Artist turns village into optical illusion

Becky Stern of Make online says:

The buildings in the town of Vercorin in the Swiss Alps contribute to an impressive piece by Felice Varini, called Cercle et suite d'éclats. The pattern was projected on the town from the vantage point, then traced and painted. Photographs from the same spot in daylight make the town look flat, almost like a postcard.

Felice Varini's town-sized illusion

• [Anonymous]

  The optical illusion is that only from a certain point can you see the circles…Some artist did that in Dallas too

• [Anonymous]

  Anyone else thinking “Swiss cheese”?

• [SamSam]

  His also great — much more striking, actually, since this one here has many gaps and such caused by the trees.

• [Keppoch]

  I think the title of this post should be “Artist defaces picturesque village with optical illusion”. This is not an improvement. Blech.

• [Brandon West]

  “Photographs from the same spot in daylight make the town look flat, almost like a postcard.”

  Yeah, um, duh? Am I missing something? Aren’t postcards just photographs that you write on? I think it’s cool as an art piece but the optical illusion is lost on me.

• [Anonymous]

  Why do all the building look the same?

  I do not live in suburban America so this seems very strange to me (Yes there really are two americas (USAs))

  Building code? Convention? Swiss villiages have always puzzled me.

  Robotmistake

• [JPW]

  That’s getting awfully close to an Olympics logo infringement. . . .

• [Anonymous]

  I think the wording of the description is a little off. It seems to me that the idea is that while they are on houses of varying distances, the circles are all the same size, which would fool the brain into thinking it’s looking at a flat image, distorting it’s depth perception. I’m sure it’s much more impressive thing to look at in person, I certainly don’t get the full effect of looking at the photo.

• [Takashi Omoto]

  I think it means the town looks like a postcard, not that the photo looks like one. It’s a bad analogy for younger people I guess – a better one would be “painted on” since originally postcards stood for illustrations rather than photos.

  I’ve seen some other work from this guy, his iStockPhoto series is very popular.

• [scifijazznik]

  Ummm….uh….ok, then.

• [jfrancis]

  Everybody loves that camera projection…

  http://boingboing.net/2009/08/11/soldiers-as-patrioti.html

• [Anonymous]

  If he had made the rings brown, it would be the most perfect coffee-cup ring stained picturesque village in the world.

• [Blaven]

  I’m surprised the owners let him do this. I wouldn’t want some random guy spray painting stuff on my quaint little cottage.

• [Newsboi]

  If you like this sort of art check out Eric Grohe 3-D artist who turns drab buildings into architectural wonders you can see more on http://riverviewobserver.net/2009/10/3-d-art-murals-by-eric-grohe-an-imazing-transformation-artist-of-figurative-and-architectural-murals/

• [jere7my]

  Looks to me more like we’re looking at the town through a sheet of plexiglas with holes cut into it.

• [Anonymous]

  This was done many years ago in the UK by the alien Mysterons who projected similar circles onto things.

• [Anonymous]

  The illusion is that from one angle, there appear to be circles drawn across the buildings.
  When viewed from a different angle, the circles reveal their true form, not really circles, but partial circles that appear as circles from a certain perspective.

• [Anonymous]

  The article actually said that the circles MAKE the town look flat, not that the artist was trying to create depth with the circles? You see? It’s the opposite of what you said. Just mentioning.

  Really nice piece, I love work like this. Also, I think it is wonderful that the town allowed him to do something like this. Europe is so chill.