{"id":3017,"date":"2012-11-07T11:46:18","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T16:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/?p=3017"},"modified":"2012-11-07T13:30:09","modified_gmt":"2012-11-07T18:30:09","slug":"impossible-objects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/07\/impossible-objects\/","title":{"rendered":"Impossible Objects"},"content":{"rendered":"

Optical illusions are an interesting cognitive stumble that can be explained through gestalt theory<\/a> – but a simple shorthand is to say that what we are seeing doesn’t match up with what we expect to see, and the illusion is the result of our brains try to “fix” the image.<\/p>\n

There is a subset of optical illusions known as impossible objects, which I have been really drawn to lately. There is something simply delightful about a good paradox. \u00a0This, for example, is a blivet, also known as a poiuyt, “the devil’s pitchfork” or “the devil’s tuning-fork”.<\/p>\n

\"blivet<\/p>\n

An\u00a0impossible object\u00a0(also known as an\u00a0impossible figure\u00a0or an\u00a0undecidable figure) is a type of\u00a0optical illusion\u00a0consisting of a two-dimensional\u00a0figure which is instantly and\u00a0subconsciously\u00a0interpreted by the\u00a0visual system\u00a0as representing a\u00a0projection\u00a0of a three-dimensional object although it is not\u00a0geometrically\u00a0possible for such an object to exist (at least not in the form interpreted by the visual system).
\n– wikipedia<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oscar Reutersv\u00e4rd<\/a>\u00a0was a Swedish artist who invented a whole stack of these kinds of objects. He’s kind of a big deal but has sadly been overshadowed to some degree. \u00a0Check out these triangle forms he drew using a series of cubes:<\/p>\n

\"Reutersv\u00e4rd<\/a><\/p>\n

He was drawing these kinds of forms well before Lionel and Roger Penrose published their paper in the British Journal of Psychology, but these kinds of forms are generally known as a Penrose square and a Penrose triangle, respectively.<\/p>\n

\"Penrose<\/p>\n

These kinds of objects have inspired many artists, most notably the Dutch artist, M.C. Escher. In this piece, Escher employs what is known as Penrose stairs.<\/p>\n

\"M.C.

M.C. Escher – Ascending and Descending<\/p><\/div>\n

…but back to the blivet. It is interesting not only as an impossible object, but also etymologically<\/a>. Its origin is military, and was \u00a0coined in WW2. A blivet was originally defined as “ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag”.<\/p>\n

A rather colourful description, no?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Optical illusions are an interesting cognitive stumble that can be explained through gestalt theory – but a simple shorthand is to say that what we are seeing doesn’t match up with what we expect to see, and the illusion is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[130,265],"tags":[614,460,616,621,615,617,619,620,618,622],"class_list":["post-3017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-history","category-design-theory","tag-blivet","tag-dutch-artist","tag-impossible-object","tag-m-c-escher","tag-optical-illusion","tag-oscar-reutersvard","tag-penrose-square","tag-penrose-steps","tag-penrose-triangle","tag-swedish-artist"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2JDlZ-MF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}