Sculpting the Impossible
In an impossible figure, seemingly real objects—or parts of objects—form geometrical relations that physically cannot happen. The artist M.C. Escher, for instance, depicted reversible staircases and perpetually flowing streams, whereas mathematical physicist Roger Penrose drew his famously impossible triangle and visual scientist Dejan TodoroviTodorovi created an Elusive Arch that won him Third Prize of the 2005 Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest. These effects challenge our hard-earned perception that the world around us follows certain, inviolable rules. They also reveal that our brains construct the feeling of a global percept, “or individual item we perceive,” by sewing together multiple local percepts. As long as the local relation between surfaces and objects follow the rules of nature, our brains don’t seem to mind that the global percept is impossible. Read more …
View the slide show.
