May 23, 2007

Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest - quite a collection. The visual illusion community includes visual scientists, ophthalmologists, neurologists, and visual artists that use a variety of methods to help discover the neural underpinnings of visual illusory perception. First place went to The Leaning Tower Illusion, submitted by McGill University. *preen* Via FmH
  • Don't look at this site if you're having migraine auras. That should be obvious, but I'm stupid.
  • Aura? Sorra, Lara!
  • Cool... the brain certainly can be entertaining. I liked the fact that the winning illusion was also among the simplest.
  • *imagines the illusions that could have been incorporated into pac man* Fun post. I love stuff like this, and was not aware of the competition.
  • Not a circle. NOT!
  • Your FACE is IN a BOX! Your FACE is IN a BOX! Your FACE is IN a BOX! whoa.
  • The percept is generated by attraction and repulsion of the circular envelope in the orientation domain by the sinusoidal carrier gratings. No shit. Of course, this is nothing that can't be fixed by a neti pot.
  • That first place picture has to be the worst "illusion" I ever seen. A tilted picture of a tower looks tilted? OMG! That's supposed to be an illusion?
  • Sorry about so much snark, I'm just really diappointed in many of these best illusions. I can't even find the illusion in some.
  • I guess you have to be a vision scientist in order to appreciate the leaning tower illusion. It is by far most novel of the ten. The prizes are pretty neat, too.
  • I liked the simplicity of the leaning tower one- the two towers are leaning at the same degree, but do not appear to be parallel.
  • Yeah! Go leaning towers of Pizza! I'm just glad the top 10 didn't include the famous "Dogs Playing Poker" illusion. That one freaks me right the @#%! out