Under no Illusions

Look at the yellow blob in the middle and pretend to be in a Stargate episode.
The blue circles will appear to rotate and make you vomit.

What You'll Need: One toilet roll tube, two hands, two eyes.

Effect: For this illusion, you'll first need to find a small tube. A cardboard paper towel tube works great for this illusion, although if you can't find one, you can always roll up a sheet of paper into the same shape or find something else that is similar. First, you want to hold the tube in front of one eye and with both eyes look at something in the distance (10 to 15 feet away). Next, your free hand (the one not holding the tube) up in front of the eye that is not looking through the tube so that your hands. Your hands and eyes should now be positioned similar to the illustration above.

What You'll See: You should see a round hole in the palm of your hand. The object that you were looking at in the distance should be perfectly visible through this hole.

The images above may astound you. These sort of ‘tricks of the light’ are called ‘optical illusions’, or as I prefer ‘needing another glass of wine’.

Let’s face it your date never looks the same over cocktails as they do over cornflakes.

So what are optical illusions?

They are, in short, discrepancies of the truth. Our perception is not , it seems, consistent with the truth. We all suffer from illusions, or visual embarrassment. Most inconsistencies with reality pass unnoticed. Many have seen a mirage on occasions mistaken for instance, a wet road on a hot day. A simple example would be, a pencil in a glass of water. It is enlarged or misshapen. This explains why pickles always look bigger inside the jar. Ask your ‘chippy,’ “do you base the price of their pickles on the size and quality of their dills?” When extricated from the jar you can explain that gherkin ‘size’, in fact, does matter’, and demand a discount on your delicacy. Yet, we are surrounded by illusions everyday. Look below, at these cloud formations.

When I took this photograph I was stoned on smack. Notice, how I mistook the cloud formation for a giant ‘Auntie Bessie Yorkshire Pudding’ on legs, in the sky. Another example of how our visual senses can be fooled by ambiguous images.

An optical illusion is simply ‘visual noise’. The brain and optics malfunction much the same as an ‘autofocus’ feature on a camcorder. When pointed on white expanses, it ‘hunts’ to focus because, it expects to arrange an image, even though, sometimes, one is not available. It is not so much a ‘trick of the light’ but feelings of being lied to. Your moviemaker not only suffers misperceptions but will feel a failed product. After wasting it’s battery on trying to focus on nothingness, it may lose confidence, and end up in isolation on top of the wardrobe, for long durations, until a more reliable machine has replaced it. Untrustworthy and shunned, it will become resentful about all the home movies it has produced for the reward of its adopted family, and finally run out of warrantee. Alone, bitter and on Ebay.

Cognitive Illusions... are different. They have a physiological base and are more subtle and harder to determine. There may be nothing wrong with the brain process to get disturbed sensory signals. For instance, a small soup tin may weigh more than a large one. We assume that the size and weight is relative.

We can test this theory by going on holiday with an empty suitcase. Put a “HEAVY” label on it, and ask a porter to lift it, onto a trolley. The porter will assume the case is far heavier than it really is, and pick it up with a measure of force, and it will fly through the air, swinging around and put the uniformed helper on his shiny arse. Result? One very embarrassed airport staff and no baggage to worry about.

Ambiguous Images

This is when ordinary subjects seem to change or distort into another quite different image. Perception may change into two different alternatives. Is it a rabbit or a donkey? Is it a vase or an old lady? Is it a wood nymph or too much too drink?

A phenomenon called ‘visual depth reversal’ or A.K.A ‘PARALLAX’ is commonly known as, counter information. The interpretation of what we believe we see, or what our eyes want us to see. Much like any other camera, but the most sophisticated on the planet, the eye cannot cope with too much information. Another similarity, is when we watch the propeller on an airplane in an old black and white film. The spinning prop seems to change direction after it starts up. Of course that is not happening, but movie cameras fifty years ago, frame for frame, did not synchronise well, with such fast images. The eye is thus ‘surprised’ from time to time with optical illusions. The reassuring fact about the cues the eyes takes from what they perceive, or what the brain tells them to perceive, is purely paradoxical. Our vision takes the easy way out and focuses on what is probable not what is really happening. So, the camera, and indeed our own eyes can lie.

To illustrate. If you put one hand in a bowl of cold water and the other into a hot bowl. Your brain would naturally assume the different temperatures and the brain would know what was going on with each extreme. The eyes are different. They need three dimensional data. That means, they need ‘depth cues.’ A one eyed person will automatically lose one of those dimensions, thus making any visual judgment limited. When we see somebody wave their hand in front of a switched on TV screen, it will appear that the fingers and thumbs multiply. The eyes are having a problem focusing with the TV image and the foreground moving image.

An optical illusion through converging lines and icons can stress the vision in the same way. Without a ‘moving’image, there is either, too much information, or not enough. The eyes that cannot assimilate an image will appear to make it change shape or move.

In many ways an optical illusion is really an optical delusion. Why? Because it contradicts our conceptual and perceptual beliefs.

Much like the Pope dying recently. All his life he preached about the rapture of heaven, but when it came to his time, he really wasn’t that keen to go, was he?

Concentrate on just one of the yellow dots
and the other twenty three will disappear.

Some handy tips to cope with optical scenarios.

Have you ever steam ironed a striped shirt, or busy looking tie, and it appears to move, or change shape? Always check that someone is not wearing them first.

Try this at home. Take a film poster off an advertising board outside your local cinema by using the steam iron above and a small generator. Look closely, and notice the film cast are always printed in that impossible ‘tall type’ under the illustration. Unroll it, onto a field, and lie down at the foot of the giant ad, looking up to read the type, from its lower edge. Presto! The print becomes legible.

Take an empty cereal box and using some scissors, cut two holes in the front where your eyes will be. Jam it over your head. Walk into ‘Specsavers’, shouting, “Why can’t I have a pair like my brothers?”

Send your next utility bill back to the power company with, ‘Arseholes to you, I’m dyslexic’ written in lipstick across it, at an angle.

Walk into the GPO wearing very dark sunglasses and holding a cheese-grater. Run your fingers up and down the serrated edges saying. “I’m lost and these are the only directions I have, can you help?”

Get time off work by carefully replacing the Optrex fluid, with bleach, in your office’s first aid cupboard.

Next time you eat a Chinese meal, take a canister of ‘Tippex’, and some kid’s gel pens to dinner. Paint one of the sweet and sour pork balls to look like an eyeball and watch the fun.

Want to dump your flat chested girlfriend? Tape a pair of contact lenses into her birthday card and write inside, “My present to you is enclosed. I hope you like your new see thru bra….”

Walk into the opticians, naked, with a friend. Tie some red and white bunting to both your knobs. When, arrested by the Police, just say in your defence, “We just wanted to make ourselves a pair of spectacles.”

Squirt green food colouring into your eyes, to get served quickly, at Starbucks.

Go to a slaughterhouse and purchase the fresh eyeballs of livestock. Go to your local tennis club. The animal orbs make very cheap tennis balls. If you are spotted by the RSPCA…. try not to bat an eye.

This is not an optical illusion but a great idea for a new carpet.

I love what happens here. Stare at the dot in the middle of the picture above, and move your head forwards and backwards. Can you see what it looks like? Yes, that’s it! It looks like you are some nodding idiot that belongs in a mental institution.

I will never play draughts again as pissed as this.

I’m not quite sure how this one works either.
All I know, is some bint, is spoiling my view.

This is a new design for superstore carrier bags.
The contents of your shopping never equates to the money you have spent.
If you stare at the bill long enough, it will eventually fill you with despair.

The above is what it feels like when the landlord shouts ‘last orders’.

Warning:
You should never stare at anything small to make it shrink.
Ask my wife.

The illusion below is nothing short of stunning.
Always ‘skin-up’ first to avoid disappointment.

The illusions of imagination:

A common fascination, and so, very pure of all our natures. That whimsical, and inventive flair, we have to see faces in clouds, or figures in the shadows.

Below is a hedge called ‘Russell’.
Can you see the likeness? Did you twig that?

Below is a cloud formation that proves the Virgin Mary has gone to heaven.

Below: X-American President Gerald Ford in heaven. Isn’t he?

Below: A side profile of Ann Robinson.

Below: A spooky child’s face, and it’s not Jack Osbourne.

Below: This looks like God’s finger in the sky, saying, “I was only joking.”

Below: This is my greatest fear. Christ came too late.
This vintage photograph was taken, during the last war, by an American airman.

By far the most captivating cloud.
It’s me, passing out, after being barred from four pubs.

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All content on this site is subject to copyright © 2000/2006
If you wish to use anything either text or graphics please ask permission