INSIDER: Last month, a unique carpet design from French retailer FNAC went viral on Twitter.
Now, a similar floor design from tile company Casa Ceramica is baffling people online for the same reason: Both designs are optical illusions that make a flat floor appear as a bumpy surface.
7 comments:
Though I can appreciate the idea behind this carpet, I think this is an absolutely horrendous idea. You want to stop people from running in your halls? Ok. Post a sign, maybe station an employee in the area to ask people not to run, but this is quite possibly the worst way to prevent running. To walk over such a surface is easy enough for an able-bodied person, as their balance is probably good enough to walk through. However, elderly fold, people who struggle to walk, or have balance issues could literally be endangered by trying to cross over this floor, as the surface does not accurately match with the texture. If somebody were to fall, that person could be injured, and the business this flooring is a part of opens itself to costly lawsuits. Though this clearly didn't come from a place of malice, the concept is crude and poorly-implemented.
I have always been fascinated by perspective based art such as this. The attention to detail and point of view are impressive to say the least, and the illusion of depth and use of distortion can definitely have applications to theater. In this instance, the use of a grid is used to manipulate the hallway entrant's perception. Whether it is effective in quelling "running in the halls" is up for debate, but it certainly makes for an interesting piece of installation art. I wonder, how can we as theater designers and technicians employ visual illusions to our advantage? Perhaps through a combination of media and specifically designed scenery the theater can be made into a space that appears to be much larger or smaller than it is, or warped in some other way. The possibilities of this technique could be incredible if explored further.
I am fascinated by optical illusions. I hardly ever see them being applied in real life situations like the hallway in a building. I am curious how the artist was able to create the allusion. I know there is a video that shows him creating this illusion on the floor but I am curious about the mental process he had to go through to create the design before applying it to the floor. I know that if I tried to create something like this it would take me a long time before I was done being thoroughly confused me. I would love to see more designs similar to this in other public situations. I am also inspired to try and incorporate optical illusions in set designs.
This is an incredibly abstract and creative idea to fix a fairly straightforward problem, which is what I think makes it so unique. I think its incredible that they are able to use an artistic design to prevent someone from running in their halls instead of just placing up a sign, even though it is a little excessive. Optical illusions have always been very intriguing to me in their manner of asking the audience to think and creating a distorted perspective on a seemingly normal world. Illusions like this one are very intriguing, so regardless as to whether or not it is successful in its task, there is something unique about incorporating these into daily life in such a public setting. As people in theatre, it is definitely something we can draw from in future designs and ideas as I think it would be interesting to play with similar concepts using different scenic, costume, and lighting elements.
This is actually a brilliant idea. The article is structured around not getting people to run in the hallway but I think it does a lot more than that. It makes people use their brain when they are walking and have awareness of there surroundings. So often people are absorbed in much more than just the walk. It could be their phone, a book or even the computer that catchs their attention. If I was the one to install this in a hallway I would probably also install a camera just to see how people react when they are halfway down the hallway. I can see it now, someone looks up from their phone and see that they are in this ditch and didn’t even know. This little allusion would never hurt anybody and I honestly think that it will make people learn the hard way. Don't worry, one day I will be in a hallway just like this and I will be the one looking down at my phone, I have no doubt.
Maybe I am just missing something, but I do not think that these floor illusions are being marketed to stop people from running. I think it was a click bait tactic used by the website to get you interested in reading the article. This tile floor is installed in a showroom for the tile company, not in a public building hallway. Although I guess I agree with what Al says, that these tiles should not be implemented as a safeguard against running, that is definitely not what this floor was created for and not at all what this article is about.
That being said, I think there are so many cool things you could do with an optical illusion installation. Having an illusion like this on floor adds a level of distortion to the space that is very fascinating. Perhaps a floor with this kind of illusion could be used as a way to direct people through an installation space. Perhaps, to help answer Patrick's question, a theatre could use the forced single perspective of an audience in a traditional proscenium theatre setting to create an regular looking set using optical illusion on stage, and then pick a point in the show at which to break the illusion and suddenly create a distorted environment. A performance like that seems like something that would be great for Playground.
This is fascinating and seems like the type of thing we should be doing in theater except for one thing. This type of illusion only works from one angle. I have had many conversations this year about actual dimensionality on scenery versus paint treatments. I feel like this is along the same vein. The designers took something that could have been dimensional, but made it exist in one plane. And they didn’t have the bonus of lighting to help their effect. The use of the different shaped tiles to create this effect isn’t easy and requires a lot of planning. The same could be said for designers wanting to add dimensionality to scenery rather than going through the work of figuring out what and how to apply a paint technique to achieve the same effect.
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