This art installation is named Fata Morgana, and was set up by Ralph Helmick and Stuart Schechter in 2001 at Ft. Lauderdale, FL. This sculpture is a romantic pictorial exercise pushing a traditional painterly subject–the seascape–into three dimensions. As you can see, the central image is a cruise ship and its reflection. Over 16 000 cables are suspended from a framework attached to the ceiling. If you jump inside the article, you can see the sculpture up close, and you will notice that it is made of thousands of smaller sculptures. Absoultely amazing! If you love these kind of illusionary installations, be sure to check Mark Jenkins project “Embeds“, along with Unity Triangle, levitating dumpster, house on a museum…
what the heck? is that just painted on the wall or something?
yes all the hanging beads are just painted on the wall :p
besides, read the intro from vurdlak.. he states 16000 cables are used…
That is SOOO cool.
Pandas, this is a 3D image made by hanging objects from the ceiling.
That is very intruiging. Must have taken the designer quite a while to allign all of those hanging shapes.
Pandas…Read the article and look at the other pictures. It is not a painting, it is a bunch of shapes suspended from wires that when viewed from a distance make a whole shape.
Aaah… but does it actually make a whole shape, or is it just making your brain fill in the gaps and think there is an object there? Or is it relying on the frailties of human sight to not be able to see the spaces between points?
Or am I just full of garbage?
A very cool illusion, this one.
I love this kind of art work, they have one like this in Midway Airport in Chicago called Rara Avis.
Wow, that’s so skilled. I applaud the guys who made that.
i like how the artist uses the pyramids for waves
It’s a painting, I know because I can tell. Open your eyes people! At least it’s not photoshoped this time.
Right…it’s a painting…it’s so obvious, especially considering that it looks completely different from different angles…yep, definitely a painting. ;)
Why would they paint strings?
YooPoo it’s not a painting….I looked in to the sculpture I mentioned earlier and it’s by the same artist…I’ve see his work personally it’s not a painting.
to see more of this artists work take a look at http://www.handsart.net/
Narro87. can you not see that it is individual little things hanging from the ceiling and plus he said so in the discription yeesh
Wow… That is amazing!
it is not a painting. it is objects hanging from the celling.
that is very cool!
hey, don’t underestimate his ability to tell things. that’s not fair.
YooPoo, is ya head full of poo? Or is it that you just can’t you imagine that some people are called artists for a reason? Some boys and girls are actually skilled you know.
And let’s not get overexcited though, it is not that hard making a sculpture like this these days. All you need is some 3d modelling software like Autocad, 3d Max or similar, a lot of thin wire, a lot of beeds and a lot of patience. Ralph Helmick and Stuart Schechter had these. Difference between them and us is that they had the idea and made it into practice. That’s why we call them artists and call ourselves …
that is so awsome
YooPoo: It is definitely NOT a painting. Did you not see the second picture which shows a close-up of how the ship image is made? Have you never gone out and seen such a thing in person for yourself?
It is a bunch of objects hanging from the ceiling by string, arranged at various heights and depths to create the desired image.
Try it yourself. It is not that hard to create something like this at a basic level.
The first picture looks pretty amazing; it is something to make you think about. After seeing the other pictures it just makes it a little confusing and I think it takes away from the first picture. It is still definite talent and I wouldn’t be able to do it! Props to the artist!!
Please don’t take this the wrong way; I mean no offense and it is obvious that English is not your 1st language, but I must point out that every single picture on your site has the same mistake:
… and share it’s link with a community…
There’s no apostrophe in it’s unless you mean “it is”. And, in the context you are using, you don’t.
Also, I assume “Stumble Upon” is a Website(?) and, if so, it should be capitalized or italicized not only to be proper, but to make the sentence readable.
If you really do want to make your site more popular, please show your commitment to quality. and fix these errors Thank you in advance.
C’mon, don’t you guys see the tiny cables?
They show up clearly contrasting against the wall.
Nice work!
anonymous, I think you’re right. I mean, look at the third and fourth pictures. If you hadn’t seen the others both of those would seem like random dots in the air! Cool illusion by the way.
I recognize this is supposed to be real… I understand the different pictures from different angles and all but …really…. look at the pictures again. Sorry, I am not buying it. You could design this in 3dsmax and view from multiple angles too. this may be good manipulation but without more info… I actually find myself agreeing with YooPoo. Look at the staircase shadows, look at the top of the pillar shadows, these all look to formulated and “perfect”. Perfectly fake if you ask me.
…remind me never to be sarcastic again…I think it’s real, not a painting.
But I come to one conclusion from all of this…people don’t think that an optical illusion is real unless it’s flawed, which is something really ironic. The *better* job someone does, the less likely it is that people believe it. Isn’t that exactly what an optical illusion is? Something unbelievable? I assume Thomas, that you won’t be happy about whether it’s real or not unless you see it yourself, in which case, it is truly strange that you come to a site like this, where all we have are pictures of the objects and no direct access to the physical ones. What here *couldn’t* be Photoshopped if someone wanted to hard enough? We have to make a drastic assumption that the person presenting the illusion is telling the truth about it. If you don’t, then what here counts? One by one, all of these illusions can be dismissed because they have the potential of being fakes.
We’re now left with two possibilities when we’re confronted with what appears to be a legitimate optical illusion. Either we trust the submitter, or we don’t. I’ll leave that for you to decide.
Dear Thomas Rodgers,
If these pictures wouldn’t look “perfect”, you’d say “look at the picture, all blurry and bad lighting, obviously faked…” wouldn’t you?
Of course these images can be made with 3dmax, but than it would be a virtual image, an image of something that isn’t an actual part of the real space we live and move in. In a few minutes I can draw you a portrait of your person having breasts, wearing a zebra striped skin with a tree growing out of your behind whilst flying a space shutlle, but that wouldn’t be as cool as making it really happen, would it?
Of course I could get the ball in the hoop easier by lowering the hoop, but I would’t like the game anymore. Would you?
This is a cool piece of art and I guess you just can’t stand others doing things differently and still end up having a nice product. I challege you: go ahead, make your 3dmax images and show ’em to the world ! In several public and semi public spaces these two artists already did… learn to live with it, dude.
this is really cool. props to the artist who designed this. it looks sort of like a “ghost ship” type thing.
it took some time to do this.
if you’re convinced that it’s fake, you’re stupid. there’s one of those in the evanston library too. it’s above some stairs and it looks like a face.
wait…
what?
I’ve seen this in the philadelphia airport, just that its planes, and i think anima;s
I used to live in a city where they had art like this in the city hall. But, they didn’t do it properly and after a few weeks some of the little sculptures(well, not that little, they fell because of the weight) fell down. Luckily no one got hurt. After this they rebuild the whole thing with smaller parts
nice
Over 16000 cables? Is that a typo? If not, then there must have been a computer somewhere in the design process. For us nerds, how about some measurements? How big is it, left to right, top to bottom, front to back? And how many small objects are dangling? is it just one per cable? I love both the concept and execution.
nice. but i don't get it. <3
what ignorant people who think that this is a painting! just appreciate that this is a skilled artist who is dedicated. how can you not see the objects hanging from the ceiling? (i am talking to YooPoo and Narro87 by the way)
oops, i just read your comment, narro87 tht you were sarcastic, sry bout tht. i still think YooPoo is an ignoramus though
they r hanging from invisible wires, but its still awsome!
cooooooooolo!
lol narro87 even put a winking face ;) after his comment and everyone STILL thinks hes serrious,
Coooool)))))))))I want it at the my home)
It looks like a lot of work, just to think it up then make it….But it looks grate.
That must have taken FOREVER to do.
Agreed!
That man is brilliant!!!
Cool , its a ,…. -_- …
its really fantastic to ther eyes