The Ethereal Veil of Visual Perception

The rich palette of perceptual effects elicited from simple patterns of black and white lines—such as the paintings of op artists—underlines just how much science still needs to unravel before the complexity of visual perception is fully understood. In this presentation, I would like to show how a few of the more subtle and some of the most salient perceptual effects experienced in black and white line patterns can be interpreted as a concerted outcome of various very early stages of visual processing. Specifically, what seem to be complex effects can be simulated with relatively simple models. The effects bear witness to the intuitive skill with which the artists wield considerable visual impact on their canvas. Scientific scrutiny, of their art and of the possible visual processing involved, leads to new insight into the perceptual complexity experienced in these deceptively simple paintings. In a sense, their works present the construction of an ephemeral canvas within stripes of black and white paint.