Illusions - Best Illusion of the Year Contest - 2017

The phenomenon “Shape from Motion Only” presented in its purest form in the video i.e., the information is only in the temporal domain, without any clues in the spatial domain. Both the object and the background are created by flashing the pixels on and off, while the only difference is expressed in the temporal properties. We examined various properties of the phenomenon such as: statistics and object size. Furthermore, we examined how several known optical illusions like “Rubin’s Vase” might occur using this temporal phenomenon. This research has the potential to open a hatch for better understanding the visual system mechanisms.

Do the dark blue rows appear to slant? Surprise! They are completely straight and in parallel rows. The rows appear to skew due to the contrasts and variants in light and color as well as the varying angles of the diamond targets at the intersections. Blurring the image dissipates the illusion by dissolving the contrasts and angles. The Skye Blue Café Wall is an adaption of previously discovered versions. Richard Gregory made the original illusion design famous after documenting the illusion seen on a café wall in Bristol England. Professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka has created multiple versions of the illusion that include the contrasting targets.

Müller-Lyer’s illusion proves that a segment can visually appear longer or shorter depending on the sense of the arrow heads at its ends. As shown in the animation, the red dot in the middle of the line is equidistant from the other two red dots, although the ends of the line visually appear to alternately stretch and shrink like a rubber band! The radial version of the illusion is even more impressive: http://goo.gl/sas92D. The perceptual increasing and decreasing of the segments occurs in a very short time. Thus, I suppose it is more a physiological phenomenon, rather than a psychological bias. Our attention seems to be attracted by the receptive field WITHIN the V-shaped arrow heads, causing an illusory inward or outward shift of the ends of the line.