Robert Therrien is an American sculptor based out of Los Angeles, California.   He attended the University of Southern California, where he earned an MFA.  Some of his installations are very large versions of ordinary things, like the example below.  This sculpture of an enormous table and set of chairs is meant to examine the viewer’s relationship to scale.  Walking underneath a dining room table can certainly provide you with completely a different view of the world.

To see another enormous table and set of chairs, check out Tiny Horses.

Brazlian artist Vik Muniz is no stranger to transforming trash and other discard items into beautiful works of art.  We previously featured a video in which Muniz used hand-torn scraps of paper from magazines to recreate Van Gogh’s The Starry Night.  In 2012, Muniz created a series of composite artworks under a series titled Scrap Metal.  One of these works, presented below, shows a hummingbird created from various discarded pieces of scrap metal.  You can understand the full scale of this artwork by observing the car doors that are incorporated into the photograph.  I would be very curious to know how high off the ground the camera was when this photograph was taken.

(via Vik Muniz)

In this variant of the Hermann grid illusion created by Professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka, illusory blue dots can be seen in the white circles where the squares intersect.  This phenomenon was first reported in 1870 by Germany physiologist Ludimar Hermann.  The blue dots cannot be seen if you look directly at one of the white circles.  Instead, you will only see the blue dots in the circles that you are not focusing directly on.  While I would not recommend it, you could move your eyes around the grid “chasing” the illusory blue dots forever.

(via Akiyoshi Kitaoka)

At first glance, this might not look like much of an optical illusion.  But something is not quite right about this picture.  You may notice it right away or it may take you a while to discover it.  (full disclosure:  It took me some time to figure this one out)  So… can you spot what is wrong with this photograph?

Unless you live under a rock, you have probably heard of the wildly-successful Walking Dead series on AMC.  As with many successful television shows, the creators decided to create a spin-off series to complement the original called Fear the Walking Dead.  Season 2 centers around the premise that survivors of a zombie apocalypse board a very nice yacht (named Abigail) and take to the sea in an effort to escape the zombie horde.  Of course, they quickly find out that the water is not quite as safe as they thought it would be.  The tagline at the top of the promotional poster for the current season says NO SAFE HARBOR aptly describes their predicament.  It also happens to feature an ominous hidden skull made from the sun, clouds, and the yacht.  Very fitting.

Fear of the Walking Dead Season 2 is the ultimate survival series for the luxury yacht owner. In the series, the Kadey-Krogen Yacht named “Abigail” could have cruised a longer distance thanks to its excellent fuel efficiency. If a zombie apocalypse were ever to happen, a yacht like this would be an excellent option to wait out the attack in a nice, air-conditioned salon.

I ran across this image the other day and almost just scrolled right past it.  I was kind of wondering what the point of the picture of this man with a beard and glasses was.  As I was scrolling, however, a set of eyes caught my eye which caused me to do a double take.  As I further examined the detail of his beard, it caused me to both laugh and be somewhat disturbed.

I am not sure what the exact source of this image is.  Does anyone know who created this image?  If so, post it in the comments and I’ll add the proper attribution.

Kelly Ripa has been in the news quite a bit lately.  It appears that there is a lot of drama between her and her former Live! With Kelly and Michael co-host Michael Strahan.  In what he called a “career move”, he abruptly quit the show (without telling her, which is why she is angry) and bolted for another full-time gig at Good Morning America.  I don’t watch either of these shows, so none of this really impacts me.  But, it seems that I can’t load up the Yahoo! or MSN homepage without seeing some new article about it.

I was looking through John Langdon’s site earlier today and saw that he had actually created a Kelly Ripa ambigram at some point in the past.  Since she’s in the news, I figured this was a pretty timely addition to An Optical Illusion.  You can see John’s creation below:

If you turn her name upside down, it reads exactly the same as what is seen above.

(via John Langdon)