Reversing Cubes and The Folded Chessboard
On the right is the ancient and well known reversing cube illusion. It is pre-Christian in its origins. If you stare at the cubes for any period of time they will go through spontaneous reversals. One moment the top faces are top faces and the next they become bottom faces. The illusion depends upon depriving the viewer of the cues needed to make a valid judgement as to which way the cubes should be viewed.
Add a man to one of the faces as shown here on the right and the ambiguity disappears because the viewer has been provided with a cue as to how to read the image. It occurred to me that, just as the absence of cues provides an ambiguity, the presence of contradictory cues could do the same thing ........... and thus “The Terrace” was born.
The Folded Chessboard by Sandro Del Prete
Despite their astonishing similarity, my image was created independently of this one. I had simply based my Terrace on the reversibility of the top face of the classic reversing cubes illusion as shown above.
When somebody sent me Sandro Del Prete’s “Folded Chessboard” image I was utterly appalled at the similarities and how close I had unintentionally come to outright plagiarism! I also realised that at some long distant time, as a young man, I had seen the image somewhere before. Whether some subconscious memory was at work when I created the “Terrace” I have no idea. It would certainly seem possible.
Copyright Sandro Del Prete. No reproduction without the permission of the artist
CAMBIGUITIES is the official site of illusion creator David Macdonald. All images strictly copyright of the artist.