Art and Mind

The human mind is a very powerful tool and organ. There are however imperfections in the way it processes things. Illusions for example, are visual stimuli that trick the brain because the brain cannot process all visual images correctly. Why do we see puddles forming up the road while we are driving in our cars on a hot summer day? Why do some parts of a drawing look bigger when in fact they are smaller? There have been many artists that have used illusions in their paintings, M.C. Escher, Scott

Kim, and Salvador Dali. Each artist employed a different illusionary style. In Dali’s works of art, he often uses perceptual ambiguity and we often see hidden faces of himself or others that are painted into his paintings. To see these images, we must step away and look at certain objects from a different perspective. We must first comprehend why illusions happen to begin exploring perceptual ambiguity. To answer the first question proposed above, we must understand that heat makes light waves bend. So, the light streaming in from the sky doesn't travel in a straight line to your eye from up above, it comes to your eye from a different direction, in fact it looks like its coming from the pavement. So your brain doesn't quite know how to interpret it, it sees a patch of sky right in the middle of the road, and ends up thinking that its a puddle of water. This is also what happens in deserts, when the heat distorts light from the sky to make look like there's a lake in the middle

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