Vantage Tees (Afterimage)

Vantage Tees transforms the standard t-shirt—a frontally-oriented message or graphic—into a site for spatial and experiential effects. Using optical effects, altered viewpoints, or purposeful distortions, these tees reconsider the simple act of wearing and reading the ubiquitous uniform of today.

Afterimage exploits a simple ocular defect: staring at one color for too long will "burn out" the eye's retinal cones and create a ghost image in the inverse color. The shirt uses bright, bold colors on both front and back shirt panels. A viewer stares at the registration dot, in the center of the shirt, and then quickly stares at the reverse panel. Staring for a few seconds, an inverse afterimage appears, either causing color overlaps, vibrating adjacencies, or unexpected color fields.

A familiar afterimage effect: stare at the dot at the center of the flag for 20 seconds without blinking. shift your gaze to the dot below and the inverse image will slowly appear.

A registration dot in the center aligns a primary front-panel image and its rear-panel afterimage.

Various colors are paired with their inverse color, making a complete solid panel with the afterimage.

The red stripes become cyan in their afterimage, overlapping the yellow, making a new green area in the overlap.

Vertical stripes invert and cause vibrating color borders in the afterimage overlay.