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"

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.

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

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: