Back in January, I shared a visually baffling image I’d stumbled across: a glitch quilt. The quilt was purposely sown with opposing colors to make it look BLURRY, and it’s as clever as it is hard to look at.

I’ve always been a sucker for optical illusions, which I consider puzzles for the eye. They’re a visual treat that tricks you into seeing things that aren’t there. These inspired bits of perceptual trickery can fool you into thinking near is far, big is small, or two dimensions are really three.

And I’ve been fascinated ever since by this growing subset of glitch art where incredible precision is required to create physical art that looks fuzzy, uncertain, or even moving from the right angle.

So you can imagine my joy when I found this YouTube short:

This is the work of artist Enzo Prina, a physical media artist who specializes in Moiré art.

What is Moiré, you may ask? Well, XKCD has a fun explanation:

But please allow me to elaborate.

Moiré, which is both a mathematical and an artistic term, is the use of two or more overlapping grid patterns with regular spacing to create an interference pattern.

By overlapping these intricately formed and carefully spaced patterns at an angle to each other (and not directly lined up), you create the eye-catching patterns you see above.

Moiré patterns are all around us. If you’ve ever seen a Houndstooth jacket on an old television program, or tried to photograph a TV screen or computer screen at the wrong angle, you’ve no doubt noticed a Moiré pattern.

While making Moiré patterns isn’t difficult, you can see that Prina’s work is far more complex than simply layering two patterns. He maps out his designs with tape, meticulously pulling layer by layer of tape strands from his work as he paints it, making the creation process as gorgeous and mind-bending as the final product.

It’s truly something to behold, both during and after.

Prina claimed on LinkedIn back in January that he’d just started making art again after a ten-year break, and clearly that break has reenergized him, as his work continues to evolve and diversify in fascinating ways.

This intersection of art and mathematics really struck a chord with me. It’s not surprisingly, really, given that I’ve had Tom Lehrer on the brain for days, and he similarly combined math and artistic whimsy to create works of art that played with perception and imagination.

What a treat.

Now everyone, go stare at something boring and rest your eyes for a while.

Happy puzzling, everyone!