Sunday, January 17, 2010

OPTICAL ILLUSIONS


House I, Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein is best known for the pop paintings based on advertisements and comic strips that he made in the 1960s. He also produced a significant body of sculpture, including large-scale works designed for the outdoors. House I incorporates the hallmarks of the artist's style: crisp, elemental drawing, heavy black outlines, and a palette based on primary colors. Whereas most of the artist's sculpture approximates freestanding paintings in relief rather than volumetric structures in the round, some of ...




Delboeuf Illusion
The Delboeuf illusion is an optical illusion of relative size perception. In the best-known version of the illusion, two circles of identical size are placed near to each other and one is surrounded by an annulus; the surrounded circle then appears larger than the non-surrounded circle if the annulus is close, while appearing smaller than the non-surrounded circle if the annulus is distant. Recent work suggests it is caused by the same visual processes that cause the Ebbinghaus illusion





Chubb Illusion
The Chubb illusion is an optical illusion wherein the apparent contrast of an object varies dramatically, depending on the context of the presentation. Low-contrast texture surrounded by a uniform field appears to have higher contrast than when it is surrounded by high-contrast texture. This was observed and documented by Charles Chubb and colleagues in 1989





Munker-White Illusion
White's illusion is an optical illusion illustrating the fact that the same target luminance can elicit different perceptions of brightness in different contexts.Note, that although the gray rectangles are all of equal luminance, the ones seen in the context with the dark stripes appear brighter than the ones seen in the context with the bright stripes. Note that this effect is opposite to what would be expected from a simple physiological explanation on the basis of simultaneous contrast ...





The Spinning Dancer
The Spinning Dancer, also known as the silhouette illusion, is a kinetic, bistable optical illusion resembling a pirouetting female dancer. The illusion, created by web designer Nobuyuki Kayahara, involves the apparent direction of motion of the figure. Some observers initially see the figure as spinning clockwise and some counterclockwise.The illusion derives from the lack of visual cues for depth. For instance, her arms could be swinging either in front of her to the left or behind her to the ..





Peripheral drift illusion
The peripheral drift illusion (PDI) refers to a motion illusion generated by the presentation of a sawtooth luminance grating in the visual periphery. This illusion was first described by Faubert and Herbert (1999), although a similar effect called the "escalator illusion" was reported by Fraser and Wilcox (1979). A variant of the PDI was created by Kitaoka and Ashida (2003) who took the continuous sawtooth luminance change, and reversed the intermediate greys. Kitaoka has created numerous variants of the PDI ..





Ames trapezoid
The Ames trapezoid or Ames window is a style of window which, when observed frontally, appears to be a rectangular window but is, in fact, a trapezoid.The window is mounted on a rod connected to an electric motor that rotates it about its vertical axis. When it is observed with one eye from about 3 meters or with both eyes at 6 meters, or more, the window appears to rotate through 180 degrees and then seems to stop momentarily ...





The Ambassadors (Holbein)
The Ambassadors (1533) is a painting by Hans Holbein the Younger in the National Gallery, London. As well as being a double portrait, the painting contains a still life of several meticulously rendered objects, the meaning of which is the cause of much debate. It is also a much-cited example of anamorphosis in painting





McCollough effect
The McCollough effect is a phenomenon of human visual perception in which colorless gratings appear colored depending on (contingent on) the orientation of the gratings. It is an aftereffect requiring a period of induction to produce it. For example, if someone alternately looks at a red horizontal grating and a green vertical grating for a few minutes, a black-and-white horizontal grating will then look greenish and a black-and-white vertical grating will then look pinkish. The effect was discovered by Celeste ..





Ehrenstein illusion
The Ehrenstein illusion is an optical illusion studied by the German psychologist Walter Ehrenstein in which the sides of a square placed inside a pattern of concentric circles take an apparent curved shape





Metamorphosis of Narcissus
The Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937) is an 511 x 781 mm oil on canvas painting by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. This painting is from Dalí's Paranoiac-critical period. According to Greek mythology, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in a pool. Unable to embrace the watery image, he pined away, and the gods immortalized him as a flower. Dali completed this painting in 1937 on his long awaited return to Paris after having had great success in ..





Necker Cube
The Necker Cube is an optical illusion first published in 1832 by Swiss crystallographer Louis Albert Necker





Pulsing vortex
If you stare at this one long enough you’ll notice a fast and pulsing multicolored vortex. Photo from Flickr





Poggendorff Illusion
The Poggendorff Illusion is an optical illusion that involves the brain's perception of the interaction between diagonal lines and horizontal and vertical edges. It is named after Poggendorff, who discovered it in the drawing of Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner, in which Zöllner showed the Zöllner illusion in 1860.In the picture to the right, a straight black and red line is obscured by a grey rectangle. The blue line, rather than the red line, appears to be a continuation ..





Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire - ..
Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire (1940) is a painting by Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí. The painting depicts a slave market, while a woman at a booth watches some people. A variety of people seem to make up the face of Voltaire, while the face seems to be positioned on an object to form a bust.The painting was completed in 1940. Dalí describes his work on the painting "to make the abnormal look normal and the normal ..





Wormhole
The black and white circular lines make this illusion seem as if there are various depths in the image, creating different entryways and tunnels. Photo courtesy of Paco Calvin





Disappearing dots/ Troxler's Effect
Troxler's fading or Troxler's effect is a phenomenon of visual perception. When one fixates a particular point, after about 20 seconds or so, a stimulus away from the fixation point, in peripheral vision, will fade away and disappear. The effect is enhanced if the stimulus is small, is of low contrast or equiluminant, or is blurred. The effect is enhanced the further the stimulus is away from the fixation point.Troxler's fading was discovered by Ignaz Paul ..





Wundt Illusion
The Wundt illusion is an optical illusion that was first described by the German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt in the 19th century. The two red vertical lines are both straight, but they may look as if they are bowed inwards to some observers. The distortion is induced by the crooked lines on the background, as in Orbison's illusion. Hering illusion produces a similar, but inverted effect.Another variant of the Wundt illusion is the Horizontal-Vertical Illusion, introduced by Wundt on ..





Lamp Optical Illusion
What do you see? Do you have a dirty mind?


Penrose triangle
The Penrose triangle, also known as the Penrose tribar, is an impossible object. It was first created by the Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd in 1934. The mathematician Roger Penrose independently devised and popularised it in the 1950s, describing it as "impossibility in its purest form". It is featured prominently in the works of artist M. C. Escher, whose earlier depictions of impossible objects partly inspired it.




Ebbinghaus Illusion
The Ebbinghaus illusion or Titchener circles is an optical illusion of relative size perception. In the best-known version of the illusion, two circles of identical size are placed near to each other and one is surrounded by large circles while the other is surrounded by small circles; the first central circle then appears smaller than the second central circle.It was named for its discoverer, the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) it was popularised in the English-speaking world by Titchener ..





4 Perfectly Round Circles
4 Perfectly Round Circles [Optical Illusion]. Can you see them all at once





Colored Spirals
You see embedded spirals of green, pinkish-orange, and blue? Incredibly, the green and the blue spirals are the same color





Same Color Illusion
The same color illusion—also known as Adelson's checker shadow illusion, checker shadow illusion and checker shadow—is an optical illusion published by Edward H. Adelson, Professor of Vision Science at MIT in 1995. The squares A and B on the illusion are the same color (or shade), although they seem to be different. This can be proven by sampling the colors of A and B in an image-editing program. By erasing everything except the two labelled squares





Rotating snakes
Circular snakes appear to rotate 'spontaneously.' Stare into the middle of the picture in this link and you'll get this disorientating sensation of the outer circles slowly rotating





Leaning tower illusion
The Leaning Tower Illusion is an optical illusion that presents two identical images of the Leaning Tower of Pisa side by side. Although the images are identical, people have the impression that the tower on the right leans more, as if photographed from a different angle. The illusion was discovered by Frederick Kingdom, Ali Yoonessi and Elena Gheorghiu at McGill University, and won the first prize in the Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest 2007.





Young Girl-Old Woman Illusion
A famous perceptual illusion in which the brain switches between seeing a young girl and an old woman (or "wife" and "mother in law")





Strobe effect
Animated black and white lines make your world turn liquid





Kanizsa Triangle
The Kanizsa triangle is an optical illusion first described by the Italian psychologist Gaetano Kanizsa in 1955. In the accompanying figure a white equilateral triangle is perceived, but in fact none is drawn. This effect is known as a subjective or illusory contour. Also, the nonexistent white triangle appears to be brighter than the surrounding area, but in fact it has the same brightness as the background





Hermann Grid illusion
A grid illusion is any kind of grid that deceives a person's vision. The two most common types of grid illusions are Hermann grid illusion and the Scintillating grid illusion





Rollers
Rollers appear to rotate without effort. On the other hand, they appear to rotate in the opposite direction when observers see this image keeping blinking.




Your own blind spot
All humans have a blind spot right near the middle of their pupil. To find it, hold your arm out in front of you, but off to the side, with your index finger extended. Cover one of your eyes, stare straight ahead with the other and slowly bring your extended finger closer to the middle of your field of vision. As your finger approaches you should see your fingertip disappear when it reaches the blind spot. Mind = blown.





Cube?



Down or Up




Face or Eskimo?




What do you see?




How many cubes?


Cups or Faces?


Up or Down?




Follow the lines...

Follow the lines...


What do you see?



Young woman or Old woman?


What do you see?


What you should do for the black and white optical illusion image above:Stare at the center of the image above for at least 30 seconds. Then look at a blank white wall, or a peice of paper. What do you see? On this page you'll see that the after image of the black and white image above is much stronger than the one in color below. Take your time, sometimes it takes an additional 20 seconds before your eyes can really focus on the after image. The image looks similar to the shroud of turin, which is another famous face of jesus.

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