Biggest 3D street painting ever.

October 15, 2007 12:59 AM

Biggest 3D street painting ever. As part of the 2007 Moose Jaw Prairie Arts Festival, German painter Edgar Müller and a team of artists turned River Street into, well, a river. Müller and his associate Manfred Stader have done other interesting trompe-l'oiel works around the world.
posted by gottabefunky (9 comments total)

That's awesome. There's something about these perspective-based "3D" street paintings that tickles a nerdy bone I have no name for. Thanks for the post!
posted by brundlefly at 1:14 AM on October 15, 2007

œil
posted by Wolof at 2:27 AM on October 15, 2007

That's so amazing. I had to look at it with one eye shut to see how the perspective worked. It's almost dangerous -- I hope they're not letting anyone bike or drive down that street. It'd be startling.
posted by Miko at 6:47 AM on October 15, 2007

The trail divides here.
You may:

1. float down the Columbia River
2. take the Barlow Toll Road

What is your choice?
posted by Stan Chin at 7:33 AM on October 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

I really, really, like the photos taken from the "wrong" angle -- it's fascinating to see how distorted the images really are, and then compare that to the way it seems when viewed from the intended angle.
posted by aramaic at 8:03 AM on October 15, 2007

Moose Jaw, eh? Nifty.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:00 AM on October 15, 2007

I wonder what the effect is when you approach it. Is there vertigo and amazement? Or is the illusion less successful in person because of height/motion variables?
posted by hermitosis at 9:28 AM on October 15, 2007

This is really cool.
posted by Mitheral at 10:01 AM on October 15, 2007

its unlikely to produce vertigo as you approach it, and you have to appreciate that this is only going to be correct if you move the eye to a single center of projection. i havent seen one this large scale in person, but theres plenty of smaller examples of illusions (e.g. reverspectives) that play with the issue of perspective.

heres a cool one you can fold yourself . read about it here

anyway, what these illustrate is that if you play with perspective you will find that the other cues to the orientation of surfaces (e.g. stereo disparity, parallax and general perceptual stability constraints) interact so that you would expect that as you move to the center of projection (where the image taken by camera is striking) your perception is likely to change slowly or even remain stable - flat road surface - so its unlikely to startle you or make you dizzy.

basic point is that one of the underlying tasks of visual perception is to assume a relatively stable world and intuit whats out there in that stable world based on a rapidly changing and unstable image in the eye. this kind of trickery works much better in the camera's eye than it does in yours - meaning in the real world environment you really have to work to get it.
posted by mano at 12:09 PM on October 16, 2007 [1 favorite]