Escher and LEGO

Idea

Dutch graphic artist M.C.Escher is famous for his pictures displaying impossible 3D constructions. In other words, he managed to create pictures, which display “reality” that contradicts with some physical and geometry laws.

Andrew Lipson and Daniel Shiu managed to recreate Escher’s impossible constructions in LEGO®. Well…sort of, sometimes they "cheated", but they are honest about it.

• Escher's Balcony displays a Mediterranean townscape with a distorted balcony in the middle. On the photograph with the townscape rendered in LEGO, the distortion is achieved by digitally post-processing 16 images of the LEGO construction.
• Belvedere displays a three story dome in which the top two stories are supported by columns. These columns are intertwined in an impossible way. The LEGO construction looks almost “real” when looked at from certain angle.
• Ascending and Descending shows a system of four staircases, which form a closed loop, although each staircase is ascending. The trick here is to take the picture exactly from the right spot in order to create the optical illusion of the loop.
• Relativity shows system of walls and staircases. No optical illusion is used here. However, the gravity seems to work here in three different directions. In order to reproduce this in LEGO, no difficult tricks were needed. The picture of the LEGO construction had to be taken just from the right angle once the lighting was setup properly.
• Waterfall displays an optical illusion of a loop consisting of a waterfall and four channels where the water always descends. Digital processing of two images was needed to achieve the illusion that is displayed on Escher's picture.

Nice part of those web pages is that they explain ideas behind the LEGO constructions and the digital post-processing. Very inspiring indeed.