Optical Illusions » illusions and aesthetics

Native Canadian Ambiguous Art

david — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:14:26 +0000

Depending how you see it, this panel either shows two killer whales looking at one another in profile, or a bear looking at you head on – the killer whales’ fins top centre become the bears’ ears. And then the killer whales’ tails centre bottom become the mouth of a third creature, probably a frog, [...]

Cheating with tessellations

david — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:05:35 +0000

Tessellations are patterns whose repeat motifs fit together like jig-saw pieces, with no gaps and no repeats. For an introduction, see our earlier animation. They can be abstract patterns, but the most intriguing are the ones devised by tessellation maestro M.C.Escher in the middle of the last century, which show representational motifs, such as animals, [...]

Soap Sheets

david — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:49:37 +0000

Here’s a new item for our category of soap bubble pictures. The movie shows a science-centre-style demo, not of a bubble, but of a soap sheet. It’s a way of showing patterns like the ones that appear on bubbles, but streaming down a huge sheet. The quality of the [...]

Sleights of Mind – illusions and magic

david — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 12:18:54 +0000

The dome in the left hand picture is an illusion! It was painted on the ceiling of the Jesuit church in Vienna by Andrea Pozzo a bit over three hundred years ago. Seen from just the viewpoint of the photo on the left, it’s one of the classics of trompe l’oeil painting. The right hand [...]

Arcimboldo exhibition in Milan, Italy

david — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:47:33 +0000

Make whatever sacrifice you have to, but unless you were in Washington last Autumn and caught the National Gallery of Art’s exhibition of the work of Arcimboldo there, seize any chance to travel to Milan, Italy, and see it there from January 27th to May 8th 2011. It’s coming on at the Palazzo Reale. [...]

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 [...]

Perspective Errors and the Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest

david — Tue, 11 May 2010 13:50:01 +0000

This is a detail from British artist William Hogarth‘s print made in 1754, to demonstrate mistakes in perspective. For example, the sheep lower left get larger with distance, not smaller, and the woman top right is leaning out of a window offering a light to a man in the distance. However I’m really showing [...]

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. [...]

Aesthetics and Perception: Kula trade canoes

david — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:38:57 +0000

This wonderful ornamental canoe prow represents some fabulous creature, looking to the right. Prows like this appeared on boats used in a cycle of trade around the Trobriand and nearby Islands in the Western Pacific, called the Kula trade. The wonderfully ornamented canoes were only a small part of the story of this cycle of [...]

Illusion Jigsaw Puzzles

david — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:46:50 +0000

I’ve turned some of the illusion images into online jigsaw puzzles available to play online. Click on a thumbnail to play the puzzle or just try the illusion jigsaw puzzle below. Optical Illusions online jigsaw puzzles at JigsawSite.com Online jigsaw puzzles from JigsawSite.com