Wednesday, April 02, 2008

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...


34 comments:

  1. No kidding. I'm actually a fan of the band and have seen the covers before but I never took the time to see if anything was hidden in them. Nice

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  2. Score one for the near sighted!

    hint: just take off your glasses ;)

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  3. If you have an invitation to Fffound could you email it to me? Thanks!

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  4. Anonymous9:47 AM

    I found it easier to see if you looked at it while scrolling up or down the page.

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  5. Anonymous9:51 AM

    If you are lazy and running Firefox 3 Beta 5, just zoom the page out a little.. the words will become obvious... :)

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  6. Anonymous10:15 AM

    Yeah, I see it right off without squinting. Damn astigmatism.

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  7. Anonymous11:00 AM

    The words really jump out if you resize the images below 200x200. I first noticed "Any Minute Now" when I imported the cover onto my iPod.

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  8. Anonymous11:08 AM

    Try looking at them from the side at a low angle.

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  9. Anonymous11:08 AM

    If nearsighted, remove glasses and squint eyes a it.

    If not, move further away from the screen.

    Really cool effect. How can we replicate such a thing?

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  10. Anonymous11:27 AM

    Backup a few feet...or a meter.

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  11. Anonymous11:42 AM

    Thanks for the glasses tip. All becomes clear.

    Great effect, great band too!

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  12. Anonymous11:50 AM

    I can see them without any problem or effort... pretty sure my eyes are normal too, so I dunno what's up with you lot needing techniques tbh

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  13. Anonymous12:44 PM

    easy to see if you look at the image while scrolling down.

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  14. Anonymous12:57 PM

    easy, Just squint your eyes. reduces the amount of white and then it's easy to see.

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  15. Awesome band, put on quite the party. There playing in nyc this summer, def not something to be missed.

    http://newyork.going.com/event-294169;Soulwax_The_Filmore_-_NYC

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  16. I feel bad for anyone who missed them at Studio B a while back!

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  17. Anonymous3:23 PM

    If you've got an LCD monitor, look at the screen from an angle, and you'll see it.

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  18. Anonymous3:58 PM

    Here is the recipe. It was on digg a while back.

    http://digg.com/design/In_response_to_Optical_Illusion_of_the_face

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  19. my eyes! my poor eyes! anyone else astigmatic here?

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  20. Anonymous4:19 PM

    Also if you move your viewpoint up and down with respect to the screen they are easier to see, e.g. move laptop up and down.

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  21. Anonymous5:17 PM

    It's not you, it's the E talking

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  22. Anonymous8:45 PM

    Not sure about an easy way to reproduce it, but it looks like the white dots where there are letters are just slightly smaller than the other white dots.

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  23. Anonymous12:54 AM

    It must just be on screen; they're perfectly easy to see in real life.

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  24. Anonymous8:30 AM

    I'm Blind... (-)(-)

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  25. Anonymous4:52 PM

    It's actually quite simple. The color is slightly darker on the text. Gotta love Soulwax, though. They are creative on all fronts. ^^

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  26. Anonymous5:16 PM

    just move back a little and you'll see it

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  27. thanks tek-ops.com. i am nearsighted and when i took my glasses off i could see it easily. thats really cool!

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  28. Anonymous7:09 PM

    check out these optical illusions
    http://www.news-world.us/pics/2009/02/28/20-incredible-optical-illusions/

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  29. Anonymous3:34 PM

    Really great Belgium band!
    And nice dj's too!

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