optical illusion

Art and Science: Black Whole

Black Whole

Bristol board, papier mâché, acrylic paint, document clips. 27x20x3cm. 2024

Exhibited at the Royal West of England Academy, Jan – April 2025.

A sculpture composed of two hemispheres on a flat surface, with one of the hemispheres protruding from one surface and the other protruding from the other surface. Both hemispheres are hollow, so that relative to each surface of the flat card one hemisphere protrudes and the other creates a hollow. The sculpture is coated with very matt black acrylic paint (Stuart Semple Black 4).

The matt black colour of the sculpture makes the form deliberately difficult to read. This is especially the case with the hollows (possibly because the brain is not expecting there to be hollows in the surface).

On one level the work can be viewed as a simple intriguing puzzle that engages the viewer’s perception and cognition in interpreting the positive and negative forms that are generated by the hemispheres.

The work also has a metaphorical interpretation that relates to my interest in science.

In this interpretation the flat black surface of the sculpture can be thought of as representing the ‘base state’ of physical reality. Think of this state as being flat and featureless – a state in which nothing physical can meaningfully be said to actually exist – maybe the ‘resting’ state of the universe. Perhaps think of it as being comparable to a graph in which the line of the graph flatlines along the zero value of the x axis, indicating that there’s nothing to measure.

The two hemispheres in the sculpture disrupt the flat surface, creating the existence of form. Returning to the graph analogy, this is similar to the presence of two blips on the flatlining graph, with one blip going up and the other going down.

Because the hemispheres are hollow the pair create a bulge and a depression on each side of the flat surface, with the one that forms a bulge on one side of the sculpture forming a depression on the other side.

On either of the two sides of the flat surface, in terms of total volume, the bulge of one of the hemispheres and the depression of the other cancel each other out, with the negative volume of the depressed hemisphere cancelling the positive volume of the protruding one.

This can be thought of as an analogy for the physical nature of the universe at its most fundamental level. The flat featureless surface of the sculpture represents the flat featureless ‘surface’ of the fundamental universe when it is devoid of matter and when nothing exists other than the ‘surface’. The pair of hemispheres conceptually represents a single fundamental ‘disturbance’ in the flat fearless surface, a single simplest element of existence perhaps analogous to the most fundamental of fundamental particles.

Importantly, because this fundamental disturbance is represented by two identical forms (the hemispheres) of which one has positive volume and one has negative volume which cancel out, the total volume of the disturbance is zero. This is analogous to the physical universe arising out of a state of nothingness (the flat surface) yet adding nothing to the volume, thus adding nothing to nothing.

So, although the universe exists it is still composed of nothing.

This work reflects my interest in both art and science (I started out on a scientific career before moving over to an artistic one).

I believe that art and science are often much more closely linked than is often assumed. There is for instance a huge amount of aesthetics in the appreciation of mathematics, and the study of the way that our senses make sense of the world is nothing if not a science.

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Moiré patterns in overlapping mesh

Overlapping mesh generating moiré patterns

Plastic mesh. 6 x 4 x 4cm variable 2024

The work consists of a sheet of plastic mesh from the packaging for a pack of oranges.

I particularly like this piece because of the mundanity of its material.

I’ve been experimenting with the generation of moiré patterns and related optical effects for many years, often involving the interaction of digitally generated simple grids such as in the example below from 2008 or as seen here .

I’ve previously used the same sort of plastic mesh to create moiré patterns in an exhibit in my solo exhibition at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens in 2022.

The term moiré pattern or moiré fringe comes from a type of French fabric called moire, in which two layers of fabric are pressed together to form a single sheet in which the slight misallignment of the fabric’s mesh generates patterns.

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A study in the perception and interpretation of images

What’s wrong with this picture?

Photograph

What’s wrong with this picture?

A study in the perception and interpretation of images.

This photograph is an undoctored image, but it’s very hard to decipher what exactly’s going on in it. It looks like an aerial photo of rows of terraced houses, but there’s something not quite right about it.

Have a look near the very top left hand corner and you may realise what it is you’re looking at. You can see a line of cars there, but they are all upside down.

The photo is just a straight photo that’s being viewed upside down. The unexpected orientation of the image creates the effect of disoriention in the observer.

The photo shows the way in which the observer tries to construct a meaningful interpretation of an image that is giving confusing and ambiguous cues. The observer may easily be able to recognise that the image shows the walls of houses because the windows and doors are easily identifiable. And there are house roofs here too, but these components don’t seem to marry up properly to create a coherent whole.

It’s a study in visual perception and interpretation.

For the sake of efficiency the brain makes a lot of assumptions about what it’s perceiving at any moment, so it takes a few cues and interprets things from there.It only does any extra work if it notices that things don’t add up, as here. If it didn’t do that it would have to analyse everything from first principals and you’d need a brain as big as a planet to do anything.

The photograph with the correct orientation

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Mirror and coloured hemispheres

Mirror art

Mirror, wood, paper, acrylic. 30 x 30 x 20cm. August 2024

A mirror-based artwork. It features a mirror mounted perpendicular to a coloured ground on which are mounted two hemispheres in different colours. The hemispheres are positioned so that the reflection of one hemisphere in the mirror precisely coincides with the position of the other hemisphere. This creates an intriguing effect when the viewer observes the work from different angles.

Mirrors are a useful device for the exploration of perception and the interpretation of what we see. I think this is partly because perfect reflections like those found in mirrors are almost nonexistent in the natural world other than when they are observed on stretches of water such as puddles, ponds and lakes in perfectly still conditions. When you look at a puddle, a pond or a lake you know exactly what you’re looking at, so your brain knows that the reflection in its surface is an optical effect, especially because the nature of the surface will usually be betrayed by the occasional ripple or the presence of a floating object such as a leaf or a duck.

Mirrors however are different. They can easily be placed in an artificial context in which the brain has to do a bit of work in deciding what it’s actually looking at. And to compound this, mirrors are almost always vertical (which the surface of a puddle or a pond never is). Put a mirror in a slightly unusual context and the brain can be deceived, which is a good avenue into the study of perception.

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Spheres in a mirror

Spheres in a mirror

Mirror, wood, acrylic 29x29x6cm May 2024

A sculptural work composed of coloured hemispheres reflected in a mirror to create the illusion of complete spheres.

The mirror is a front coated mirror so that there is no gap between the hemispheres resting on the surface of the mirror and the reflection.

The sculpture includes one complete sphere that creates the effect of a pair of spheres when reflected. This sphere is there for compositional purposes, but it fortuitously helps to emphasise the nature of the reflections of the hemispheres.

This work can be wall mounted or can be displayed horizontally.

The work explores the themes of mirrors, reflections and illusions that have featured recurrently in my work over the decades.

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Mirror sculpture

Mirror art. Interlinked rings.

Mirror, card, acrylic. 30x30x18cm Feb 2024

A sculpture composed of a mirror with a sculptural form made of card and paper attached to its surface. The card and paper are painted with acrylic paint.

The interlinking of, and interplay between, the horizontal and vertical forms in the sculpture are significant features of the piece.

The upright sculptural forms are held in place on the mirror by magnets attached to the back of the mirror. The magnets attract small pieces of steel tape that are embedded in the card of the sculpture. This ensures that the sculpture can be held invisibly on the mirror, with no obvious means of attachment such as fasteners or glue.

The mirror in this piece is a standard rear-coated mirror, so there is a separation between the objects on the mirror and their reflections. Some of the pieces on the mirror are painted a different colour on the side that is facing the mirror so that the underside adds an extra element to the composition. In other works where I don’t want a separation between the objects and their reflections I use front-coated mirrors.

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Mirror art – Squaring the Circle

Mirror art. Squaring the Circle

Mirror, card, paper, acrylic. 28x28x18cm Feb 2024

A mirror piece consisting of a semicircle of card half of which passes inside a box-like construction. The semicircle and box are resting on a mirror so that the semicircle appears to be part of a full circle that enters and exits the box.

The reflection of the box makes the box appear to be half of a square structure, with the circle entering and leaving the interior of the square via its openings where the square is cut. This gives rise to the title of the piece, Squaring the Circle.

The mirror is a front-coated (or first-coated) mirror. Unlike standard mirrors that have their reflective coating on the rear surface of the glass front-coated mirrors have the reflective surface on the front. With a standard mirror the thickness of the glass creates a gap or space between the object on the glass and the reflection, while with a front-coated mirror the object and the reflection are ‘touching’.

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Mirror art – Flite

Mirror art. Flite.

Mirror, card, acrylic. 28x28x18cm Feb 2024

A wall mounted mirror piece.

A wall mounted sculpture composed of a mirror with a sculptural form made of card attached to its surface. The card is painted with acrylic paint.

The sculptural form is held in place on the mirror by a magnet attached to the back of the mirror. The magnet attracts a small piece of steel tape that is embedded in the card of the sculpture. This ensures that the sculpture can be held invisibly on the mirror, with no obvious means of attachment such as bolts or glue.

The mirror is a front-coated (or first-coated) mirror. Unlike standard mirrors that have their reflective coating on the rear surface of the glass front-coated mirrors have the reflective surface on the front. If a standard mirror had been used the thickness of the glass would have created a gap or space between the object on the glass and its reflection, while with a front-coated mirror the object and the reflection are ‘touching’.

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Contemporary mirror art

Contemporary mirror art. Multiple reflections creating complete rings

Mirrors, wood, card, acrylic. 2023.

Two mirrors joined along their bottom horizontal edges are held at an angle to each other. Placed between the mirrors are three painted card sections of circles. Multiple reflections of the sections of card around the axis of the joined mirrors produce full circles. There are six reflections (or multiple reflections) in the mirrors, creating a full circle composed of seven sections.

A second component of coloured card is lying flat on the surface beside the mirror structure. The shape and colour of this second construction add another dimension to the assemblage as a whole. The fact that this part of the piece is in two colours and that it forms only part of a ring add to the resonance of the structure.

Below is a video of the sculpture. Because of the nature of the multiple reflections in the mirrors it’s particularly important to see the sculpture from different angles.

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Photography as abstract art

Photography as abstract art.

Photograph. May 2020. Zennor, Cornwall.

A photograph as abstract art.

I took this photograph because when I looked at the object in the photo in real life I was surprised how much it was transformed by a particular quality of light so that it resembled an abstract artwork.

It’s a photograph of a window in my house.

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Contemporary mirror art – Yellow Ring

Contemporary art, mirror art. Yellow Ring

Mirrors, wood, card, acrylic 2023

A sculpture exploring reflections in mirrors. The sculpture is composed of two mirrors set at angles to each other so that they show the reflections of each other and thus show multiple reflections of objects reflected in them.

Resting on the mirrors is a curved length of yellow card that forms a quarter of the circumference of a circle. Multiple reflections in the mirrors turn the quarter of a circle into a complete circle.

From some viewpoints only part of the circle can be seen, giving the effect that the circle is somehow partly disappearing – a form of optical illusion created because the brain can’t interpret what it is seeing properly.

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Moiré effect generated by mesh and a mirror

Moiré effect generated by a mesh on a mirror

Concave mirror, plastic mesh. 8x8x10cm. July 2024

A study of the moiré patterns that are generated when a mesh is placed above a mirror.

The mesh is rolled into a cone shape which creates moiré patterns where the mesh overlaps itself.

A concave mirror at the base of the mesh creates an enlarged and distorted image of the mesh, further complicating the patterns that the mesh generates.

The mirror in this study is a convex mirror taken from a bicycle rear view mirror with the mirror inverted to expose the concave rear of the mirror. The mesh is the plastic mesh from a supermarket pack of easy peel oranges.

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Seeing the world from an unusual angle

On the escalator. Seeing the world from an unusual angle.

Video. 45 seconds. May 2023

A video of people going down an down escalator at a London Underground station. I was going up the up escalator.

The video was shot at an angle so that the sloping architecture of the escalator occupied the horizontal plane in the video.

One of the metaphorical points of the video is the idea of looking at the world from unusual angles as a way of getting away from conventional ways of thinking and of conventional perception. It’s also quite humorous, which is something I often strive for.

Tilting the world to unusual angles is a concept I’ve pursued multiple times. An early example was in the early 1970s when I toyed with the idea of writing a short story about an isolated community that lived in a town half way up a very steep hill. The hill was so big that the people couldn’t see the top or the bottom, so they didn’t realise that they actually lived on a slope. All they knew was that there was a strange force (gravity) that meant that objects were only stable when they were at a particular angle to the ground and orientated in a particular direction. And that walking towards one side of town (uphill) was quite hard work, while walking in the opposite direction (downhill) was easy.

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Mirror art

Mirror art featuring a mirror and two coloured hemispheres.

Mirror, wood. acrylic. 30x30x12cm. August 2024

A work on one of my recurring themes of mirrors.

In this work a hemisphere can be seen reflected in a mirror. The hemisphere is positioned so that its reflected image appears in exactly the same location as a second real hemisphere. The second hemisphere is a different colour.

It’s a simple yet arresting effect.

The reflective coating on the mirror is on its front surface rather than the more usual rear surface. This is to avoid the presence of the ghost reflections that are produced by the glass front surface of conventional mirrors.

I’ve been experimenting with mirror based optical illusions and effects like the one in this work since the early 2010s. The main difference between this piece and most of my previous ones is that this one is wall mounted. My interest in mirrors and optics in general date back about fifty five years to when I constructed an astronomical telescope (including grinding the parabolic mirror).

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Fur in contemporary art

Fur ellipse

Fake fur, card, acrylic. 30 x 42 x 8cm March 2022

At first sight this work looks like a dark ellipse painted onto a blue background. Closer inspection reveals that the ellipse is in fact made of fur and that it protrudes some distance from the flat blue surface.

A close-up detail of the work.

The fur is dark and matt, making its texture quite hard to see without close inspection. As a result most casual observers don’t notice. A close inspection is however rewarded with the realisation of what is being looked at.

This work exhibits my interest in interpreting perception, illusion and expectations.

Optically deceptive artworks in my solo show at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall, 2022. The fur piece is the far one.

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Perception-challenging artwork

Shapes at the edge of perception

Papier mache, acrylic, card. 30x21cm. 2021.

A wall hung artwork in which a matte black hemisphere protrudes from a flat matte black surface. Due to the darkness of the surface the protruding hemisphere is quite hard to see (although in this photograph it is lit in a way that makes it reasonably visible). Even less obvious than the protruding hemisphere, the matte black circle at the centre of the metallic area is actually a hemispherical indentation. This indentation is very rarely noticed by observers.
The work is an investigation into perception, optical illusions and expectation.

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Mirror art – reflected spheres

Ring of Spheres – a study in the hierarchy of forms

Mirrors, wood, papier mâché 15x28x30cm February 2022

Two mirrors set at an angle to each other with a hemispherical object placed between them.

The reflection of the hemisphere in the mirror on which its base rests creates the effect of a complete sphere, while the second mirror generates multiple reflections to give the effect of a ring of spheres. The number of spheres can be changed by varying the angle between the mirrors.

It’s interesting to notice that when you look at this work you see reflected spheres although in reality you’re seeing reflected hemispheres. The sphere is visually, conceptually and metaphorically a more dominating form than the hemisphere, and thus its apparent presence in this work swamps the actual reality of there only being a hemisphere present.

This work taps into my interest in the generation of forms from more basic forms, with simple forms being the building blocks of more complex entities and objects (see also my abstract moving image work). In this case the hemisphere can be interpreted as being an incomplete form which transforms into a complete sphere which in turn creates more spheres.

The sphere can be thought of as a symbol of perfection or completeness, while a hemisphere is axiomatically incomplete (as its name implies).

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Mirror-based artwork – multiple reflections inside a cube creating the illusion of the word “OXO” in infinite regression

OXO Cube infinity mirror cube

Mirrors, paper, acrylic. March 2017

This is a mirror-based artwork that uses the concept of infinity mirrors (which is a phenomenon I first became aware of while I was a student of maths and physics in the early 1970s).
The work consists of four mirrors forming the vertical walls of a cube, with the mirrored surfaces facing inwards. Each mirror reflects the mirror opposite it, including the reflections in that mirror, so the reflections build up to form infinite reflections (or, more accurately, multiple reflections, as the reflections gradually fade due to light loss).
Where two mirrors meet in the cube’s corners each mirror reflects the other corner mirror, creating a different set of multiple reflections.

The design on the cube’s floor forms the abstract image below:

In each corner of the cube the abstract images are reflected in the mirrors to appear to form the word “OXO”.
Each of these words “OXO” is then reflected infinite times in the other mirrors in the cube.
This artwork is titled “OXO Cube”, as it’s just too good a title to ignore (The artwork is meant to contain an element of humour).

A low viewpoint looking into the mirror cube, as below, shows the infinity mirror effect at its best.

Below: a video of the mirror cube.

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Ghost Pipe – shadows generating an optical illusion

Ghost Pipe – optical illusion

Unretouched photograph. September 2018

An unretouched photograph of a single pipe inside a room near a window.
The shadows generated by the light through the window create varying dark areas on the wall that give the illusion of a second pipe – a Ghost Pipe.

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Land art – buttercup field with hidden object

Land art – Buttercup Field, Rosemorran, Zennor

Video. 27sec

A video of a field of buttercups that contains a hard-to-see object near the centre-left.
The object is revealed at the end of the video.
The video is on a recurring theme in my work – an investigation into perception, reality and illusion.
The video was taken behind my house at Lower Rosemorran, Zennor, in Cornwall.

Spoiler alert – the nature of the object in the video is revealed in the next section.
The scene in the video contains, on the ground amongst the grass and buttercups, a square mirror. The mirror is hard to see partly because of the distracting proliferation of buttercups, but mostly because the mirror is positioned so that the light from the sky doesn’t create give-away shadows or highlights (buttercups that are reflected in the mirror can look abnormally lit compared with the rest of the buttercups if the angle of the light is incorrect).

Below is a photograph of the wider field in which the work took place.

The work is filmed in an almost cliched, very peaceful and calming field full of spring flowers, which to me makes a nice setting for a work that at its most pretentious can be interpreted as being a prompt for questioning the nature of reality. At its least pretentious however, it’s just a nice visual joke.
Mirrors and reflections have been a common features of my work for many years, with the first probably being this artistic experiment from about 1970.

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