If you were parked here taking this photograph, would you feel comfortable driving over this bridge?  Is the car heading up the hill in the distance about to drive off the end and into the cold waters below?

This is a photograph of Storseisundet Bridge in Norway.  It is the longest of eight bridges that make up “The Atlantic Road” which connects the mainland of Norway to the island of Averøya.

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The best way for me to know what type of optical illusions you want to see more of is to hear directly from you.  One easy way that you can do this (without taking too much time out of your busy day) is to vote for each post.  If certain types of illusions are consistently getting high ratings, then I can make sure to feature more of those.  Of course, I always love hearing directly from visitors, so feel free to get in touch via email if you would like to offer suggestions, submit an optical illusion or discuss anything in greater detail.

Today’s illusion is an anamorphic 3D sidewalk chalk art created by the very talented Kurt Wenner.  It features a fictitious hole in the sidewalk that reveals damage to the sewer system underneath.  The two police officers on their phones (calling for backup?) and the crime scene tape help to make the sidewalk drawing even more believable.  If I am not mistaken, I think that Kurt is the man kneeling on the right side of the photograph.

Also make sure to revisit Kurt’s Spiderman sidewalk chalk art that was created for the tenth anniversary of Universal Studios Japan.

Belgian artist Charline Lancel creates digital op art pieces and prints them on large aluminum panels using a printing process called ChromaLuxe.  While she has been told that her work resembles that of Victor Vasarely, she was not aware of his work when she first started creating digital op art in 2007.  The following spherical composition is titled “Compo34 Fushia”.

With respect to creating her art, Charline says the following:

I take pictures from everyday life with a simple Sony CyberShot camera.  This makes my basic image matrical and not vectorial. I then process and transform these pictures through Photoshop, working on a MacBook Pro.

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In this tessellation pattern by Makoto Nakamura, black and white mysterious dancers occupy a space with no gaps or overlaps.

While it is a nice pattern, even more interesting is the animation that he created to accompany the design.  It shows the two sets of dancers taking turns showing off their dance moves.  Watching it leads to an almost hypnotic feeling.

If you enjoyed this pattern, be sure to check out Nakamura’s Marathon tessellation that was featured about a year ago.  Another optical illusion worth another look is the ballerina optical illusion that features a dancer that appears to spin in both directions simultaneously.

In 1978, artist Blue Sky painted a trompe l’oeil mural on the side of the Flint Journal Building in Flint, Michigan.   The mural, aptly titled “Overflow Parking”, measures 60 by 70 feet in size.

The deceptive mural is still there and can be found at 200 E. First Street in Flint, Michigan.  You can even see a good shot of it from the street view on Google Maps here.

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In 2013, Teodosio Sectio Aurea created an enigmatic, DNA type puzzle, consisting of 350 small, metallic balls.  The end result appears to be a colorful jumble of balls arranged in an odd formation.

But when this design is lit from the correct angle by a light source, a shadow of Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous sketch from the 15th century is revealed on the wall.  This design is often used as an implied symbol of the symmetry of the human body, and more extensively, of the universe itself as a whole.

More shadow art from Teodosio Sectio Aurea can be found here.

Artist Julie Heller created this digital collage measuring 28″ by 36″ in 2008.  When you look at it up close, it appears to be a random collection of unrelated images placed haphazardly together.  Viewing the image from a distance, or squinting your eyes a bit, reveals that the individual images (a giraffe, hand, church, and fish among other things) have been arranged in a way that they also resemble a human face.

In an artist statement about this piece, Heller notes the following:

With an extra-heavy dose of the primordial urge to recognize the human face, I see faces and their component parts in almost everything I see.

Visit www.julieheller.com to view more of her artwork.