Author: Gianni Sarcone

When Straight Paths Bend

Gianni Sarcone

First, observe the alignment of the red circles as they move in a straight vertical path, up and down. Then keep your gaze on one of the three Xs in the middle. What do you notice?

© Thornton, I. M., Riga, A., Zdravković, S., & Todorović, D. (2025). The Mainz-Linez Illusion. I-Perception, 16(6). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2041669525139912

The red circles seem to drift away from their true physical trajectories, as if they were following the curves of the static lines. This perceptual shift is known as the “Mainz-Linez Illusion“.

When you keep your gaze on the central X, the moving dots shift into peripheral vision, where spatial resolution is limited and detail is reduced. The visual system compensates by interpolating missing information based on contextual cues and prior experience. As a result, the dots become perceptually “bound” to the nearby curved lines, as if threaded on them, and their straight vertical motion is misread as oscillating.

The Mainz-Linez phenomenon reflects a broader principle: peripheral vision is largely constructive. Under certain conditions, this predictive filling-in can also distort motion judgments in real-world tasks—such as driving—where events in the periphery may be misperceived.

Enhancing Reader Engagement with Thought-Provoking Visual Content

Gianni Sarcone

As a visual creator, over the years I have developed a broad collection of mind games and hands-on activities designed to foster visual and critical thinking while supporting the learning of mathematics. These features, created for readers of all ages, are available for licensing to newspapers, magazines, and media platforms seeking distinctive, high-quality editorial content that captures attention and sustains reader interest.

Interested in adding a fresh editorial feature that energizes your publication? Explore the available offerings at Knight Features.

When Water Decides to Defy Gravity

Gianni Sarcone

My minimalist tribute to M. C. Escher: an animated “impossible waterfall,” drawn frame by frame. It’s not exactly my usual artistic language, but I had great fun creating it, and I hope you’ll enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it.

As you can see, the isometric structure links impossible angles to create a continuous water channel that appears to flow upward in a loop, falling from a high point yet seemingly returning to the top.

The “impossible waterfall,” reimagined in a lavish Rococo style, rendered as a surreal illustration for a book project.

Creating a New Impossible Cube: From Concept to Print

Gianni Sarcone

Impossible or undecidable figures have long fascinated artists, mathematicians, and viewers alike. Their appeal lies in a delicate tension: the structure appears perfectly logical at first glance, yet closer inspection reveals spatial contradictions that cannot exist in the physical world. My latest work revisits an idea I first explored in the 1990s—an impossible Rubik’s-style cube—now developed into a new series built across several stages, from hand-drawn construction to digital refinement and photographic interpretation.

The project began with a simple geometric framework—interlocking beams arranged to suggest a stable cubic volume. The challenge was to reinterpret an apparently ordinary three-dimensional cube into an ambiguous form that still appears structurally plausible. Through careful adjustments of line weight, contrast, and directional and formal cues, the cube gradually shifts from perceived solidity to spatial uncertainty, so that as the eye moves across the image, the object quietly reorganizes itself, producing a surreal perception in place of a coherent physical structure.

impossible cube
Here is the original version of the project, refined from my initial hand-drawn construction and carefully reconstructed using FreeHand MX

Two of the final images belong to the Op Art tradition, where sharp black-and-white geometry emphasizes visual tension and rhythmic structure. These compositions highlight the cube’s architectural clarity while allowing the paradox to emerge naturally from the viewer’s perceptual processing. The remaining two images take a different path: they present the object in a photographic setting, rendered with realistic lighting and textures.

impossible cube etched
Astraea Paradox Cube: Available as fine art print.
Rubik’s Paradox Cube: Available as fine art print.

Together, the four images form a small visual narrative—construction, transformation, and illusion—showing how a purely conceptual structure can evolve into multiple aesthetic forms. The Op Art versions focus on perceptual mechanics, while the photographic interpretations suggest how an impossible form might inhabit the physical world, even if only in appearance.

Fine art prints and canvas editions from this series are available through my official gallery shop, where each piece is produced using archival materials designed for long-term display.

Collectors and galleries interested in larger formats or special editions may also contact me directly for availability and production details. This series continues my exploration of perceptual geometry, where simple shapes become instruments for questioning how we construct space, depth, and visual certainty.

The Logic of Abstraction

Gianni Sarcone

Some say abstract art is non-representational—that it avoids visual reality and relies on color, shape, form, and gesture to trigger emotion or thought. I see it differently. Abstraction does not reject reality; it reframes it. It is a change of optics, not a disappearance of the world.

Take, for example, this video of goldfinches perched on swaying thistles. At first glance, does it not resemble an abstract painting? Rhythms, repetitions, subtle chromatic tensions, forms dissolving into movement. From there, one could push the abstraction further with the slightest shifts in shape or color—without betraying reality, only rephrasing it.

This idea is hardly new. From Cézanne’s insistence on treating nature through cylinder, sphere, and cone, to Kandinsky’s claim that abstraction reveals inner necessity rather than surface likeness, many artists and thinkers have argued that abstraction sharpens perception instead of diluting it. Even in cognitive science, perception is understood as an active construction, not a passive recording of facts.

Abstraction starts precisely there: with attention. Not with denial, not with decoration, but with the recognition that reality is already structured, already abstract, long before the artist intervenes.

Kinegram Exhibits

Gianni Sarcone

Here are two Kinegram installations I made, designed to educate, engage, and spark curiosity in visitors of all ages. These works make motion appear from static forms, offering an experience that is both playful and thought-provoking.

Kinegrams reveal movement through a sliding transparent panel printed with vertical black lines. As the panel moves over the underlying image, hidden sequences appear, animating the drawings like frames of a film. Each interaction lets the viewer explore how motion can emerge from stillness.

The concept of movement from static forms has long interested scientists and philosophers. Movement is a dimension unfolding in space and time—without time, there is no motion. Kinegrams make this idea tangible through touch and visual perception.

These exhibits are simple to set up but produce surprising results. I made the first panel for UNIFI, the University of Florence, and the second for the Mind Games Art Alive Museum in Sydney. Both projects engage and surprise visitors, combining education with visual impact.

Kinegram - UNIFI

“Twisting Cords,” Kinegram exhibit for UNIFI, Florence
As the transparent panel etched with black lines glides across the design, colorful cords seem to twist, winding and unwinding in a mesmerizing, living rhythm.

Flying Birds - Migration

“Flying Birds – Migration,” Kinegram exhibit for Mind Games, Sydney
As the transparent panel etched with black lines glides across the static design in the background, the flock of birds rises and takes wing, transforming a still pattern into living, rhythmic motion.

To see more or discuss a Kinegram installation, visit: https://www.giannisarcone.com/Kinegrams.html

Minimal Perception

Gianni Sarcone

I’ve always wondered about the limits of shape and color needed for us to represent or recognize an object. Take a stemmed glass, for example. To depict it, you might need just two circles and a straight line—and perhaps a red disc to suggest the wine inside.

But we can go further: by turning it from a flat image into a 3D form with a simple rotational movement, like in Duchamp’s rotoreliefs, the object suddenly comes alive in space.

All these graphic shortcuts rely on memory. Our brains interpret what we see based on past experience, filling in missing information and reconstructing the object from just a few essential cues. This process aligns with the principles of visual perception: the Gestalt laws of closure and continuity explain why we perceive a complete glass even when much of it is absent. Minimalist perception highlights how human cognition distills visual information, showing that a few simple shapes and colors are enough to evoke a rich, instantly recognizable image.

☞ Duchamp rotoreliefs.