What do you supose the 4th Wall looks like?

Something similar to Xibalba or the Great/Dark Rift.

edited 6th Jul '13 4:25:55 PM by Quag15

The opening shot of Holy Motors pretty much sums up what I think it looks like.

Fragile.

You know the screen on a TV? That's the 4th wall. Simple as that.

It's just a plain old 4D gap which looks into our 3rd dimension, but because it's in the 4th dimension, we can't see it.

Perhaps the fourth fall, isn't really there. When people 'break' this fabled wall, perhaps they aren't so much breaking it, as realizing it isn't there. Like the emperors new cloths, in that people see what they want to. Being that, those who hang on the forth wall notice it's nonexistance.(And yes, I know that something nonexistant couldn't technically do something, but you get my point.)

But don't you need to realize that it is there, i.e. you are in a work of fiction, to break it?

Okay, this is what I think.

The fourth wall, if it does exist, isn't per se a wall. It's kind of like a sort of incomprehensible sort of viewing port where multiple people can watch through, but only from one side. The other side, the "fictional" characters, can't see the fourth wall because their mind can't comprehend it. It's like an eldritch portal. When we directly look at it, it just isn't there, our mind and perception wraps around it, behind it.

However, those unfortunate enough to actually see this fourth wall are mostly loons, whackjobs. It's not that they have been driven insane by this fourth wall, but they were insane enough to begin with to just be able to see at least a glimpse of it.

Slowly it begins to dawn to you that your own existence might be plagued by people watching you from the beyond. That one time you thought somebody called your name? It might be an echo from the other world. Remember that time you thought somebody was watching you? Well, maybe they are. And that time you really felt great when you came? Someone might have touched your balls.

Hideo Kojima's excrement.

edited 20th Nov '13 9:43:34 PM by TheAirman

4th wall is a glass window. Saving Private Ryan shows blood and guts splattered on the camera lens.

A frontal view of this: http://thinbluelinewallpaper.blogspot.com/2012/12/movie-camera.html

edited 28th Nov '13 9:40:16 PM by BaconManiac5000

I'm sure it's been said before, but the fourth wall exists as a barrier in dimensions that cannot be comprehended by man. As a result, no one can grasp the true form of the 4th wall.

The fourth wall looks exactly like the other three walls, which are in turn the fourth walls to audience in three other universes.

I think it would probably be fourth dimensional, so the characters naturally couldn't perceive it

XOPHER! *glomps*

Simple. The fourth wall is visible only to a select few, and what it looks like to those select few depends on what work of fiction they come from or if they're from real life (ha. ha).

Also a giant hole appears in it whenever you give it any more attention than just a passing glance, regardless of its form.

The original post asked if any artist had shown their representation of the fourth wall. Well, Andrew Hussie of Homestuck often represents the fourth wall as a four-panelled window device, with the clearest rendition found in this comic

Personally, I imagine the fourth wall as a clear glass panel, and on the other side of it, there's a "live theatre audience" in a large theatre with velvet seats and a mezzanine, really fancy with gold detailing.

Indeed, I have read Homestuck from beta to gigapause so that goes without saying on my end.

In any case I'm pretty sure what's on the other end depends on what medium your world is actually in because duh.

The fourth wall — the glowing, undulating boundary between all worlds. It stretches forever in two dimensions, squirming and twisting into all sorts of unnatural shapes.. It stands impervious...

Yet, not impervious. Once in a while, something from one of the worlds slips through, into another. And sometimes, on rare occasions, the barrier between two worlds will break down entirely, giving both sides free access across.

And in the middle of it all, seeing what occurs in all other planes, influencing events, sits... our world.

It looks like yo mama.

, The contrast between these two posts

The fourth wall is made of our collective unconsciousness.

The fourth wall is literally invisible to the naked eye. Whenever we try thinking too deeply about our existence, we get a headache, courtesy of the wall.

What 4th wall?

edited 23rd Feb '14 11:28:34 PM by TolkienOtaku

A swirling mass of darkness.

It's the Wall

Obviously it's the theoretical edge of the universe...what it looks like is a blinding wall of endless light and swirling colors...but if you manage to look through it enough, you can see a crowded theater behind it. Touching it will not only shatter it, but twist reality as we know it- it will chaos of the purest level as different worlds collide. Fiction itself will vanish, as every story will become the truth.

That is the Fourth Wall.