MIT Museum: Optical Illusion
MIT Museum Trip
Lesson Plan: Optical Illusions @@
Duration: 1hr20mins
Age group: 8th-10th Grade
Overview
The students will be introduced to a brief history about optical illusions in art. This lesson would be given before their trip to the MIT museum. The students will then be working in groups to come up with examples of their own version of the optimal illusion theme that they picked. They will present their version of the optimal illusion example and explain the usage of this particular illusion.
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Procedure
- Students will each have a packet about optical illusion on their seat (see worksheet sontent below).
- Images of examples will be displayed on the projector. Students will be guided through the philosophic view of optical illusions. Next, they will try to categorize the images shown on the projector with the hint on the worksheet (realism/perspective/surrealism/op art).
- They will be divided into groups of threes. They will further decide which topic to focus on (Impossible Optical Illusions/3 Dimensional Illusions/ Camouflage and Optical Illusion/ Facial Illusion/After Images/ Ambiguous Optical Illusions/Distortion Illusions/Color and Shadow Illusions/Other).
They will focus on a few questions:
How does this illusion work?
How can you use this form of illusion in your everyday life?
How can it come in handy?
Interpret your own version! (As a group or on your own)
4. Present time.
Materials
Assorted paper
Scissor
Marker and Color pencil
Adhesive
Wrap up
Using optical illusions can be entertaining, but some jobs depend on them, and can be very useful. Pilots need to be skilled in flying airplanes so they practice in flight simulators run by computers to make situations appear that aren’t really there, similar to virtual reality.
Because wearing clothing with vertical stripes make people look skinnier and wearing clothing with horizontal stripes make people look heavier, fashion designers have used illusions when designing clothes. They have also learned that color can have a visual effect. For example, wearing black causes people to look skinnier.
Architects and interior designers can now use computer programs to make their designs look three dimensional. This helps the home buyer better see what the product will look like.
Finally, landscape architects use illusions to make gardens look bigger. If they create a path that gets smaller as it goes away, it will actually make the garden look bigger when it is really small.
Worksheet content
What is Optical Illusion?
Optical Illusion: a picture or image that tricks your eyes and makes you see something that is not actually there.
In the beginning, people didn’t know when they were looking at an optical illusion if their brain was playing tricks on them or if their eyes were playing tricks on them. A lot of people thought they could explain why we see optical illusions.
Artist Felice Varini demonstrates a form of optical illusions.
Greek Philosophers has different opinions about
Optical Illusion
Philosophers: someone who studies and develops ideas about the nature and meaning of existence, truth, good and evil.
Epicharmus and Protagorus both lived around 450 B.C. Epicharmus believed that our senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching) were not paying enough attention and were messing up. His exact words were, “The mind sees and the mind hears. The rest is blind and deaf.” Protagorus went against what Epicharmus said. He thought that our senses and body were just fine. He believed that it was the environment that was messing us up. He said, “Man is nothing but a bundle of sensations.”
Aristotle, who lived around 350 B.C. said both Epicharmus and Protagorus were both right and wrong. He said our senses can be trusted, but they can be easily fooled. For example, when it’s a very hot day and you stand near the road, heat waves rise and we can see them. Our senses are right, we can see the waves. But, if you look through the waves at a tree, the tree appears to be wiggling. That is when our sense get fooled.
Another Greek was Plato. Plato lived around 300 B.C. He said our five sense need our mind to help interpret what they see. In other words, that the eyes and mind need to work together. That is exactly what we think now.
Optical Illusions in ART
Realism
For centuries painters have tricked us into thinking that something is real when it is only a painting illusion.
Perspective
In the 1600s artists started to play around with perspective to create impossible pictures. In “False Perspective” (1754) by William Hogarth, the scene looks normal until you look closely.
Surrealism
A group of artists who called themselves surrealists painted some of the weirdest painting ever. Regardless of their weirdness, they were fantastic. These artists created the word surrealism to describe their work because their painting was beyond normal reality. Salvador Dali and Rene Margritte are two famous artists of this time period.
Escher
In the 1050s a Dutch artist, M.C. Escher, created art which seemed real but could never exist. He did this by playing tricks with your eyes by using math.
Op Art
The OpArt Movement was created in the 1960s. OpArt painters use optical illusions to show different puzzling effects. Most of these paintings change while you look at them. Some paintings look like they are moving. The picture below is “Square of Three” by Reginald Neal.
References:
http://dornob.com/interior-design-wall-art-incredible-optical-illusions/?ref=search
http://library.thinkquest.org/J0110336/history.htm