Escher's Waterfall seemingly brought to life

[Neroon]

Escher's Waterfall

I've always been fascinated with Escher's work, so this particularly caught my eye. Not to mention it's driving me crazy trying to figure out how it's been done!

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

My guess is that the construction is a perspective trick as the camera viewpoint doesn't change, the flowing coloured water is CGI, and the waterwheel is powered by an electric motor and turned on by remote control.

 

[Jadzia]

I'm inclined to think it is real water, but is a perspective illusion.

Things I'm assuming:
(1) The water is real, and because water flows down an incline, the gutter must be layed out on floor level heading over towards the door.

(2) The tower/upright at the front is actually above the water wheel but because of the camera position it appears to meet up with the gutter that's by the door.

(3) The waterfall is real. In order for water to get up there it has to be being pumped up the tower.
If you look at the gutter just before where it falls, the flow is quite rough, unlike other places in the gutter.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

^ Yes, I think that's a better explanation -- CGI doesn't have to be invoked to explain everything. Perhaps the pump is turned on by a water sensor at the far end.

 

[BlobVanDam]

Looks like some crazy perspective trickery, but I don't think there's any computer trickery. Although I wouldn't be surprised if he used a computer to design something to fake it that well.
I tried to get a sense of what was where using the shadows and reflections, but it is very well put together. It's hard to tell from the video quality whether the water is actually hitting the water wheel. I don't think it could possibly be actually hitting the wheel. You can tell from how slowly the water moves that the whole thing must slightly tilts downwards as the water moves, and not upwards as it tricks you into believing. But how the waterfall works, I have no idea. Just amazing.

 

[Jadzia]

If you look at the last few seconds where he walks back to the camera, look how his shadow crosses the frame.

First thing to go into shadow is the right hand tower. Then the front tower. Then the left-right pieces of the gutter that head towards the right hand tower.

That makes it seem as though that the gutter is in at least two parts, with all pieces being supported by that front tower.

If we move the camera a bit, this is what I think we'd see:

The colours I'm using to represent the different heights above ground.

 

[Trekker4747]

I was just going to post about this.

(Instead I'll make an in-thread video post for convenience. )

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggDklYcCJQ4[/yt]

At first I thought it was CGI, put I can also see how it's a "perspective thing." That people will fall for this as a real "perpetual motion machine" just staggers me on how dim some people are as I was dubious from the start and my B.S. meter really went of when the water appeared to flow UPHILL from the machine's "base."