Durban - Look like a giant or a dwarf, be swallowed up by the floor, try standing upside down, or catch a glance of yourself every which way in an infinity of mirrors.
Questioning the very fabric of reality as your mind plays tricks on you is the new World of Illusions opening at Gateway Theatre of Shopping today (Saturday).
The six illusions described as “insane, and which will completely confuse and bewilder, but in a good way”, will feature some famous optical illusions, such as the Ames Room.
The Ames Room illusion, researched by ophthalmologist Adelbert Ames jr in the 1930s (The Ames Demonstrations in Perception), plays with perspectives which use unexpected distortions in construction to mislead our minds’ strongly-held assumptions.
There are actually two illusions associated with the Ames Room, with the first one being a room that appears to be cubic when viewed from a specific viewing point, when in fact it is trapezoid, and the second being when people appear to be larger or smaller.
Ames started a career in art, but moved to physiological optics.
The basis for Ames’s theory is that our minds are so accustomed to rectangles with 90 degree corners, that even when shapes are different ‒ for example, trapezoids ‒ we perceive them to be squares or rectangles. A longer edge is perceived to be closer than a shorter one, which we assume to be further away. Our eyes also follow “lines into the distance” as we assume walls, floors and ceilings recede.
The power of the Ames illusion lies in the angle from which the room is viewed.
The Ames Room illusion has also been used for special effects in a number of movies, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which used several Ames Rooms to make the size of the tiny hobbits correct when standing against the much taller Gandalf.
The illusion was also depicted in the 1971 film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as well as being used in the Super Mario 64 game.
English rock band Status Quo used an Ames Room on the front cover of their 1975 album On The Level, while rock singer Roger Daltrey of The Who used one in his music video for his song Free Me.
Tricks of the mind have intrigued scientists and philosophers for centuries, with famous thinkers Aristotle and Plato writing about influences of the mind, environment, senses and assumptions on what appears to be real, but was actually a fabrication of the mind.
It has been suggested that Ames Room illusions are in fact examples of anamorphosis, a form of distortion used by artists through the centuries and said to have been invented by Leonardo da Vinci in 1485.
There were two anamorphic drawings found in Da Vinci’s notebooks. He called it “accidental perspective”, because it was largely the consequence of a misunderstood or intentional misuse of linear perspective.
In linear perspective, the work is designed to be viewed from the front. In anamorphosis, the work is designed to be viewed from an oblique angle.
Often regarded as one of the best examples of anamorphosis, the painting The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein, dated 1533, features an elongated shape of a skull in the foreground that is stretched out in such an extreme way, it is barely recognisable. But if the painting is hung above a doorway and viewed from an oblique angle, the skull is clearly discernible.
Apart from the Ames Room at the World of Illusions, there will also be The Upside Down Room, The Infinity Mirrors Room which is an infinite number of images created by mirrors reflecting in on themselves, Fallen Dreams, where visual trickery creates the impression of falling from a height, The Bottomless Pit where the person appears to have been swallowed up by the floor, and The Scale Illusion, which plays with large and small perspectives.
Gateway Theatre of Shopping marketing manager Michelle Shelley said the World of Illusions is a “shape-shifting, mind-bending experience. We wanted to create an immersive experience which would turn the ordinary upside down”.
It is open during trading hours and there is no entry fee.
The Independent on Saturday