square peg, round hole

July 1, 2016 8:15 AM

The ambiguous cylinder illusion (youtube) - finalist for Illusion of the Year 2016. More up-to-date illusions!
posted by moonmilk (29 comments total)

[spoiler!] How the ambiguous cylinder works! (youtube)
posted by moonmilk at 8:16 AM on July 1, 2016 [10 favorites]

Thank you for the spoiler content, moonmilk. I was about to quote the current top youtube comment:

Show it from the top you fucking peasant

posted by sparklemotion at 8:20 AM on July 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

Just different views of a "squircle".
posted by sammyo at 8:20 AM on July 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

At first, I was all, that's cool. That's really cool.

And then WOW SUCH ILLUSION VERY BRAINMELT

"She turned me into a doge!"
"A doge?"
.....
"I got better."
posted by chimaera at 8:30 AM on July 1, 2016 [10 favorites]

OW OW MY BRAIN HURTS
posted by procrastination at 8:59 AM on July 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ambiguous Cylinder would be a fabulous username. Or R.E.M. album.
posted by chavenet at 9:00 AM on July 1, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's a squircle!
posted by Hairy Lobster at 9:06 AM on July 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

Aw, the guy in the Reddit video calls it that too, guess I can't claim to have invented the term.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 9:08 AM on July 1, 2016

[spoiler!] How the ambiguous cylinder works

This is just a link to the word 'witchcraft'
posted by beerperson at 9:13 AM on July 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

Hmm. It's impressive. I was impressed. But this wouldn't work in real life, right? The forced persoective only works because video is 2D and compression makes the edges of the shapes look more uniform than they really are, no? It's still good, but some of the illusion is in the way the camera and the compression algorithm see the world, not just in how our brains see the world. As least, so it seems to mr.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 9:24 AM on July 1, 2016

I'd really like to see how interlocking/completely separate look from different view points.

It would work in real life but only if you were standing in exactly the right spot; possibly with one eye shut.
posted by Mitheral at 9:28 AM on July 1, 2016

from the "how it works video", it can be seen in real life if you just lean the piece at certain angles.
posted by numaner at 9:35 AM on July 1, 2016

i don't think it's got to do with video compression. this is essentially like a complex object that casts a simple shadow due to parts of the object blocking itself from the light source. for instance a wire cube will cast a shadow of a square if illuminated along one face, but some more complex shadow if illuminated from one of the vertices.

so yeah - one eye closed is right - you have to be looking down a particular axis for these shapes to look one way or another. any parallax will destroy the illusion.
posted by joeblough at 9:41 AM on July 1, 2016

MetaFilter: It would work in real life but only if you were standing in exactly the right spot; possibly with one eye shut.
posted by The Bellman at 9:49 AM on July 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

Brain melted, going home. Sorry boss!

(Take that, Hemingway!)
posted by Fig at 10:38 AM on July 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

I want that zoetrope. Where can I buy one?
posted by jetsetsc at 10:46 AM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

The discoverer, Sugihara Kokichi, has a how-to Kindle book .
posted by King Sky Prawn at 10:47 AM on July 1, 2016

why must they play the jingley smug music at me

quit laughing at my weak brain
posted by skrozidile at 10:55 AM on July 1, 2016

I wondered if it was two different guys making synchronized movements pretending it was a mirror. Like the Marx Brothers in that movie.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 11:29 AM on July 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

And what a marvelous title: Joy of Ambiguous Solids
posted by sammyo at 11:30 AM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Ambiguous Cylinder was only the second-best illusion this year.
posted by straight at 12:06 PM on July 1, 2016

Ambiguous Cylinder was only the second-best illusion this year.

In the cutthroat world of illusions, you quickly discover it's all politics and who you know.
posted by splen at 12:16 PM on July 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

The winning illusions is neat to look at, but it didn't make me doubt my entire perspective on the world the way the one in the OP did.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:25 PM on July 1, 2016

This is amazing and I love it. Even seeing how it works I still don't understand how it works.

I have always loved all manner of illusions. Kokichi Sugihara's work has such a cool sense of fun to it. I really enjoy it. (I was kind of disappointed in some of the other finalists, though, but maybe there's more to the science of some of them than I realize.)
posted by darksong at 12:32 PM on July 1, 2016

*cues final countdown music*

"... but where did the lighter fluid come from?"
posted by mysticreferee at 1:15 PM on July 1, 2016

... I think this is how cats must feel whenever they see a cucumber...
posted by midmarch snowman at 6:16 PM on July 1, 2016

Spoiler: it was a magic man what done it.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:00 AM on July 2, 2016

I really liked the third-place zoetrope one. It's very charming. (From the second link.)

I didn't love the squares/cylinders one because I've seen enough perspective illusions that I knew it would turn out to have something to do with the shape of the things and what side they were seen from. I think these kinds of things are cool, but it was a little too much like a magic trick where I knew just a little too much about how it worked.

I think I liked #1 and #3 better because even though how they worked was obvious—not in that I could explain them technically but in that there was no trickery in the mechanism. "Look, I can create the illusion of a certain kind of movement with iterations of a different kind of movement which your brain will interpret in an interesting way," and "Look, the birds are on the outside but your brain will interpret them as being inside the zoetrope." Like, two of them were like, "I will reveal an interesting feature of your brain!" and the circle/square one was like, "I am tricking you!"

I dunno. I just liked the zoetrope better. Don't really know why.
posted by not that girl at 10:13 AM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I saw Ambiguous Cylinder at the Budokan. Also under the Budokan and above the Budokan. Simultaneously.
posted by ardgedee at 10:54 AM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]