MetaFilter posts tagged with illusions

Visual Illusions

dios — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:32:03 -0800

The winners of the 2009 Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest. And past years. (ante)

Play With Your Blind Spot

cybercoitus interruptus — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:54:56 -0800

Blind Spot Optical Illusions. Online seminar from McCormick Lab at Yale lets you find your own visual blind spots. After that, you can make Monet's sun, and Van Gogh's ear, disappear. Map your blind spot. Adapt to color (1, 2). Adapt to motion (making things swirl). Student Letters: "Dear Mr McCormick, Please don't suck out our brains!" (The student's reference to "gummies" may possibly refer to novelty candy from here.) Previously.

Door Game

Rumple — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:24:38 -0800

The predictably irrational door game. The optical illusion demonstrations are also good (scroll down half page).

Cut The Knot

parudox — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 23:52:10 -0800

Interactive mathematics miscellany and puzzles, including 75 proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem, an interactive column using Java applets, and eye-opening demonstrations. (Actually, much more.)

not just optical illusions

nickyskye — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:09:00 -0800

Illusion art by Octavio Ocampo, a painter from Mexico. Sometimes illusion art is made using unlikely materials, like Jason Mecier's art made out of beans, noodles etc. [previously] or like Scott Blake's barcode images. [more inside]

Choose Your Illusions, Too

milquetoast — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 05:28:16 -0800

Illusions for sale : The Audience Dis*Member. The Ultimate Levitation. The Wakeling Sawing. The Classic Zig-Zag. And many, many more . If you can't conjure up that kind of scratch, you don't feel lucky or industrious, and your celebrity friends can't help, you could always try the Magic Auctions. Just watch out for that beautiful assistant!

Ernest Becker

semmi — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 12:52:12 -0800

“The real world is simply too terrible to admit; it tells man that he is a small, trembling animal who will decay and die." “The defenses that form a person’s character support a grand illusion, and when we grasp this we can understand the full drivenness of man. He is driven away from himself, from self-knowledge, self-reflection. He is driven toward things that support the lie of his character.” Words of Ernest Becker, here summarizing Gestalt therapy and his own existential perspectives in Growing Up Rugged.

motion induced blindness

elemenopee — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 11:11:41 -0800

Motion induced blindess. Be sure to check out the other really cool stuff

Art of Deception

euphorb — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 00:29:22 -0800

The sculptures of Shigeo Fukuda show that shadows and reflections (mpegs) may not be what they appear to be. When you turn M.C. Escher's drawings into sculptures, you can get some impossible objects (mpeg). And Dick Termes paintings on globes are stunning examples (Quicktime) of six point perspective. All of these works of illusionary art are featured in the book Masters of Deception: Escher, Dalí & the Artists of Optical Illusion and must be seen to be believed.

Hidden Pictures

salmacis — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 11:34:41 -0800

Hidden pictures! In an effort to get back to that "best of the web" thing, here are some cool hidden pictures within pictures. Can you find them all without looking at the answers? (from B3ta)

FreakyFace

srboisvert — Sun, 21 Mar 2004 09:33:46 -0800

The Thatcher Illusion (using Madonna) , the original, Bush

sandlot science

crunchland — Mon, 03 Nov 2003 07:48:41 -0800

sandlot science ... optical illusions and visual oddities... hundreds of exhibits and interactive demonstrations.

You think it's moving but it's not.

xmutex — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 12:17:28 -0800

You think it's moving but it's not.

get the aspirin

crunchland — Fri, 27 Jun 2003 13:11:16 -0800

headacher

taz — Fri, 27 Sep 2002 01:27:26 -0800

A professor of vision science at MIT understands that life isn't just black and white, even though we often see it that way. This amazing illusion proves it, and these slick, fast-loading, Flash demonstrations of lightness perception show how it's done. (My favorite is the "Koffka Ring".) White paper here, for deeper background.

Shadowkeeper — Thu, 18 Oct 2001 12:29:37 -0800

I'm usually not a big fan of optical illusions (unless there's a nice magic trick built around it), but this one is pretty brain-burning. (Yes, that's my entire front-page post. But hey: at least it ain't a news story.)