The Scintillating Grid Illusion is visually simple. A black field crisscrossed with grey lines, white dots appearing where the lines intersect. And black dots too? They seem to flash in and out of existence. Of course they're never there at all. Your brain just projects them, for whatever reason.
Optical illusions are often cool, especially when you first notice what's going on. This one is as well. I can't look at it too long, though. It's a little too much like having a floating image in your retina after staring at a blinding light.
3 comments:
I liked the fact that the black dots that aren't there show up in the visual field - it's a good trick. However, in general I don't pay much attention to optical illusions for much the same reason as you. Looking at one of them longer than a moment can be unpleasant.
I don't know if you'll remember a fad in the 1980s that had people in shopping malls looking at large posters that were autostereograms. The idea was that if you stared at an image that appeared to be visual static it would eventually turn into a 3D image. I could never make sense of them - obviously, since the fad came and went, neither could most people.
Illusions are a double-edged sword. They're fascinating to look at, while at the same time they seem like they might hurt you if you stare at them too long. Which might actually be an evolutionary adaptation.
Autostereograms don't really work for me, either. In the ones that I've seen the initial image is just random noise, so I don't have the patience to see what might emerge out of it. I wonder if that led to the fad's downfall.
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