Investigate the principles of colour, light and perspective to discover how optical illusions are created in art. From Renaissance painting to video game environments, artists have been employing visual strategies such, linear perspective (lines converging to a point on the horizon), anamorphosis (distorted images) and colour anaglyphs (colour coded stereoscopic images) to trick our eye into seeing a wide range of 3D effects on a flat plane.
Artists/designers Owen Brierley, Lee Nielsen and Tom Rhodes play with these concepts alone and in tandem to create a backdrop of discovery where nothing is as it appears. Roaming through the exhibition, illusions appear and disappear like magic highlighting the active status of the viewer as co-creators of their environment. It is only when you are situated at the correct vantage point and distance that the illusion can be successfully completed, providing valuable insight into how our brains process stimulus in our visual field and inform our everyday experiences.
Your turn! Explore Presto Lumo through coloured lenses, stand at numerous vantage points and solve puzzles; be surprized by what you encounter. Combine your discoveries to complete a series of illusions all your own!
The BMO World of Creativity is an interactive, hands-on space where children and their grown-ups can explore their creativity. BMO World of Creativity exhibitions and themes change from year-to-year.
