The mind-bending “Droste effect” can be hypnotic, but it’s implications are also extremely important.
What is the Droste Efffect?
Droste Effect refers to an artistic technique that creates a recursive picture in which a smaller version of the image is placed inside itself repeatedly. In still images, the recursion is limited by the fixed resolution of the picture but can repeat as an infinite loop in animations.
knowyourmeme.com
The Droste effect … is the effect of a picture recursively appearing within itself, in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear, creating a loop which theoretically could go on forever, but realistically only goes on as far as the image’s quality allows.
The effect is named for a Dutch brand of cocoa, with an image designed by Jan Misset in 1904. It has since been used in the packaging of a variety of products. The effect was anticipated in medieval works of art such as Giotto’s Stefaneschi Triptych of 1320.
Wikipedia
In the series of images below you can see how Escher starts the image with a man looking at a photo and as you look further, this image will take you deeper into a never ending loop of the same image.
Today the creations of the Droste effect are mostly done using digital images and there are some helpful solutions to make it easy to create your own piece.
via webdesignerdepot
In 1956, the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher made an unusual lithograph with the title ‘Print Gallery’. It shows a young man viewing a print in an exhibition gallery. Amongst the buildings depicted on the print, he sees paradoxically the very same gallery that he is standing in. A lot is known about the way in which Escher made his lithograph. It is not nearly as well known that it contains a hidden ‘Droste effect’, or infinite repetition; but this is brought to light by a mathematical analysis of the studies used by Escher. On the basis of this discovery, a team of mathematicians at Leiden produced a series of hallucinating computer animations. These show, among others, what happens inside the mysterious spot in the middle of the lithograph that Escher left blank.
Hendrik Willem Lenstra – Escher and the Droste effect
The Importance of the Droste Effect, Recursion, Chaos, and infinity
Why The Droste Effect is Important.
The Droste effect is visually pithy example of infinity, complexity and recursion. The philosophic and psychological importance of the concept points to our inherent selfishness and our own limitations: our inability to truly grasp the infinity of the universe, and the effects we have in the world.
sonder n. The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own — populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness — an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com
Cool Video Examples of the Droste Effect:
Clap Your Brains Off
Creative Animated Gif Art:
How to Make Your Own Droste Effect Art:
Guide by Creative Cow for After Effects:
Easy After Effect Video Template:
Guide for Photoshop:
Easy Photoshop Action:
- Droste Effect Pro Photoshop Action: 2-Step Droste Action Effect with Photoshop.
Simple Apps to Create the Droste Effect:
SnapChat:
Droste Effect Inspiration:
Best Recursive Droste Effect Meme of All Time
The Droste Effect
Because you can never have too much of that kind of art that goes into your mind and gobbles it up.
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