The Visual Effect of Surface Decomposition

This paper has been devoted to the influence of surface decomposition on the visual perception of flat and three-dimensional figures’ sizes and proportions. A common stereotype is that the object surface’s vertical decompositions visually increase its height, decreasing its width, and vice versa the horizontal ones increase the width, reducing the height. There are a lot of examples for this in the art history, architecture and design, including academic literature. It’s approved unsubstantiated that "rooms with transverse stripes on the walls are perceived as wide and low and give the impression of movement and dynamism of space. Longitudinal bands, on the contrary, visually increase the height and create the impression of peace and static character". In the present paper has been demonstrated the fallacy of this stereotype propagated in art, architecture and design. Surface decompositions visually increase the transverse, and not the longitudinal in relation to decompositions dimension of the object. This was noticed by scientists for a long time and is known as the Helmholtz effect. The converse proposition, as well as a proposal that under certain conditions the opposite effect is possible, is either unfounded or based on incorrect drawings, examples of which are given in the paper. Images of flat and volumetric bodies, carried out by the author in a graphic editor, take into account different factors influencing the perception, such as contour lines, shades, perspective distortions. Have been considered decompositions for a variety of geometrical figures and clothing. Taken into account the possible influence of other visual effects. These images show that the Helmholtz effect pronouncedness in different images is different, but the opposite effect is always absent. A discrete object appears larger than equal-sized continual one, as the discrete object carries more visual information, and divided material object occupies a space no less than the holistic one.