Optical Illusion Transforms A Street In Montreal Into Wavy Sand Dunes

If you are a die-hard Star Wars fan, you might remember the famous dialogue of Obi-Wan. He once said, “Your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them”. And maybe he was not wrong. Why are we saying so? It’s because we have seen a masterpiece by a Canadian architecture firm NÓS. We are talking about none other than the “Moving Dunes” 

What is interesting about this art is that it looks like the dunes are bending but they are not. If you will see these dunes, you will feel like they are making a deceptive path. This path looks like it is mimicking the patterns that are generally seen on the sand in a desert. 

This art firm says that the artwork looks like “an experiential mirage in the heart of downtown Montreal that interweaves real and virtual.” Actually, this artwork was made as a part of an exhibition in 2008. 

If you also want to see the moving dunes we are talking about, keep scrolling. 

The “Moving Dunes” is the illusory artwork installed on a street in Montreal, Canada

To know more, we talked to the architect of the “Moving Dunes”, Charles Laurence Proulx. He said, this idea came as they had to create “a bi-dimensional installation to maintain vehicle access across the street, but we wanted to give the street a topography, a volume”. It was inspired by “the graphic technique of cubism to create the illusion (trompe-l’oeil) of depth.”

It bends the viewer’s perspective in such a way that the Avenue de Musée street appears to be moving

“First, we did a 3D model of the topography and spheres with our architectural modeling tool and with a simple pattern applied to the topography. Then, we worked with the museum to choose a graphic pattern and colors to match the exhibition branding and identity.”

“At last, we mapped the pattern on the the street as a giant stencil.”

The mural was inspired by cubism and created by Canadian architecture firm NÓS

He further said “From Africa to the Americas: Face-to-face Picasso, Past and Present at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA).”

“Moreover, “through this process, ‘Moving Dunes’ introduces the public to the essence of this approach in a playful way.”

As the viewer moves, the sand shapes are reversed, and the ground comes alive

 

Ekta Singh
Ekta Singh
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