los angeles CALIFORNIA
SCI-Arc
Critic: Kristy BALLIET
suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.
Yi Ning LUI: “Now you See Me” celebrates optical trickery and tests the contemporary observer’s visual expertise, in the spirit of our complex and ever-changing relationship with the world around us.
- Yi Ning LUI, “Now You See Me…”, Elevation
- Yi Ning LUI, “Now You See Me…”, Perspective
- Yi Ning LUI, “Now You See Me…”, Perspective
- Yi Ning LUI, “Now You See Me…”, Plan
Nowadays it is easy for us to decode visual images because of the ubiquity of image-based media. We have no trouble deciphering illusory representations, such as augmented realities, animation and virtual 3D space. This has led to a loss of magic and enchantment for more sophisticated visual techniques. My project harnesses various optical effects to challenge the modern observer’s cognition, in a playful celebration of color, perspective and formal illusions.
The Tech Incubator School is almost like a glitch in the urban landscape, as its adjacency to one of San Francisco’s main highways means it will flash by, only to disappear behind a plain building a second later. Escher-like impossible geometries, combined orthographic views, pixel patterns and sheared objects act as a feast for the eyes, engaging and mesmerizing the on-looker. Color highlights geometrical changes, and helps create the overall illusion of continuity between forms that seem to connect in elevation, but are separate in reality. The design of the buildings was curated primarily in elevation, to emphasize picturesque views, with the plain blue towers acting as a backdrop to the spectacle.
