Visioni Fenomenali

At the start of the exhibit, guided by the voice of a scientist, visitors will enter a giant camera to discover the secrets of photography and how the human eye works. As with the photographic process, the image that forms in our eye is upside down: it’s up to the brain to ‘straighten things out’, providing a suitable, useful image of the world and reality around us.

In the second section of the exhibition, a video shows us how the human eye works and the various parts that make up the complex system that allows us to see and interpret reality. The cornea, anterior chamber, pupil, and lens intercept light and images and transmit them—inverted—to the optic disc through the hyaloid canal. From the optic disc, via the optic nerve, the image reaches the brain, which processes it in the visual cortex.

In the third section, two faces combine in a double optical illusion: on the one hand you get the impression that the face is following you, on the other it’s hard to understand which face is concave and which is convex. The illusion happens because our visual system implicitly assumes that light comes from above: the concave face is then interpreted as convex. Also, when we are in motion relative to a stationary object, elements that are closer appear to move faster than the distant parts: but in this case, what seems closer to us is actually further away and moves more slowly, thereby creating the impression of rotation.