Intention

The illusion created by this street art really captivates me. Sometimes it's because it incites your imagination to a whole world below, and other times because I legitimately cannot tell which aspects are real or drawn. I'm motivated to see the technique behind the work, and how the illusion of depth can make the eye perceive a 3D image from a 2D work of art. The big ideas behind the project are to understand the effects of the relative size, position, and overlap of objects in real life and in 2D art, and how they represent depth. I hope to be able to see the difference between the real and illusory parts of the street art using my knowledge of the illusion.

Examples in the world

It's difficult to find examples in the world without them overlapping with the examples in art, in this case, photography. Therefore, I chose three images with no noticeable photoshopping or effects related to depth. 

The picture above shows a path in which the bottom of the path is closest, and the path leading behind the trees is farthest away. This is a good example of how our vision takes in information of overlapping to represent depth. Since the trees overlap the path in the sunlight, we can perceive that that portion of the pathway is farther away, at least from the trees. The path towards the bottom of the image seems to be not blocked from the trees, indicating that it is in front of the trees. By transitive property, the shaded path must be closer than the sunlit path.

In the photo above, the aspects of depth are more dramatic for sake of the photo. However, this is just a hyperbolic example of another cue of perception. The lines of the brick seem to lead in to a single point. In perceiving this street without the camera, we would perceive the buildings leading in to show that this pathway is long and straight. In addition, the people at the top of the image would be perceived to be farther away because they are smaller. Again the buildings farther away are blocked from the buildings that are closer, telling us that the blocked buildings are farther away. 

The above picture is a conglomeration of the aforementioned visual aids. Our eyes take in the overlapping walls, the parallel lines seeming to trail off towards each other to where they would eventually intersect. This information is perceived as depth, and therefore we can comprehend that the archways are probably the same size, and that the archway inside all other archways is just in fact farther away.

Examples in Media/Art

I chose to focus on the works of Julian Beever, a street artist from Cheltenham, England. His works utilize the illusion of depth using common techniques of 2D dimensional artists, and incorporating some 3D aspects. The same techniques that the eye uses to perceive depth, as explained above, the artist uses to portray and create the illusion of depth.

https://www.quora.com/How-do-artists-create-the-illusion-of-depth-on-a-flat-surface

The picture above is an example of one of Beever's works that I did not initially understand what was in real life, and what was chalk. My first time viewing this, I thought the "smaller" person on the top of the beer was part of his chalk drawing. Upon further inspection, I realized that that is a real person, sitting on the ground, much farther away. While the mind is perceiving the beer as standing up perpendicular to the ground, the "smaller" person being real and of average size conflicts with this perception, and is left to enhance the illusion. Beever, the man in the hat, stands at the base of the drawing, seeming to be in line/parallel with the beer.

The work above is one of my favorites of Beever's. It covers up the depth of the bench against the pavement to make the snail appear to be crawling onto the bench. The use of shadow and overlapping of the snail on the bench makes the eye perceive the snail as in front of the bench, and in continuation, the pavement drawn portion must also be before the bench. This uses the eye's ability to create slight discrepancy between real life and perception, in order to portray an image that "makes sense". The shadow is also covering up a real reflection of a store's lit sign on the bench, as the chalk material is not reflective, and Beever used lighting in his chalk drawing to make it appear as though the top of the snail is reflecting the store sign. 

Looking at this art from a different angle brings reality into the forefront. It is clear to see that 2D art that looks three dimensional must take angle into account, as many aspects rely on dimensionality and relative size. At this angle, it is clear to see that the top of the shell was drawn proportionally larger than the bottom to compensate for the eye perceiving objects farther away as smaller. Something I didn't notice in the above picture, until seeing this "behind the scenes" image of the illusion, was that one of the antennae was a pole coming perpendicularly out of the ground, that Beever seamlessly incorporated.  

Reflection

I learned a great deal about how the eye perceives depth, given the visual cues of a scene. I then saw how artists used those visual cues to create an illusion of depth in their own work. I could use this in my own digital media by the placement, size, and overlapping of the images in my picture. For example, many people take a picture trying to appear to push the leaning tower of pisa, based on the relative position of the camera, person, and tower. By positioning items in digital media, I could create a similar illusion.

Additionally, in sound, there are ways to create depth. The quieter the sound is, the more it seems like it is far away, especially if the original sound is usually much louder. Also, pitch changes based on if you are in front of or behind it. (Imagine a truck racing by, blaring its horn. It goes from a higher pitch to a lower pitch as it passes you.) Also, ears perceive sound in stereo (through both ears) to perceive where the sound originates based on when it gets to both ears. If a sound is on the left, it will get to the left ear louder and slightly faster than it will to the right. I could use these components to create "moving music", or a song that seems to be moving in space, while the listener is sitting still.