Final Project for Math 8

Playing With Perspective

Among Salvador Dalí's sketches there is an idea for a horse, which, when seen from the right perspective looks like a normal horse, but which is actually distorted along a great distance. At first he wanted it to be built in a hallway, but then he grew more ambitious and wanted to have the rear end of the horse on a building at the end of a street. Again he decided this was not large enough, however, and proposed placing it on the side of a mountain and finally, on the moon. This sculpture was never built, however, and the horse remained simply a twisted idea.

We decided it would be a great project to bring this idea to fruition. It was much more complicated than we first anticipated, however. First, how is it really distorted? What makes it look right from the front? How does one determine the point from which it must be viewed, and what must be taken into consideration with positioning the horse?

The Design Process