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| Tree Art displays along the San Diego Harbor |
Picture a window that opens up a lovely vineyard with big purple grapes and curly green vines stretching out for miles and hills in the distance. What is the difference in experience if you were to take a photograph of a place like this versus sitting at a real window looking out? The mind can be tricked, so it cannot be the visual aspect. A photograph captures perfectly every detail, every shadow and every line. What it cannot provide is a different point of view, a new angle or a new perspective. Two dimensions will always give you the same image and the same structure no matter how you look at it. If you sit perfectly still, sitting at the window will give you the same experience, but when you move, you might see farther to the right or farther to the left.
If we think about the difference in design, why would a design in a two dimensional space be different than a three dimensional space? René Magritte explains very well how we might think of the differences between what we often look at on paper versus a sculpture or a crafted object. In The Treason of Images (1928-1929), Magritte writes in his caption "this is not a pipe" though the drawing is of a pipe. He seeks to emphasize the difference between the "idea" of something, its representation and Jean Piaget's theory of object permanence, which is the idea that we know something exists even when we don't see it. Magritte might point out that often we do the opposite of object permanence, we think something exists when it is in fact not a "thing" at all, but another form of that thing.
So, though it is not the visual aspect of a two dimensional design versus the three dimensional design that is different, because ultimately they can be almost the same and therefore infer a similar experience, it is the idea and the mental knowledge of knowing that the design is portraying while the three dimensional design is.
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