ENGLISH FOR DESIGN 1
Meeting 8
Prepared by :
Dr. Ir. Indra Tjahjani, SS, MLA, MMSI
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OP ART
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OP ART - 1
• Op (optical illusion) art relies on confusing the brain with
particular ambiguous arrangements of shapes. They
consist of an equal proportion of black and white,
however they may be distributed. We are designed
physiologically to make ‘sense’ of what we see, and we
do this by finding the structure of any arrangement. If
there are two identical structures, one white and one
black, the eye moves rapidly from one to the other trying
to find the dominant one, and this rapid eye movement
causes the dazzle typical of op art. Vasarely began
working on op art between 1931 and 1938, and
continued after 1951, but in England, Bridget Riley is the
most well known practitioner.
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OP ART - 2
• Equal portions of complementary colors
(red and green, orange and blue, etc) may
be used instead of black and white.
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OP ART - 3
• Most op art images are worked out carefully to some
predetermined plan, and all the edges of the shapes
must be very sharp for the visual disturbance to work.
The original paper could have been painted in black and
white stripes of equal widths. Concentric circles with an
equal distance between each circle could then have
been cut out. By rotating the outermost ring until the
stripes were at right angles to the background and so on
until the centre was reached, one could achieve the
effect in this picture.
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OP ART - 4
• Exactly the same procedure of cutting out
concentric circles could have been used in
this example, but instead of altering the
stripes at affix 90 change each time, they
are moved progressively a little more off
the horizontal.
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OP ART - 5
• This time great care has been taken to see that
the black stripes of one circle correspond exactly
to the white stripes of the previous circle and so
on, producing the check-board pattern. Most
intriguing is the effect of changing the color of
the border around the design, by shifting the
emphasis of the shapes, one can see black
shapes on a white ground, or vise versa.
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PLEASE SEE THE OTHER READING
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