Fields · Study 012
Op Stripes
Black and white stripes bent by a travelling wave until the flat screen seems to swell and ripple. An op art study with a bulge that follows you.
What you're looking at
The canvas holds nothing but vertical bands. Each band edge is displaced sideways by a sine wave that depends on height and time, and by a lens shaped push around the pointer. Your visual system reads the squeezing and stretching of the stripes as depth, because that is what a striped surface does when it curves.
The idea behind it
Op art of the 1960s worked with exactly this economy: one element, repeated, with a systematic distortion. No shading is used. The sense of volume is produced entirely by your own perception trying to explain the spacing.
Try this
Move the pointer to push a bulge through the stripes. Hold still and it seems to hover above the page.
