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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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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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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Post thoughts + Museum Marathon

I was thinking again about what I said earlier about expanding this blog to include design inspiration. But as I have also said before I already have a blog for design inspiration, and so it seems stupid to have to categorize which blog the inspiration is relevant to. So the plan at the moment will be to keep this a research blog, and keep the inspiration on the other blog. If I post something on the other blog that is relevant to my thesis project then I will post a link to it here. Or maybe even just repost it.
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So while on the topic of relevant inspiration....

I really like going to museums, and I had some free time the last few days, so lets just say I went to more than a few museums. And I don't just rush through to say I went, I'm usually the straggler that has to get kicked out because the museum closed 25 minutes ago.

I will be posting all of the inspiration on my other blog as I just said, but below is and outline of what is to come.

All of these will become updated links as I work on posting everything...

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Pt 1: Tate Britian: Turner Prize 08

Pt 2: Tate Britian: Francis Bacon

Pt 3: Tate Britian: Misc

Pt 4: Garden History Museum

Pt 5: Haribo Heaven (I am telling you it was extremely inspirational)

Pt 6: Tate Modern: Misc (this was at least my 5th trip there)

Pt 7: Science Museum: Japan Car

Pt 8: Science Museum: Birth of Hi-tech Britain

Pt 9: Science Museum: Listening Post

Pt 10: Science Museum: Plasticity

Pt 11: V&A: Fashion V Sport

Pt 12: V&A: Cold War Modern: Design 1945-7

Pt 13: V&A: Misc

Pt 14: Natural History Museum: Misc

Pt 15: Wellcome Collection: War + Medicine

Pt 16: Wellcome Collection: The Watch Man

Pt 17: Wellcome Collection: Medicine Man

Pt 18: Wellcome Collection: Medicine Now

Pt 19: Barbican: Curve Art Installation

Pt 20: Barbican: On the Subject of War

Pt 21: Barbican: Robert Capa and Gerda Taro

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So much exhibition design inspiration it's not even funny.
I also have so many out of control sketches of the design and layouts of all of these exhibits it's ridiculous.

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Also see you here...

Institute of Philosphy, School of Advanced Study: London Aesthetics Forum

4 Dec 2008
Toward a Non-Minimalist Conception of Aesthetic Experience
Jerrold Levinson

4pm-6pm in NG16, North Block, Senate House, WC1, London
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Surrealism.

This past week in my class, Dreams, Desire & the Unconscious, we studied the interconnections between surrealist art and psychoanalytic theory. Our primary subjects of discussion were a film written by Salvador Dalí entitled, Un chien andalou, and Matthew Barney's Cremaster 3: The Order. Below is the full Dalí film in 2 parts and an excerpt from Barney's film.
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Un chien andalou

Director: Luis Buñuel
Writers: Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel





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Cremaster 3: The Order

Director: Matthew Barney
Writer: Matthew Barney


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