Made in Japan
A Japanese professor is behind the snazzy illusion on Lady Gaga's new album cover
What's the relationship between US diva Lady Gaga and a Japanese professor in psychology? The answer is: Lady Gaga’s new album “Artpop”, which just hit No 1 on the Japanese music chart, features an optical-illusion artwork designed by Akiyoshi Kitaoka, a professor at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.
“I’m glad my artwork drew people's attention,” he says. “I hope people all over the world will see how interesting optical illusions are.”
Kitaoka, 52, made the illusion titled “Gangaze” in 2008 and displayed it on his website.
The image on the album cover features objects that look like the spikes of a sea urchin and gives viewers an impression that those spikes are moving and popping out. People working with Lady Gaga asked Kitaoka for approval to use the image.
At the university, Kitaoka teaches psychology. Originally studying animal psychology, Kitaoka came up with an idea to use optical illusions when he was studying the senses of monkeys.
Kitaoka started designing images using a personal computer in the mid 1990s. Optical illusions can make people perceive that a motionless image is moving and make a graphic image look different from its actual form. These illusions have raised fundamental questions about how people perceive the outside world through their eyes and brains.
“Studies can unveil various things about visual senses,” Kitaoka says, adding that he believes that the world of optical illusions is profound.
And in the USA
In her single "Applause”, Lady Gaga sings, “One second I’m a Koons, then suddenly the Koons is me,” a statement about mingling art and pop and transcending the bonds of genre definition. In creating the artwork for her upcoming record, American artist Jeff Koons was dealing with transcendence as well, casting Gaga in a variety of metamorphic roles in a single image.
Gaga has been flirting with the art world, becoming a muse for performance artist Marina Abramovic and tapping Koons to create her album art. That art mingles together a variety of Koons’ pieces – from “Woman in Tub” to his gazing ball series, also represented in Gaga’s “Applause”
The Nation
