Trompe l’Oeils: Traditional and Augmented

Through the use of trompe l’oeils, a French term meaning ‘to fool the eye’, architects offer evidence of being able to or a desire to overcome material, economical and even static limitations by expanding a physical space into an imaginary one with paintings and frescos. This can be observed in the church of Sant’Ignazio, which contains two trompe l’oeils: one that adds ornament to the cupola not afforded in the original construction and another that expands the vaulted ceiling of the church into a painted heavenly world. A new form of augmented reality trompe l’oeil can be experienced through technological means, layering a virtual world onto the physical one with projections on screens or directly on finished architectural surfaces. One example is the proof of concept system created by Microsoft Research called IllumiRoom which expands the virtual world of a video game from the television screen to the living room through the use of a projector. Both the traditional and the new augmented trompe l’oeil face similar challenges such as both are restricted by their vantage point. As a person moves through a physical space, they will discover that there is a location where the virtual or imaginary expansion is ideally viewed whereas other spots may show revealing telltale signs of the deception. The new augmented trompe l’oeil, however, has the possibility of augmenting the illusion through moving and evolving virtual expansions. The illusion is no longer limited to a static image but can allow for interaction with the physical space and its inhabitants through projections that react to their movements. Through a comparison between the traditional trompe l’oeil and the new augmented version, this paper shows the successes and failures each contain for creating the illusion of the expansion of space.