determined at the same time. “You can either determine one parameter and ignore the other or vice versa, but you can never know everything at once,” the artist says on his website, adding that “as an observer you’re never able to observe the object as a whole and its inner workings simultaneously. The more accurately we see one view, the less clearly we see the other.”

Each object in the series is mostly recognizable from far away, but as the viewer moves closer, the optics become distorted, changing the perspective. “Your interaction with the sculpture ultimately determines its appearance,” adds Oefner in an interview with Designboom.

To create his sculptures, the artist had to first resin-cast the objects in vacuum and pressure chambers, after which they were painstakingly sliced and polished before being precisely placed into their final shapes. The artist chose these specific objects to represent memory, things that record time, sound, or events.

How do shoes fit into that theme? To Oefner, “sneakers are like recording machines that keep track of our motion. The shoes used are 1985 Nike Cortez. I often wonder about all the different places around the world they were walked to. So in a way, the series is not only about the uncertainty principle but also about the fragmentation of memory.”

The artist also made a cool discovery in the course of deconstructing a Leica M6 camera, explaining that “there was a note from the engineer written on the inside of one of the inner metal plates. It was in German, something about the precision of the shutter mechanism. I said to myself: ‘he or she probably never expected that this note ever would see daylight again. But here it is. 30 years after the camera was assembled.’”

He adds that: “I love the thought that I am the first one, in some cases after 40 or 50 years, to look at the inside of these objects…it’s a bit like modern archeology.”

Oefner has made quite the name for himself through his fragmentation work, previously focusing on objects like “exploded” cars and exposed innards of coffee pots. When asked why he has such a fascination with dissection, he mused: “It ultimately has to do with trying to understand the world around me. I remember when I was a little boy, together with my brother, we used dad’s hydraulic press to crush our toy cars, just to see how they come apart. I guess that fascination has stayed with me ever since, only that I disintegrate things in a more sophisticated way these days.”

More of views of his “Heisenberg Objects” are available on his Instagram page @fabianoefner.

The post Fabian Oefner Takes on Quantum Physics With His Chopped-Up Sculptures first appeared on Dornob.

Venezuelan artist Claudia Bueno spent eight months hand-drawing vines, seashells, coral, and other plant and animal life onto 60 glass panels, all of which were then meticulously superimposed on top of each other. As lights shine through the glass from different angles, they illuminate the various layers of drawings, creating an illusion of movement. The entire process, from idea to installation, took three years to complete.

“The process required sharp focus and lots of patience, and it was very rewarding to see the shapes grow as we built up the layers,” Bueno told DeMilked. “This piece comes to life and gains movement with a custom designed system of lights and sound which also involved long collaborations with two artists specialized in these areas. It is magical to see it all come together now in Meow Wolf Vegas and realize that everything we planned for is working beautifully.”

Close-up shots of the panels in progress give us an idea of just how complex these layered drawings really are. Each individual flower, leaf, sea anemone, and coral branch is repeated in dozens of layers to produce an illusion of three-dimensionality. The effect is apparent even without the addition of the lighting system, but when it all comes together, it’s truly spectacular.

Bueno has a background in painting, set design, and animation, all skills that came in handy as the “Pulse” exhibit came to life. She spent six years engineering systems that make her art appear to move of its own volition using motors, tracks, light systems, and wind.

The most amazing thing about this installation is the fact that it isn’t digital. High-tech immersive installations like those created by digital art collective teamLab are undeniably incredible, but they’re made using a host of sensors, computers, and projectors. Bueno’s creation is almost entirely analog, by comparison, but achieves a similar effect, albeit on a smaller scale. It’s interesting to see how very different methods can be used to produce similarly breathtaking visuals.

“Pulse” will be a permanent installation in Meow Wolf’s second permanent exhibition space, Omega Mart. Established in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2008, Meow Wolf “creates immersive and interactive experiences that transport audiences of all ages into fantastic realms of story and exploration,” which includes installations like Bueno’s, video and music production, and much, much more.

Here’s a bit more information about Claudia Bueno, via her website:

“Through her own intricate process of immersive suggestion, Claudia creates large scale multi-sensory light installations that communicate a profound sense of wonderment and awe. Designed to guide spectators on a contemplative journey, these hypnotic worlds are populated by signatures of life from micro to macro, existing in communion and living as one interconnected cosmic web. Fluidly pulsating colors and ever-evolving sounds make the creations come all the more alive.”

“Claudia has been inviting adventure and collecting cultural experiences that enrich her life and inspire her creative process since leaving Caracas at the age of 20. Strongly committed to inner healing and spiritual growth, Claudia fills her art with a quality of mystical curiosity that mirrors her personal fascination with energy, consciousness, and nature — ultimately transforming her art into a celebration of life and creation.”

The post Pulsating Painted Glass Panels Create an Immersive Exhibit of Light and Sound first appeared on Dornob.

2020 was a mystifying year full of the unexpected and unexplained. Lucky for us all, the Neural Correlate Society topped off the strange last 12 months in a perfect way, presenting the brain-bending winners of its “Illusion of the Year” contest. Below are the top three, but be warned! The videos are a must-see to fully comprehend the trippy-ness of these deceptions. The top invention will especially have your mind doing backflips (as if it hasn’t already been twisted in enough knots by the events of 2020).

3D Schröder Staircase

This illusion by mathematical engineer Kokichi Sugihara takes the classic 2D version to another psychedelic level. The original, created in 1858 by German scientist Heinrich G. F. Schröder, is an illustration of a staircase that can simultaneously be interpreted as stairs coming down from the ceiling and going up from the ground. The image is exactly the same when turned 180 degrees.

For some it is impossible to see the opposite view until flipping the image upside down, when it becomes visible for a split second before the mind undergoes the “Gestalt Shift,” a psychological phenomenon where the brain restores its newest intake to earlier perceptions.

Schröder’s staircase was the inspiration for much of Dutch artist M.C. Escher’s gravity-defying work in the twentieth century, and is now the impetus for Sugihara’s multi-dimensional wonder.

Described by some as a “mischievous mathematician,” Sugihara has taken a completely flat plane, added walls on two sides, put it on equal-length stilts, and given us a picture that our brains interpret as a staircase. That is, we see the dark tones and understand them as shadows, while converging lines give us a sense of distance. Even though what we’re actually seeing is all on a horizontal level, our minds make assumptions about familiar patterns, turning the angles and shades into a staircase automatically.

Part of the mirage is allowing that “staircase” to somersault on its axis. When a small orange cone is placed on the “top” step, it ends up on the “bottom” stair after being spun 180 degrees, even though in reality there is no up or down.

Sugihara, a Meiji University engineer, also took home first prize in the NCS’ contest in 2010, 2013, and 2018, and has been a top 10 finalist in all the years in between. About his latest project, he explains: “this object is an example of my experimental material to investigate the behavior of the brains, which are apt to misperceive 2D pictures as 3D objects when they are embedded in real 3D structures.” Because of the support columns and walls he attached, “we perceive new ambiguity, which is different from that of the original Schröder Staircase.”

Detailed plans for recreating this illusion are included on Sugihara’s website.

The Real Thing??

UK native Matthew Pritchard constructed the runner-up illusion this year, itself a Coca-Cola can sitting in front of a mirror. Only thing is, the mirror is fake (just a frame) and there’s a hole cut out in the wall behind the frame, with a strategically-placed second Coke can providing our cerebrum with the visual cues to reconstruct a reflection. In the video, the wall eventually collapses, revealing the hoax.

“Careful examination will reveal discrepancies in the scene,” Pritchard writes. “But what causes the vision system to make the initial mirror assumption is not yet fully understood.”

Impossible Grid Typography

Using 2.5D computer-generated images, Daniël Maarleveld of the Netherlands came in third place for his letters and numbers made of curving grids. More specifically, the shapes move in such a way that the human eye is unable to decipher which direction they are turning in, making them viewable from an above and below perspective at the same time.

The post These 2020 “Illusion of the Year” Winners Will Blow Your Mind first appeared on Dornob.

That’s precisely what visitors are faced with at KAMU Kanazawa contemporary art museum in Kanazawa City, Japan. “Infinite Staircase” is part of a group exhibition called “The Power of Things,” and it’s a new variation on a familiar theme from artist Leandro Erlich, a master of surreal sculptures and optical illusions. The installation aims to challenge viewers’ perceptions of space and encourage them to question their grip on reality.

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Looking at it in photographs, it’s hard to tell exactly how it works, except that it’s actually installed horizontally into a wall rather than vertically into an opening between multiple floors. It’s also unclear exactly how many layers of the installation are real versus illusion. Pictured from above, visitors navigating the sculpture seem to be floating sideways (or dangling dangerously) above an endless void.

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A behind-the-scenes photo posted on Instagram by KAMU provides a little more clarity. As the installation is assembled, multiple layers of materials and mirrors distort the reality of the scene. Another photo shows what the installation looks like when viewed from the side. It’s all a matter of perspective.

A previous work by Erlich, simply titled “Staircase,” takes a similar approach to mind-bending imagery. First created in 2005, the sculpture was inspired by a trip to a department store in Tokyo. “The staircase is symbolically a meeting place to me,” he told Japan Times in 2014. “But I wondered what would happen if such a staircase lost its function.”

For some people, gazing into the infinite staircase and seeing the steps as walls might result in a bit of vertigo. For others, it might feel frustrating, because it actually doesn’t go anywhere at all. Erlich, raised by architects in Buenos Aires during a military dictatorship, says that growing up in an environment when “we could not see a thing freely as it was” influenced his views about what constitutes reality.

“Swimming pools, staircases, and elevators are ordinary places that we never question, as we think we know about them already,” he says. “But is that true? Do we really know them? When we were children, the world was full of wonder and surprise, even in the everyday life. But as we grow older, we are less surprised by things around us because they become too familiar. I resist having a fixed view of things. There are many other ways to see reality.”

One of Erlich’s most popular works is “The Swimming Pool” (2004), also known as “Leandro’s Pool.” Permanently installed in the courtyard at KAMU and and forming an essential part of its architectural design by SANAA, it remains the museum’s single biggest attraction. A shallow layer of water shimmers on a reinforced glass sheet, underneath which sits one of the museum’s interior spaces. Subsequently, visitors milling around inside look like they’re underwater.

The post Surreal “Infinity Staircase” Installation Seems to Go On Forever first appeared on Dornob.

Born in Lima, Peru in 1950, Paredes draws from a deep cultural connection to nature and a fascination with the process of discovery. Working solely in the realm of self portraiture, Paredes makes herself virtually invisible, treating her own image like that of a rare creature to be hunted in the jungle. This is especially apparent when you consider the evolution of her work. In the early 2000s, Paredes completed a series in which she painted herself to look like some of nature’s strangest animals, like armadillos, snakes, and skunks, as well as mythological creatures like gargoyles.

The works were autobiographical, she says; she felt a kinship with “loner” animals and those seen as strange. The works also reflected her desire to fly. Her aim was to erase signs of gender altogether and blur the boundaries between humans and animals. As time went on, more manmade elements began to appear, and her more recent works featuring wallpaper illustrate how she felt as an outsider after moving to the United States. The “nature” is forced and two-dimensional, no longer her native environment, while the three-dimensional artist comes close but never fully succeeds at blending in.

“These works talk about migration and re-location and longing… My life now is pretty nomadic, so behind each image there is a story about a place I have been attached to but had to leave, or a new place where I am living now … how we have to come to terms with such circumstances,” she says in a January 2020 interview with Australian magazine Talking Pictures. “The series started with a static figure. Later the figure gets to ‘participate’ in the action by moving and imitating the background. Then, in the ‘Warriors’ series, the character interprets, grabs, destroys, and appropriates the wallpaper for her own needs and purposes.”

There’s no Photoshop or other digital manipulation happening in these photographs. Paredes plans each composition down to the smallest detail. From afar, the illusion is near-perfect, but if you zoomed in far enough, you’d see the brushstrokes, which the artist likes to leave visible. They add a small but perceptible layer of messiness, alongside Paredes’ own bodily “imperfections” like wrinkles, hair, and scars.

The artist’s theater background comes into play, as well. What we see is the final image, the work that’s presented to the world. But for Paredes, each photograph is just a tiny sliver of what actually took place. She sees each one as a private performance that’s only for her to experience and mull over. “I get pretty much caught up in the performance itself, and sometimes it stays within me for a long time,” she says.

The post Cecilia Paredes Camouflages Herself Within Ornate Patterned Backdrops first appeared on Dornob.

It may look like there’s a real tree growing within this art studio, but take the time to examine the image a little closer. Notice how the branches at the far right side actually follow the contours of the wall? See the edges of the paper upon which the leaves are printed peeling away from the ceiling? The illusion of the tree’s presence is so complete, it’s almost hard to believe someone didn’t build a room around it — but it’s all (literally) a matter of perspective. If you were to slide a few steps to the left or right within this physical space, the illusion would break as its architectural features began to fragment the imagery.

Pulling off these optical illusions isn’t a matter of using Photoshop or otherwise manipulating the final image. It all comes down to a surprisingly simple process of printing an enormous photograph out on many sheets of paper and then assembling them to fit the space. But it does take painstaking precision for Los Angeles-based artist  to pull off the hyperrealistic qualities of these incredible installations.

Hundreds of printed images plastered across the walls, ceilings, and floors, of several rooms allow us to physically enter the photographs, something Engman finds to be a bit of a paradox within his own work. He believes photography derives its power precisely from the fact that it can’t be entered, explaining that he tries to be mindful of this fact even as he exploits it when creating his 3D scenes.

Much of Engman’s documented work in this series has been rendered as “photographs within photographs,” in which he takes an original photo, applies it to a room, and then photographs the finished product before it’s disassembled. Recently, he extended this concept to a physical space that viewers could actually enter. “Containment for the Fotofocus in Cincinnati” takes his “Containment” piece and translates it to a purpose-built temporary structure within an art gallery, allowing for physical immersion in the art. But it’s in the tension between the safety of the built environment the adventurous, uncontrollable spirit of nature that these pieces find their greatest power.

Engman adds: “In the piece titled Prospect, the combination of the ocean with the studio is a marriage of prospect and refuge and the metaphoric associations of the two. In the case of prospect these associations are adventure, excitement, and a feeling of freedom. For refuge they are safety, comfort, and a looking inwards. Prospect and refuge are not mutually exclusive in a binary sense, but they are at times in conflict with each other, and this conflict, to my thinking, is central to much of what we want and work for.”

“There is a correspondence, for me, between the prospect and refuge conflict and the tension between illusion and materiality that I see as intrinsic to the medium of photography. The latter has long been a subject of my work. By “illusion” I am referring broadly to the power we invest in photographs to tell us the truth about the world, to be a record of it, to “capture moments,” as it is said. By materiality I am referring to the stuff of photographic objects, their actual truths: ink, paper, frame, and physical context.”

“The tension between illusion and material is exhibited in these works most notably by the different ways in which paper in used to construct images. In the piece titled Refuge, for example, the image of the wooded scene was printed onto over 150 pieces of paper and then physically cut and affixed to walls and objects within an architectural space. The room itself was then photographed and the resulting image printed onto a single sheet of photo paper. In the case of the former, the physical properties of paper are acknowledged. In the case of the latter (and this applies to the majority of photographs), everything about the presentation is designed to deny that the paper exists at all. What matters and is emphasized is the illusion, or, if you like, the lie.”

The post Chris Engman’s Optical Illusions Allow You to Step Inside Photographs first appeared on Dornob.

Do you ever wonder how illusions like this work? Our brains perceive elements of what we view as either figures (the objects of focus) or ground (the rest of the space). Think of the classic example of the image that can either be two faces looking at each other or a vase (the negative space in between them). Visual cues like perspective, highlights, and shadows help our brains decide which is which, but sometimes we get it wrong — like in the case of the infamous blue and black dress (or was it white and gold?).

Designers and artists like Johnston can use those cues to make it look like flat, two-dimensional surfaces have 3D objects popping out of them. Sure, our rational brains know that these typographic murals aren’t really tumbling down the wall, but Ben’s mastery of the form results in near-perfect illusions that never fail to intrigue.

The “Heart of Gold” mural, for instance, has a delightful springiness to it that conveys excitement and enthusiasm. Johnston says it was created for a non-profit organization in Ontario around the idea that art can “inspire, transform, and help build a better community.” The town where the mural is located was once known for its nickel mining, so in homage, he came up with the slogan “City of Nickel, Heart of Gold.”

“I’ve always done art and painting throughout my school career when I was younger,” Johnston tells Typeroom. “After school I went traveling for a few years before deciding to study Product Design in Cape Town, South Africa. All the while studying I started playing around with graphic design and illustration. I dropped out of my course after a year and a half and decided to pursue graphic design. From there I got a job in a small agency and taught myself what I needed to know. After a few years of freelancing and working in ad agencies, I started working with lettering and type.”

The artist got his start with large-scale murals when a friend asked him to accent the entranceway of a new building. That was all it took for him to fall in love with the medium, and he’s been painting urban surfaces ever since, dividing his time between outdoor work and studio work for clients. On top of that, he also creates custom works for advertising, installations, and events, as well as his own fine art pieces shared in exhibitions.

“Raised in South Africa and currently splitting his time between Canada and the US, Ben has also been involved in various conferences and mural festivals around the world. As a multi-disciplinary artist and designer winning numerous awards for projects with Fortune 500 companies to working with a variety of NGOs, his main focus is on finding unique approaches to each opportunity, drawing on inspirations from his encounters throughout his travels.”

The post Ben Johnston’s Typographic Illusion Art Seems to Pop Off the Walls first appeared on Dornob.

A new exhibition called Urban Miniatures takes the kind of street art you’ll commonly find in places like London, New York City, Lisbon, and São Paulo and literally shrinks it down. The curators took a Hornby train set and a collection of tiny (like, really tiny, not shed-tiny) houses, and asked a lineup of 40 well-known international graffiti, urban, and contemporary artists to customize each piece, producing “a subversive model city.”

Needless to say, this isn’t your average miniature Christmas village or museum diorama. Each diminutive work bears the tell-tale stamps of the artist who customized it, and if you’re familiar with street art, you’ll recognize some right away. There’s an optical illusion mural from Peeta, black-and-white wheat pasting by DONK, and abstract geometry by Mark McClure.

There’s something really fun about zooming in to examine a high-rise or bodega that can fit in the palm of your hand and taking in all of the practically microscopic details, like graffiti tags, trash, the weathered edges of an old sign, and the texture of the tiniest cobblestone wall. The train cars are especially cool, including an NCB freight car customized by TinyScenic to include a swimming pool, floats, lounge chair, and palm tree. Plus, the train set actually runs along its tracks at the show.

The full roster of artists also includes Adam Bridgland, Ange Bell, Art+Believe, Ben Allen, Ben Frost, Candice Tripp, Carl Cashman, Chum101, Cosmo Sarson, Dave Buonaguuidi, David Bray Frea Buckler, Jerome White, Jo Peel, Maxim, Katrina Russell-Adams, Louis O’Haara, Louis Masai, Pure Evil, Regman, SheOne, Shuby, Static, Tim Fowler, Tinsel Edwards, Victoria Homewood, Will Barras, Zevs, and many, many others.

You can see the Urban Miniatures show in person now through December 22nd, 2019 as part of the Artists Open Houses Christmas Festival in Brighton, England, or check out featured works on Instagram. To support individual participating artists, check out the PaxtonGlew online store, which includes limited edition prints, models, and more.

PaxtonGlew consists of duo Emily Paxton, a photographer, educator, and creative, and Pam Glew, an international textile artist. This show marks their curatorial debut.

The duo’s official website notes: “Emily and Pam met in 2004 in Brighton, where they worked as Photography and Art technicians. Since then they have remained good friends, worked as educators, started families, and continued their creative careers. Emily is a freelance photographer and lecturer who has curated pop-up exhibitions and taught numerous people their way around a camera. Pam has exhibited internationally as a textile artist and has been commissioned by brands including Armani, Ralph Lauren, and Microsoft.”

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Apparitions are usually pretty tough to explain to those around you, but in the case of the Ghost Ship, it’s something everyone looking at Philadelphia’s Ben Franklin Bridge can witness. The temporary art installation is stationed there for public viewing from now until the first week in November.

Aligning perfectly with the month associated with all things ghastly, the Ghost Ship sits in the river between Race Street Pier and Pier 12 and is visible every Wednesday through Sunday night. The illusion is created with the help of mist fountains anchored beneath the surface of the water. The hazy sails are brought to life using lighting projected from a nearby platform.

Designers of the art installation intentionally set it up so that the ship’s port side would be visible from Race Street Pier, while its bow can be seen from the nearby Columbus Boulevard. For added folly, a pop-up Ghost Ship beer garden sits on the waterfront on evenings when the ship appears.

It’s not a hallucination caused by beer goggles, though. Instead, a lot of planning and preparation went into bringing the piece to the river. It’s the first result of the Delaware River Waterfront Corp.’s new Waterfront Arts Program, which aims to explore the history and diversity of the area through works of art. With this in mind, organizers opened up a call for exhibitions that represented that goal.

“We’ve always had cultural events like fireworks displays at the waterfront,” says DRWC President Joe Forkin. “So we started to think about how art complements the waterfront and how it can bring new audiences here.” The council debated, scrutinized, and brainstormed ideas until they agreed to focus on past and present communities affected by the Delaware River as a theme for the works.

The exhibition call was answered by Ryan Strand Greenberg, a public art curator and photographer from the area. Having visited an inspirational light display in Amsterdam with a similar theme, Greenberg reached out to Biangle Studio (based in Estonia), who agreed to modify their original work to represent the history of migration in the area during the 18th century — when the river was used to carry products like cocoa beans and crude oil, as well as both free and enslaved people.

“This particular time period was really important to the city’s development,” Greenberg explains. “It contributed to the social fabric of Philadelphia.”

The team studied ships from the target era until they decided on the final model. They then hired local engineering firm Pennoni to obtain permits, anchor the lighting, install a submersible power cable in the river itself, and mount lights on nearby properties.

“It was a pretty neat project for us, because this is the kind of project that our guys don’t get to work on every day,” says David DeLizza, President and CEO of Pennoni.

The installation will be visible from 7 to 10 PM on all the aforementioned evenings, and onlookers can even enjoy a self-guided tour via smartphone on SoundCloud, as accessed through the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation’s official website.

The post New “Ghost Ship” Installation Haunts Philadelphia’s Ben Franklin Bridge first appeared on Dornob.

The Bed & Breakfast Santulan is one such project, set in the desert of Baja California, Mexico. Completed in 2019 and designed by architecture firm Santos Bolívar, this scattering of structures combines vernacular and modern aesthetics and materials into a seamless whole that feels fully at home in its surroundings. Made of rammed earth bricks, the upper parts of each volume have a more traditional appearance, and when viewed from afar, they seem to be floating above the sand and cacti below.

But each of these buildings is actually set upon a faceted, mirrored modern plinth, which themselves reflect various scenes around the property. Depending on the angle of the facet, that might be the red earth, the blue sky, or the faint gray mountains. Floating concrete staircases connect the buildings to the ground, and a long walkway leads into a striking subterranean geodesic dome conceived as a place for meditation.

“Santulan” means “balance” in Hindi, explains lead architect José Antonio de los Santos Bolívar, and that word is the guiding concept used for the development of the entire complex. The architect wanted the hotel to be both a tourist destination and an example of a culture of respect and balance with the ecosystem, both from visitors and from the architecture itself.

“We wanted to break with the architectural typology of a hotel that develops its services within a same volumetric body. [A]fter incessantly analyzing the site and its geographical and natural qualities, we made the decision to project its architectural program in different buildings interconnected by means of walkways that interact directly with nature and are architects of an invitation to live different spiritual and architectural experiences. [We also attempted] to make these walkers the result of the analysis of the traces of the OM mantra symbol, a part of an integral design that seeks the balance between architecture, nature, mind, and spirit.”

In addition to using blocks of compacted earth as a main building material, the hotel includes other ecologically sensitive features like greywater recycling wetlands, a fog catcher tower to capture water from the air, low-maintenance green roofs planted with native grasses, an organic orchard, low-water landscaping, and a natural cross-ventilation system. All of these considerations add to the peaceful and low-impact atmosphere of the hotel, which is augmented by the unusual nature of its reflective architecture.

Bed & Breakfast Santulan is the architect’s second project in Baja California’s Valle de Guadalupe. The first was the Media Perra Brewery, which uses similar materials alongside strategically folded metal facades that help shade the interiors from the harsh desert sun. The adobe blocks seen in this 2014 project are a trademark of the native Kumiai people who live nearby. Both projects achieve a sense of harmony with the landscape and traditions of the area, as well as the era in which they’re being built.

The post Optical Illusion Bed & Breakfast Appears to Float Above the Desert Landscape first appeared on Dornob.

The Baltimore-based duo has been working together since they met at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2001. Expressing emotion through a dazzling array of patterns in vivid hues, Jessie and Katey have developed a signature style that’s undeniably eye-catching, whether the work is a small screen print framed on a wall or a monumental mural stretching several city blocks in length. Their work has appeared in locations throughout their home city, all over the eastern coast of the United States, in Seattle at the Starbucks headquarters, and even as far afield as Hawaii.

One of their boldest pieces is “Summer Kaleidoscope,” a 400-foot-long floor mural and pop-up park developed in collaboration with Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program. Transforming a local park known as The Oval, the piece features 3D elements and painted mazes, encouraging visitors to interact with it at every step of the way.

The duo also designed a gorgeous staircase for the city of Knoxville, Tennessee in the summer of 2017 that produces an optical illusion when you stand at its base, with shapes seeming to protrude out from the steps. That design was based on traditional Appalachian weavings.

In Seattle, a snake-like mural winds its way along the floor at the base of the iconic Space Needle. Measuring an incredible 350 feet long, “Liquid Sunshine” was created through artSEA, a local mural program, in summer 2016.

A 2017 project called “Allumination:Boston” sees the duo not only painting all four sides of a small house, but also the floor and roof, adding details like recycled tin cans, plastic bags, and bottle caps.

“We often describe our work as being like music,” Jessie told Flood Magazine in a piece about their design for the 2018 Lollapalooza festival poster. “It’s abstract and it’s fluid. It’s sort of a collaboration of different shapes, like how different sounds collaborate in music. And the fact that we collaborate with each other is pretty cool. We’re a band, basically.”

In their bio, Jessie and Katey speak of taking inspiration from textiles and board games as well, saying their work “explores themes of movement and symmetry, inspired by bold color combinations, patterns in nature, and woven textiles.”

“Over the past two years the team has been exploring traditional batik, hand dyeing, and appliqué methods in their studio, where they have created several large-scale framed paintings. These painting have been exhibited in Brooklyn, Miami, Baltimore and Russia. They have been awarded two PNC Transformative Grants to bring their bold geometric paintings to Baltimore community. Their unique partnerships with the community earned the team residencies with the The Albright Knox Museum in Buffalo, NY, The Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, ME, and the John Micheal Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, WI.”

Want more murals? Be sure to keep up with Jessie and Katey’s projects on Instagram.

The post Playful Patterns: Neon Op Art Murals Enliven Urban Spaces first appeared on Dornob.