Interesting research

Visual illusion may explain the allure of pointillist paintings



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exhibition catalogues

The Strand has a big collection of museum exhibition catalogues (which I am going to have to make).
I bought a couple random ones that I just liked the design of.
BUT, I was totally nerding out when I found these two catalogues and snatched them up so fast.

The Responsive Eye
from 1965 at The Museum of Modern Art, New York

The Art of the Real: USA 1948-1968
from 1968 at The Museum of Modern Art, New York

These were really important exhibitions.

ESPECIALLY The Responsive Eye!!!
It is basically what introduced the world to Op Art and artists like Frank Stella, Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley and Getulio Alviani, amongst others.

Here are some photos I found online of the catalogue..




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Need to read these. now.

I should be banned from The Strand. Every time I go I spend minimum 4-5 hours there, and then have to take a cab home I bought so many books.

But at least this time these were all in the name of thesis. Or at least that is what I tell myself...

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To Be Looked At: Painting and Sculpture from The Museum of Modern Art



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Design and Art (Documents of Contemporary Art)


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The Metropolitan Museum of Art Illustrated Guide 1972


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Logical Conclusions: 40 Years of Rule-Based Art

(couldn't find any photos of the cover)
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Modern Art: A Critical Introduction


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Modern Painting And Sculpture: 1880 To Present From The Museum Of Modern Art


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Add it to the list of yet another book I want.

This is the amazon description...

Reshaping Museum Space pulls together the views of an international group of museum professionals, architects, designers and academics, highlights the complexity, significance and malleability of museum spac, and provides reflections upon recent developments in museum architecture and exhibition design.

Various chapters concentrate on the process of architectural and spatial reshaping, and the problems of navigating the often contradictory agendas and aspirations of the broad range of professionals and stakeholders involved in any new project.

Contributors review recent new build, expansion and exhibition projects questioning the types of museum space required at the beginning of the twenty-first century and highlighting a range of possibilities for creative museum design.

Essential reading for anyone involved in creating, designing and project managing the development of museum exhibits, and vital reading for students of the discipline.

Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley is a British painter, and one of the forerunners of the Op-Art movement.

"In my earlier paintings, I wanted the space between the picture plane and the spectator to be active. It was in that space, paradoxically, the painting 'took place,'" Bridget Riley summarized with characteristic incisive clarity. "Then, little by little, and, to some extent deliberately, I made it go the other way, opening up an interior space, as it were, so that there was a layered, shallow depth. It is important that the painting can be inhabited, so that the mind's eye, or the eye's mind, can move about it credibly."

(click images to enlarge)


Light Between, 1981-2004

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Untitled (Winged Curve), 1966

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Turquoise, Cerise, Ochre: Closed Discs with Black, 1970

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Encircling Discs with Grey in Grey to Black Sequence, 1970

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Untitled (Rothko Portfolio), 1973

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Displaced Parallels, 1962

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Twisted Curve, Horizontal Colour Movement,1977

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Untitled (Diagonal curve), 1966

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Blaze 1, 1962

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Fall, 1963

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Descending, 1965

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Cataract 3, 1967

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source source source
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It would probably be unconstitutional to not include Bridget Riley in an art + visual perception exhibition. You could talk a long time about all of the perceptual illusions her work activates. Most famously illusory motion, but many many others. While almost all of her work throughout her career has employed optical illusions, or are aesthetically inspired by them, most of her work that will be most relevant to my exhibition is from the early 60s through mid-70s.
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I need to research if there have been any fMRI scans done of people looking at her work...
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Beginnings of the curation process.

Something I need to get going on asap is the curation of what is going to be in my exhibition. I think it will a process in progress for quite a while, but gotta start somewhere. I'll be collecting loads of images to sift through that relate to each other out of a common visual perception concept/theory/phenomena/etc. Basically this will progress eventually to things that will be in the same section together within my proposed exhibition.

This first batch will probably give you a migraine if you look at them too long.

Visual perception relevancy: illusory motion
Art movement: Kinetic and Op-Art

I find it fascinating that some of these were made by "op-artists", while others were made by "vision scientists."
(click images to enlarge)

MacKay Rays
Donald M. MacKay (vision scientist)

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The Christmas Lights illusion
Gianni A. Sarcone (op-artist)

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Bridget Riley (op-artist)
(she gets her own post in a bit)

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Nick Wade (vision scientist)

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The Ouchi Illusion
Hajime Ouchi (op-artist)

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The Ouchi Illusion (variation of previous)
Akiyoshi Kitaoka (vision scientist)

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Hatpin Urchin
Akiyoshi Kitaoka (vision scientist)

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The Rotating-Tilted-Lines Illusion
Simone Gori, Kai Hamburger (vision scientists)

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The Rotating-Tilted-Lines Illusion (variation of previous)
Isia Leviant (op-artist)

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The Enigma Illusion
Isia Leviant (op-artist)

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That's it for the moment, more Bridget Riley and Akiyoshi Kitaoka pieces to come.

]link to some brief info about most of the above pieces.
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presentation 1/29/09

These slides are from my brief thesis proposal presentation for my first thesis class this week.

(I tried to keep them as straight forward as possible because I believe slides are supposed to ENHANCE the presentation, not, BE the presentation.)








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Multimodal Perception

This guy is a little goofy, but explains the concept plain and simple...

Awesome use of visual illusions to prove a point.

Transport for London 'Illusions' commercial.
Agency: M&C Saatchi
Credits: Peter Saville, Graham Fink, Mark Goodwin

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Olly Moss

uses visual illusions in poster design.



link


via the apt
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Sensory Perception

Fun infographic from the Boston Globe!




via neurophilosophy

duck or rabbit?

Pretty much everyone has seen this famous illusion at some point...



Simon Cunningham takes it to a new level making a photographic version. awesome.



As fun as these illusions are though, they tell us important information about the way the brain processes visual information. They show the ability of the brain to maintain multistable perceptions. In this example there are two mutually exclusive images to be seen. The duck and the rabbit. You cannot see both the duck and the rabbit simultaneously, instead your brain shifts back and forth between the two perceptions. Other examples of ambiguous figures like this include (most famously) the Necker Cube and old-lady/young-woman illusion (not sure of proper name).



If you wanted to apply this idea to typography, this is the same phenomena that allows the middle character to be read as both '13' and 'B'...



This technique is sometimes used in logotypes. I need to look for some examples...

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