Optical Illusions » Ambiguous images

David Kemp

david — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:02:44 +0000

You’re going to have to hurry, but if you can get to the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro, England, before July 3rd, you can see this brilliant sculpture of a dog by British sculptor David Kemp, in his exhibition The Botallack Hoard. It’s one of the dogs in his piece The Hounds of Geevor, and [...]

Eyespots

david — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 11:35:01 +0000

Eyespots are fascinating. Nature presents all sorts of camouflage and mimicry, but mostly when prey species look like harmful species, or are camouflaged against background, or imitate leaves, or when seahorses look like seaweed (sea dragons). The imitation then is in 3D, like a waxwork. But eyespots are nature’s only example of patterning that becomes [...]

80 Illusions Poster

david — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:06:20 +0000

You’re welcome to download and use for private purposes any of the imagery on the site, except for a very few pictures where I indicate that third party copyright might apply. But if you’d like a giant, 35 x 23 inch poster, full of illusions, you can buy it (along with loads of illusions on [...]

Meet Humbaba

david — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 09:51:56 +0000

This is one of the oldest ambiguous images I know. It’s a small clay mask from Mesapotamia, (in modern day Iraq), made about 3750 years ago. It’s the face of the giant Humbaba, but as he might have appeared to a soothsayer, looking into the writhing entrails of a sacrificed animal for purposes of divination. [...]

Animated illusion cartoon – post no. 2

admin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:12:17 +0000

Here’s a new chance to see illusions as you’ve never seen them before (unless of course you viewed our first post on animated illusion cartoons). This one is STAG and the SNOW FAIRY. The illusion it features, on which we have an earlier post, also with an animation, is revolving heads. You can also view Stag and [...]

Koala and Woven Person

david — Sat, 02 May 2009 08:32:00 +0000

Here’s another ambiguous severed head illusion. Is Koala thoughtfully holding up the severed head of Woven Person for inspection, or is it the other way round? You can see it both ways. For examples of this illusion in earlier posts, check out The Screams after Munch, the Monks, and the Mask/Skull illusion. (On that link [...]

Which way around is Mercury going?

david — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 08:57:01 +0000

Does Mercury look like he’s rotating clockwise or anti-clockwise? That may depend on whether you look at the left hand figure, or the silhouette. That right hand silhouette figure can appear to rotate either way round. Some viewers find that it flips from clockwise to anti-clockwise spontaneously, but others may find [...]

A wonky dagger illusion

david — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:37:27 +0000

There’s something amiss with this dagger, for sure. For a start, the blade’s a bit short. More important, you can’t be sure just from the picture where the blade is pointing. That’s because one and the same perspective view can arise from more than one three-dimensional configuration, out there in the world. This dagger is [...]

Mosaic illusions

david — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:24:37 +0000

Here’s another example of the way illusion effects have been used in decorative art designs. (For examples in earlier posts, check out the category Illusions and Aesthetics, to the right). This mosaic is one of many from the Villa Romana del Casale, in the middle of Sicily, Southern Italy. Only the floors of [...]

Improved artworks no.2

david — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:00:00 +0000

On the right, with apologies to Eduard Munch, I’d like to propose an improvement to his famous picture The Scream. In my version, the screamer really does have something to scream about: he’s holding up a duplicate of his own head for inspection. But which head is the one that’s attached to the body, and [...]