In 1997, I remixed the Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting Mona Lisa, into 142 perfectly spaced color beads placed at the intersections of an imaginary two-dimensional triangular network. Close up, the picture of the set of beads makes no sense, but if you see it from a distance you will perceive (or at least ‘guess’?) the portrait of Mona Lisa, the most famous Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting.
Thousands of years ago, a man in his solitude scanned the night sky and saw all those dots shining like so many still fireflies, and, perhaps for fun, he decided to join them together to form shapes. This is how zodiac signs and astronomy were born.
Far away, in ancient India, the dot symbolized beauty and the eye of knowledge. But even more, the dot they called “shunya-bindu” (शून्यबिन्दु) represented what we nowadays know as zero. It was first a placeholder and then a fully fledged number, for when it is added to the right of the representation of any given digit, the value of the digit is multiplied by ten. This is how our current numbers and decimal numeration system were born.
While drawing or painting, visual artists of all times used to fix a dot – or more specifically a point in space – which was traditionally visualized from the tip of their thumb. Eventually, when this point receded so far away in space, it became known as a “vanishing point”. A vanishing point is where all converging lines of a landscape meet at the horizon. This is how perspective and geometry were born.
One day, medieval musicians were tired of having to rely solely on their memories to remember songs. So they started to use dots, named “puncti”, placed on or between four lines to represent the pitch and duration of a sound. This is how musical notation and programming were born.
In the modern era, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, dots were used in many other symbolic forms: bumps, holes, single tones, flashes of light… Do the terms Braille, Morse, punched card, or pixel sound familiar to you? This is how communication and coding were born.
This is how the humble dot, often overlooked, has served as a fundamental building block for countless advancements throughout history. Never underestimate the power of small things; within a dot was the whole universe.
(The text above has been used as foreword for the book “The All-Round Activity Book” available from Amazon)
Embarking on a journey in a Klein bottle? Absolutely. A Klein bottle is a mind-bending non-orientable surface, defying the usual inside-outside norms. Technically, the ship’s navigating the interior…
Snag prints and cool merch from my online gallery.
Even bounded, my dynamic Müller-Lyer illusion works perfectly; the static segments of the star appear to alternately contract and expand.
Something useful to learn for 2024. Maybe.
Are you seeing spirals? Look again, they’re actually concentric circles! This unique variation of the “Fraser spiral” plays tricks on your eyes by blending a regular line pattern (representing the circle’s circumference) with misaligned elements (the spheres with varying brightness).
Would you like to learn how to create this mesmerizing illusion? Follow my simple visual tutorial. If you have any ideas to further enhance this project, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Continue ReadingIs yellow the true color of the sun? Our sun emits various forms of radiation, including visible light. In space, the sun appears white, but our atmosphere scatters light, highlighting shorter wavelengths like red.
Additionally, not all species perceive colors, as they are simply different wavelengths. Learn more.
Psychologist Diana Deutsch noticed something strange in 1995 while fine-tuning spoken commentary on a CD. The phrase “sometimes behave so strangely” sounded like a song when repeated on a loop. The phenomenon isn’t fully understood.
Learn more: http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/psychology/pages.php?i=212
Do our eyes truly act as the gateway to the world, as poets suggest? Not quite. We see the world through tiny pupils that act as spy holes. Our brain is like a creative ‘camera obscura‘, constantly comparing differences between images received by each eye and individual elements within each image. This makes our eyes highly sensitive to contrasts in brightness, sharpness, and depth. Sometimes, our brain tries to correct what we see.
Try this experiment: Look at the blurry face below next to the sharp one for 20-30 seconds (staring at the fixation star between them), then quickly shift your gaze to the same scene further below. You’ll notice that the previously clear face now appears blurry while the previously blurry face appears clearer. This illusion, called contrast adaptation or contrast gain control, occurs because prolonged exposure to blurry images affects our visual acuity and sensitivity to contrast.
As an artist, I enjoy including subliminal messages or figures in my work. My paintings, photographs and collages play on the foreground and background relationship of our visual perception and represent common or iconic faces the viewer has to rediscover.
In this magical bookmark of my creation, a portrait of M. L. King appears when held over a blank page or up to a light. From his famous words, we are reminded that, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” A neat gift available from Art of Play.
While in this one below, a portrait of Gandhi appears when held over a blank page or up to a light — a subtle reminder to read with intention and “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Still available from my partner Art of Play.
