Intention

Basically I wanted to tackle one of the oldest and probably most overlooked (pun) optical illusion out there: The eyes following you across the room. The focus of this was to give an explanation for why this occurs because I am sure it is something that everyone has wondered at one point or another in there lifetime. However people (me until now) could not be bothered to try and google it themselves so I want to bring light to why this happens and maybe inform some people. My goal was to inform on how this optical illusion works and then give examples of it in the real world and in art.  

Description 

This illusion entirely relies upon how artists create perspective. In order to make art look more realization artists learned how to use linear perspective, a technique that uses a single point as the focus, to give paintings depth. Before they used linear perspective artists just relied on height and width to replicate distance a la this Egyptian painting. 

But when artists started to use light and shadows to create depth paintings became more realistic. Now this is where the perspective comes in. When we move around in the real world the objects become nearer and away but in a painting everything remains the same no matter where you are. So if the artist painted the subject to be looking at you,  not matter where you stand the painting will be looking at you because the lighting and the background object never change keeping the same perspective. 

Examples in the world

I could not actually embed the link unfortunately so I will just cope paste it. http://www.instructables.com/id/Creepy-Eye-Following-Pictures/?ALLSTEPS This is a guide on how to make this kind of painting yourself to be possibly used in a haunted house or creepy room. This optical illusion is commonly used that other people try to replicate it for their own personal use.

Although this is a pretty extreme example this still showcases pretty well the example of forced perspective. This T-rex appears to be always be looking at you but its just because of how the artist created it. 

Examples in Media/Art

Find 2-3 examples of how this perceptual trick has been used in art making or media production to create intentional effects.

The most obvious example of this is the Mona Lisa. This is probably what most people think of when they imagine the eyes following you optical illusion. 

This painting of Rembrandt portrays the similar effect of eyes following you around the room. Most paintings will exhibit this kind of effect if they are painted with the subject starring as if they are looking straight at something just because of the perspective.   

Reflection

What did you learn? How could you leverage this illusion in your own digital media?

I did not really know what to expect going into the project just because I picked such a simple and well known optical illusion. However I was pleasantly surprised by what I learned. I thought it was incredibly cool how it worked as I actually had no clue what was happening. I really like the idea that the artist has that much control over how people experience a work of art. He or she can literally make the portraits eyes follow you where ever you are. Since I usually work with audio this illusion may not directly impact my work but it has made me think a lot more about perspective and the fact that I have more control over my art than I thought. Maybe the next mashup I make will include some sound that forces people into a certain state of mind. Is it possible? not sure but I will try!