Have you ever seen a sadder looking bathtub? What exactly would a bathtub have to be sad about anyway? Seeing faces, or other recognizable images, in inanimate objects is a phenomenon known as pareidolia. Two additional examples of this are the Apache Head in the Rocks and the Elephant on Mars. I originally came across […]
Last month, Special Head’s levitation trick on America’s Got Talent created quite a buzz. Special Head was certainly not the first person to perform such a trick and he surely won’t be the last. Performance artist Johan Lorbeer did a slight variation of this stunt by casually leaning against the wall of a building while […]
Victor Vasarely is the father of Op Art and recognized as one of the 20th centuries most important artists. His use of color, geometry and optical illusion in his art yielded fantastic results and influenced scores of younger artists. As such, his paintings are in the permanent collections of museums around the globe and admired […]
Exceptional Eye Tricks, by Brad Honeycutt, is a collection of optical illusions designed to amaze, confuse, and fool the viewer. This book contains a variety of illusion types including composite images, trompe l’oeil, tricks of perspective, and the physically impossible. The cover of the book features a motion illusion from Fiestoforo that appears to spin […]
In 1804, an interesting effect, known as the Troxler Effect or Troxler’s Fading, was discovered by Ignaz Troxler. He noticed that something strange would happen if you fixated your eyes on one particular point (see the red dot below) for about 15-30 seconds. When doing so, images in your peripheral vision (the blurry blue […]
Happy New Year! Everyone enjoys a good Top 5 list, don’t they? Based on your ratings and feedback, here are five of the most popular optical illusions posted on An Optical Illusion in 2012: Optical Illusion Compliments of Sandy Psychedelic Motion Illusion Ugly Celebrities Illusion Moving Mona Lisa Face Apple Logo Illusion Which one is […]
Look at the center of the following figure and move your head closer and further from the figure repeatedly. Does the “white spot” toward the center of the image appear to get larger and smaller? The effect seen above has also been called the “here comes the sun ” effect and is caused by a […]
