The Ames Room

Created by an American ophthalmologist in 1934, the Ames Room is a physical optical illusion that draws on our perceptual understanding of depth and perspective to trick the viewer into thinking the objects or people in the room shrink and grow depending on where in the room they are. Though the room itself is trapezoidal with a sloped ceiling and floor, when viewed from a pinhole, the room seems perfectly cubic and checkered floors help create the sense that this room is perfectly normal. The result is a trick of perspective that distorts our understanding of how things should look, and can be viewed quite dramatically when the viewer watches a person walk across the room.

http://i.imgur.com/9cC8rm3.gifv

Examples in the world

While normally constructed as art installations, the idea of spaces that distort our perception of perspective can be seen an a lot of different ways. Below is an actual Ames Room, constructed as an installation for the entertainment.

While not exactly an Ames room, "gravity hills" or "magnetic hills" are places where laws of gravity seem to be violated with water flowing uphill or balls rolling up instead of down. In addition to showing changes in perception and scale of a person, Ames's original design for the room was to demonstrate the perception of things rolling uphill using a sloped floor. 

https://youtu.be/2rpPM-Hh6DI

Gravity hills are theorized to work in a similar way. Natural geometries such as a row of trees can create a similar effect on our perception by making roads appear to slope upward when they really slope down. This effect is so strong on our perception that people who visit gravity hills will have no idea there is a perceptive trick in play and are often shocked when it appears that water flows uphill. 

Examples in Media and Art

Ames rooms are often used in video production to play with the viewer's sense of scale and have been used in a range of music videos as well as movies like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. One of the most famous examples of the Ames Room being used in media is in the filming of Lord of the Rings. While these movies employ a range of tricks to distort perspective, using trapezoidal rooms as well as playing with camera angle helps create a distorted sense of scale that was used to depict the actors in relative scales. By utilizing the same principals there, the actors are made to look smaller in scale to others, like in a scene where Gandalf appears to tower over Frodo. 

Another example of the Ames room in media is in the music video for "Denial Twist" by the White Stripes. Thought he musicians appear to be in a normal room, walking from side to side as well as backwards and forwards makes them appear larger or smaller than we think they should be. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6LuwU3LPLE&feature=youtu.be

Reflection

While this effect is best viewed in video form, the effect of an Ames Room can be used in art pieces by depicting rooms that appear normal but twist our perception of scale. As for video applications, its clear that using the Ames Room is a powerful tool that offers a startlingly simple solution to the problem of relative scale. I was surprised to see that this optical illusion has such commercial applications in movie production, and I can easily see how I could construct an Ames room of my own if I ever needed to create media that could twist the viewers perception of position and gravity.