The Greatest (Worst) Optical Illusions

• Did you stare at the picture above for 5 minutes, looking for the shark?

• Does the inability to see the number "82," in the picture below, upset you?

If you answered yes to either of these questions, then you fell for some of the world's worst optical illusions!

I saw these, and some other hilariously fake optical illusions, here:

Sad &Useless

 Top 10 Greatest Optical Illusions Ever

To make up for those trick illusions, here is a cool video by Young Rival that is a motion stereograph. When you re-focus your eyes, as shown in the beginning of the video, a 3D image appears within the seemingly random visual noise. These autostereogram images were popularized in the 90's, in Magic Eye posters & books.

Young Rival also made this entertaining video that I came across awhile back, featuring the amazing face-painting skills of James Kuhn:

Mighty Optical Illusions

I can't get enough of optical illusions or any kind of visual novelty. Mighty Optical Illusions is a blog devoted to being a database of these trickeries of perception.

One of my favorite optical illusions is the Spanish Magic Castle, which you can see here.

Your Beautiful Eyes

I saw this awesome link on BoingBoing a while ago featuring macro close-up photography of human eyes.

"Your Beautiful Eyes"

My previous post about sacred geometry reminded me of these super-detailed photos, which show the ordered chaos that somehow forms Life. The Mystery of the circle and nature's formation of such patterns are phenomena that a person can investigate and ponder for a lifetime.

Those macro eye photos are at a detail that is ironically beyond the normal perception of our own eyes. I guess that's why they almost look surreal, like they are made of sand or yarn. After looking at these crazy images, I had to go look in the mirror and study my own irises but there's no way to see details that fine without extra technology.

As a professional designer, my eyes are my life & livelihood. I definitely don't take my vision for granted. Actually, I'm always amazed by the wonders of eyesight and perception. It's hard to understand how these small gelatinous orbs could create the rich mental images of the world around us.

"Top 20 Optical illusions"

Speaking of optical illusions, here's one I made after seeing a similar technique used for an album cover. You need to click for the larger image- then squint or stand back from the monitor.

Monkey Buddha Optical Design

Hidden Optical Design

I usually browse the first page of FFFFOUND! for a dose of visual inspiration each day.

I saw these awesome optical illusion/designs that look like a field of dots or lines. It appears they are album sleeves for a band called Soulwax.

I would have passed right by it, but I usually stare at optical designs for at least a few seconds to observe what prolonged visual effects there are. As I was looking at it I must've briefly blurred my eyes, because I was surprised to see words appear for a second. This is a pretty crazy effect that can be seen a few different ways:

• squint your eyes
• make your vision blurry by ''flexing' your eyes
• cross your eyes just a little bit
• raise your eyebrows & stretch your eyes tight
• you get the idea

I think these are perfect examples of the ephemeral nature of language & ideas...

The Optical Illusion of Dimension

I don't have much to say about this work of visual genius, a crazy optically-induced virtual tunnel.

It's simply one of the best, most astounding optical illusions I've ever seen- & I've seen quite a few...

Definitely click for a larger image:

 
A fractal can be plotted on a 2-dimensional surface, but can be "zoomed" into, for a virtual dimension of depth. Similarly, this flat image is crafted to give the appearance of a virtual dimension of depth that can only be perceived by the viewer.

Disappearing Black Dots Illusion

Being a visual artist, I love optical illusions and other ways of hacking the visual processes of the brain.

The Monkey Buddha Archives: 

Optical Illusions

Created by Jacques Ninio, a French researcher in visual perception, this is one of the more striking visual tricks I've seen. The black dots in your peripheral vision disappear as your eyes focus on different areas of the grid.

I first saw it on a Reddit thread, and also found good explanations of the phenomenon:

"Your visual system is built with nerves cells that fire in response to different arrangements of dark and light. You should be able to see a circle in your peripherals, but the criss cross pattern really messes with that ability. It surrounds the dots with information that severely interferes with the visual system's way of signaling "here's a bright edge around a dark circle"

The strength of the grid pattern (at this level of contrast) overpowers the ability of the brain to detect the circles when they are so spaced out. Our mind is basically filling in the blanks with the bold, regular arrangement of lines. When the grid is lightened, the circles become easy to see all at once.

Also for comparison, see this similar pattern, but with the circles in a more tightly arranged, regular spacing:

Dancer Optical Illusion

I love optical illusions and visual novelty of all kinds. This illusion of a rotating ballerina kept me busy for a while. The direction which you first perceive the dancer to be spinning supposedly reflects your dominant brain hemisphere.

However, I've confirmed that you can also change the apparent direction. I did this by flicking my eyes away for an instant, by clicking the animation for a moment to freeze it, and by scrolling until only the legs the dancer was shown. The rest is up to your mind changing its perception.

I found this to be as thought-provoking as the Magic Eye images. Something that you are looking at instantly and completely changes form, direction, or context due to nothing other than a change in the perception of the individual. Click below to see the illusion:

AU Herald Sun: "Right Brain vs. Left Brain"

"Evolution of Man" by Octavio Ocampo

This is a cool painting by Mexican artist Octavio Ocampo.

It contains hidden imagery & optical effects to illustrate man's progress from bipedal monkey... to machine-using inventor... to our future incarnation, which may transcend Einstein's conception of spacetime to become a non-localized quantum being.

"Evolution of Man"

click to enlarge

Update 2/20/2017

I was contacted by a student asking where to find in-depth analysis of this painting. I couldn't find any, so I wrote one myself:

'Evolution of Man' represents a 4-dimensional understanding of the human being and species. It is like stepping ‘outside’ of time, to see humanity as a continuous timeline of morphing forms.

It shows the progression as a classic triptych.

• The 1st part is our primitive hominid past, where we literally outrun our monkey body. Long-distance running is one of the unique evolutionary traits of humans. The large, superimposed face is that of an ape ancestor.

• The 2nd part is the material age of industrialization and the physical sciences. This is the stage when people are occupied with mechanical technology. The large superimposed image is the face of a modern person.

• The 3rd part is the cosmic/energetic future of humankind. After transitioning from physical technologies, the forms are breaking down into elementary particles and energies. Consciousness transcends the physical body & the light of the mind explodes into & throughout the Universe. The face superimposed over this area is that Albert Einstein, representing the inclusion of mind into science- through relativity theory and the emphasis on the experience of the observer. Also, his introduction of mass/energy equivalence through E=Mc^2 opened new horizons for the future of science, and therefore the human species.

Overall, this is a type of multi-dimensional roadmap for the progression of humanity as a collective phenomenon. It shows our past, present, and future, with an optical superimposition of a face for each stage of the “”Evolution of Man”.

Monkey Buddha Optical Design

After posting the designs with hidden optical messages, I decided to try to replicate the effect in Photoshop to create my own phantom message.

It took me about 30min of experimenting to get a decent result... I could briefly explain the process, but I really don't feel like it. Besides, anyone who is fluent in Photoshop should be able to figure out a method.

Click on the image for the full size,
which creates the optimum effect:

Brain Scrambling

This weekend, I'm going to Toy Fair in NYC for a couple days. One reason is to try to find a new publisher for the award-winning strategy game I created & developed, Da Vinci's Challenge™ based on the ancient Flower of Life pattern.

We have also developed some other new games, toys, & activities that we hope will create some interest. Toy Fair is an interesting show to attend & I usually feel some visual overload from trying to take everything in.

Besides spending the last few weeks trying to prepare for the show, I was in a minor car accident in the middle of January & have been dealing with that situation.

Then, I was in work last Wed. & my head started burning up w/ a fever. My fingers felt numb & my body had the chills, despite my head being on fire. The next day the fever went away, but then I had a painful throat infection that lasted several days. It was really bad during the week, but I still went in to work to make sure I got all the stuff done for Toy Fair. I ate nothing but soup for 4 days. To ease the swelling I tried gargling water + everything: salt, honey, hydrogen peroxide, & even cayenne red pepper after seeing it recommended online.

Saturday morning I felt relatively better, & ate some cherry water ice that was like a frozen miracle. Last nite I went out to eat with my parents & was so damn hungry that I tried to tackle a burger, my first solid food in days. Even though I had an ravenous appetite, my throat was so raw that each swallow felt like I was swallowing tiny shards of glass. My Dad was laughing at me, saying I looked like an alligator the way I was grimacing & struggling to put down each gulp.
 
FINALLY, I woke up this morning & could swallow with no discomfort at all! Hallelujah!!! Most of the day, I was still reflexively wincing each time I swallowed, even though it didn't hurt anymore.

No matter how much awareness we place on our well-being, we easily take for granted what a blessing it is to experience life free of debilitating pain.

Anyway, the physical discomfort was enough to frazzle my mind as I've been trying to focus on dealing with the rest of life's steady march of craziness.
I saw the optical animated GIF below & thought it was a good representation of my general state of mind during the last week.

WARNING!!!

IT WILL SCRAMBLE YOUR BRAIN!!!!

I also saw this other cool optical illusion GIF, "Hide the Corners" that is hard to stop staring at:

Optical Illusion Rooms

I don't know how the hell you figure these out...
These rooms are painted with designs that become 3D Optical illusions when you stand in the right spot.

Click Here
for More Rooms

Macworld 2008 - "Yawn."

Despite being my hands-down favorite brand, Apple & it's boss, Steve Jobs, didn't really impress me with their product announcements this week... & it seems that I'm not the only one.

The Macbook Air is just a thin laptop & in many ways, it's a step backward. There isn't an optical drive in it & the gestures that were created for the iPhone's touch screen are relegated to a touchpad. Woo-hoo. If it weren't so expensive maybe it would be more appealing .

Apple's fixation on the fact that it is thin enough to fit in a manila envelope is a dumb marketing angle. In fact, someone already made a parody commercial mocking this useless selling point & the generally uninteresting nature of the new Macbook.

"Macbook Air Parody Commercial"

I'm really just bitter because I was hoping that Steve Jobs & Co. would leapfrog off the technology developed for the iPhone to finally release a Mac Tablet computer. Foiled again!

Data Nanostorage in Quartz

Recently, I came across this article about a new kind of data storage developed by researchers in the UK. Using nano-structured glass, it stores 360 terabytes of info on a small piece of quartz. This information is theoretically stable for 14 billion years.

Gizmodo:

Optical Data Storage

Squeezes 360TB on to a Quartz Disc—Forever

Here is the link to the university doing the research:

 

University of Southampton:

Eternal 5D Data Storage 

Could Record the History of Humankind

I am very organized, especially with all my digital files. I have archives going back to my college years, at the turn of the millennium. When it comes to saving data & preserving information, I look at it from 2 perspectives:

A basic truth to this universe is that everything changes. All composite forms eventually break down, or are transformed into something else.

In 100,000 years, it's possible that very little trace of current human culture will still exist.
In a million years, it's doubtful that anything we've created would survive.
In a billion years, there will almost certainly be nothing left of human existence at all.

If this is true, then why do we bother doing anything at all?

That is the eternal question, and the only answer is that we do what we are compelled to do. The source of this compulsion is our desire to overcome our fear of impermanence. We do this by trying to make a lasting impression on others and the world.

So... I know everything that I'm doing will eventually cease to exist in its present form. However, I still seek to preserve aspects of myself, my life, & my digital data.

I am here, experiencing this life, so I do what I feel driven to do! Cosmic perspectives are important, but a fully aware person must dwell in the personal realm, as well.

There is a lot of myself and my creative work stored online now. I feel like this is an opportunity to preserve some aspect of my life into the future, more so than people of past eras were able to do.

Of course, a global catastrophe could happen anytime that could knock out the global information network & perhaps even our power grid. This could be avoided by getting data storage off-planet, into outer space. Even if we avoid this fate, it is questionable whether anyone would be around in a million (forget a billion) years to experience anything we are doing now. Even if there were, the next question is- Would they even be able to access the information we have left, in a way that is meaningful to them?

Perhaps this would be a situation like the mysterious "crystal skulls". They could be a 3D quartz data storage system from a lost civilization, but we have no idea how to access it!

Oh well. I guess it's not worth worrying about whether or not anything we do is truly lasting. We just have to make the best of our individual situations, & try to be a positive influence on the consciousness of as many people as possible.

Art by The "Mentally Ill"

I saw these posts on FindingOptimism.com about art by people who supposedly had "mental illness". That description probably fits 95% of us artists, so I guess it's probably just as representative as a random sampling would be!

Art by the Mentally Ill (Part 1: Famous)

Art by the Mentally Ill (Part 2: Not So Famous)

Picasso and Monet have nothing on John Cadigan, who created this superb optical bug-out monkey design:
After looking on his website, I was interested by his mission statement, "... A large part of art and spirituality are essentially mysterious. Francis Bacon said that the job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery."

I feel that sentiment whole-heartedly, which is one reason I created "Da Vinci's Challenge" - to evoke a sense of mystery in an accessible and stimulating way.

Visualizing Molecules

As the human experience continues to expand into the macro scale with developments like the growth of the Internet, we also are creating images of phenomena on the micro scale, also.

This headline from the Daily Mail reads almost like a haiku:

Single molecule,
one million times smaller than a grain of sand,
pictured for first time

I have to question though what this means in the sense that we are trying to perceive force patterns and geometries more so than looking at solid "things" like bugs under a optical microscope.

This is the 'picture' of the pentacene molecule imaged by an atomic force microscope:

This is the molecule recreated in 3D:

Finally, this is what the atoms look like when you get REALLY, REALLY close:

Blogger Play

Blogger Play

As I was logging in to Blogger, I saw on the main page a description of Blogger Play. As a graphic artist and a visual information junkie, this website is like optical crack to me. It is basically a real time slideshow of images being uploaded to Google's servers. The never-ending flow of pictures are as random and as fascinating as the infinite realm of human experience. The universal mind continues to connect and expand...

Lone Monkey
Random photo seen on Blogger Play
(from Lizzy's Blog)

Stereoscopic Music Video

Being a visual artist, I love optical illusions. One that still fascinates me is the stereoscopic image.

vision3d.com

3D Viewing with Training Wheels- The "Dots" Method

Although it is challenging to "see" at first, once you figure out how to view a stereogram, you can do it at will.

By slightly un-focusing & crossing your eyes, you can make a pair of images overlap within your visual field to form a 3D image.

This music video for "Black is Good", by Young Rival, uses stereoscopy to achieve moving, 3-D forms out of what appears to be random static.

For best results, practice the technique on stereoscopic still images first- then watch the video in HD.

Young Rival also had another captivating video for "Two Reasons", with a series of entertaining face paintings:

Neatorama Link

Damn.
Neatorama is one of my favorite sites to browse every day. I'm sometimes inspired to post about things related to what I see there. A few weeks ago I posted about optical album art w/ hidden messages, so I emailed Alex from Neatorama, figuring his other readers would find it just as interesting as I did.

He was nice enough to link directly to the post & my website. I usually have about 80 people visit my site a day. This blog has been for my own amusement & mental release more than anything, so the fact that anyone was reading it at all is pretty cool to me.

Today, however, thanks to the apparent legion of Neatorama readers, I've had over 50,000 visitors view the post he linked to. That's more than double the total number of visitors to The Monkey Buddha since I started recording my thoughts here, 3 years ago. If I had that many readers every day I would probably write material that was completely outrageous & mind blowing - instead of my currently just mildly crazy & semi-enlightening posts.
: )

If anyone who visited that post actually ends up coming back & reading this, I guess I'd suggest
• perusing the links down the right side of the page,
• typing random topics into the search box at the very top,
• or clicking the categories at the end of each post.

I have three years worth of "Monkey Buddhism" that can be explored.

The only other thing I would have to mention to new visitors to this site would be to check out the award-winning strategy board game I created - "Da Vinci's Challenge". It is the yin to chess's yang & in my humble opinion it is one of the greatest games ever created. It's one of the rare creations that has the potential to survive the ages.

Enjoy!