The secret is that it's a film maker's illusion, in reality it's impossible in 3 dimensions. I was one of the around 30,000 people at the "Imagine RIT" festival on May 4. I had noticed the Escherian stairwell in the list of exhibits and realized that it couldn't be "real" but was interested in seeing what it was all about. There were signs pointing to the Escherian stairwell all over campus but we soon realized that they were pointing in random directions. We finally found the classroom where the film maker played the video seen on the Internet plus a shorter one where he explained that it was his master's project and what he was trying to accomplish. He also gave a short live talk and answered questions. Nobody in the showing that I went to asked about how it was actually accomplished but it was obviously just clever editing.
Many people throughout the world are currently being fooled by this tour of the Escherian Stairwell located in the Frank B. Gannett building at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The tour is an elaborate hoax created by RIT film/animation graduate student Michael Lacanilao and features people experiencing the stairwell illusion for the first time.
The video was made as a project to create a myth about RIT. The video on the bottom of the page I've linked to shows the guy who made the project explaining what he did to start the myth... Though in my opinion... having a video revealing that it's just myth kinda takes defeats the purpose of it becoming a myth to begin with. Should have just posted the project video and have that go viral.
Its really easy. There is one stairway leading down, and another leading up.
You walk up to the top of the stairs, then go down two flights, and walk around the corner. You then go back and edit the tape to look like you just came out at the bottom.
For the part where you walk all the way around with a group of people holding hands you have to have at least one set of identical twins. In the famous escherian stairwell video, they have those black guys. You get people to connect hands. Then you show the first twin, without showing who he is holding hands with. Then you walk around until you come to his twin brother. Make sure you don't show who he is holding hands with, because you can only repeat one person, unless you have more than one set of twins.
That is how the escherian stairwell works. Pretty clever huh? Its actually just takes some simple video editing to make it work.
Also, it helps to make up a fake tv show and call it episode 3 to lend it credibility.
The secret of the Escher stairwell is that it is an illusion.
You mean the drawing by Escher? That s an optical illusion, no such stairway could be actually built.
it works pretty good......
What's the "secret" behind it? the one at RIT.
