3.8.2008
The
Penrose Triangle (which was invented by an artist called Oskar
Reutersvaerd) is a well-known visual paradox. It constitutes an 'impossible
object', that is, our visual system interprets it as an object that we know
couldn't be actually realized in space and time. Donald Hoffman, in his book
Visual Intelligence: How we create what we see[1], describes and
explains this and similar interpretation traps that lead our perception
astray.
When I wrote in a
previous post about time travel fiction, and how we are sometimes led into
thinking that there is a strange sort of story loop in them, I might well have
compared such situations to the Penrose Triangle. We may indeed think of
time travel stories, with their story knots and perspective fusion, as an
analogue to those interpretation traps; they are in the realm of narrative
fiction what the Penrose Triangle and co. are in the realm of visual
presentation. And there's nothing mystical about them either. Just as
the visual 'paradox' can be explained by an account of the workings of our
(visual) perception system, the 'paradoxes' in time travel stories can be
clarified by an analysis of the narrative techniques and our habits of
interpreting them.
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[1] Donald D. Hoffman, Visual Intelligence. New York: W.W. Norton
1998.
