Althouse: A serene illusion.

December 7, 2009

A serene illusion.

Via ArtsJournal.

20 comments:

vbspurs said...: The Kitaro-like music is doing nothing for me, Ann. OTOH, I feel this one would be one helluva iPhone app game.

Cheers,
Victoria; 12/7/09, 12:09 PM
Phil 314 said...: well then how does comparing paint chips work?; 12/7/09, 12:17 PM
HokiePundit said...: This is some kind of metaphor for lawyering, isn't it?; 12/7/09, 12:24 PM
Unknown said...: It strikes me a little of the way digital camouflage is supposed to work. The eyes, in that case, fill in on the cloth what the surrounding terrain looks like.

Or something like that.

Very interesting little mind game, unless the patch is being exchanged for one of another color between frames.

WV "ingly" How some people must do something while the majority do it in airs.; 12/7/09, 12:39 PM
Chris said...: Nice misdirection. The illusion, or trick, probably isn't what you think it is.

(Yeah, it works as a metaphor for lawyering... or legislating.); 12/7/09, 12:44 PM
traditionalguy said...: That display was the latest in Tree Ring samples used at East Anglia CRU and taken in diamonds of wood that will do whatever the model damn well says. They are called Algore-ithims; 12/7/09, 12:52 PM
LoafingOaf said...: That's pretty cool. Can someone explain to his oaf why that works? Is it because of the white on top?

Anyway, is Prof. Althouse going to be live-blogging The Joy Behar Show tonight? Andrew Sllivan AND Levi Johnston will be on!! :o I wonder what they'll be talking about in the green room!!!! :o :o; 12/7/09, 1:38 PM
LoafingOaf said...: Anyway, is Prof. Althouse going to be live-blogging The Joy Behar Show tonight? Andrew Sllivan AND Levi Johnston will be on!! :o I wonder what they'll be talking about in the green room!!!! :o :o

From Russia, they can hear Sarah screaming in her kitchen: "SERENITY NOW!!! SERENITY NOW!!!"; 12/7/09, 1:43 PM
MadisonMan said...: I love c3's paint chip comment.; 12/7/09, 1:54 PM
PatHMV said...: Oaf, it works because the eye mostly sees relative colors, not absolute. What color we think something is, even just what shade of gray we think it is, is extremely context-dependent.

See here for another example. Advance warning: you won't believe it until you physically cut 2 holes in a piece of paper, so you can see the two squares entirely independent of the surrounding context. Other illusions here.

More than you ever wanted to know about this and related topics available here.; 12/7/09, 2:04 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: But but but but but ...

LIES!!!

This cannot be.; 12/7/09, 2:38 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Oaf-

In addition to what PatHMV said, the other key is that each diamond is shaded lighter at the top and darker at the bottom. Thus, at each edge where two diamonds meet, the above one is darker than the below one.; 12/7/09, 2:50 PM
Anonymous said...: It's amazing what computer generated graphics trick photography can do these days.

If the maker of this video really wanted to blow our minds, he could have made the whole paper disappear into thin air. Or he could make it appear that it magically turned into a turnip.

Shazzammmm!; 12/7/09, 3:58 PM
MamaM said...: Thanks PatHMV...even after viewing the two squares in isolation, my brain and eyes still wanted to argue the results.

This example of visual context-dependency makes me wonder what else I might be sure about that isn't true?; 12/7/09, 4:07 PM
David said...: Colour perception is always affected by surrounding colours.

Look here to see a what I mean.; 12/7/09, 4:08 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: I now understand this for Photoshop has shown me the light.

Those rhomboid shapes are not a single shade like paint swatches, rather, their shade changes from top to bottom, from outer edge to center. The rhomboid that moves contains all shades. This is evident enlarged in Photoshop.

In Photoshop you can use the eyedropper tool to sample the colors and get the numeric value and see that when sampled from the center the one that moves matches none of them, but that's not necessary once the rhomboids are viewed enlarged.; 12/7/09, 4:16 PM
Peter Hoh said...: I think that each diamond shape is a uniform color. On close examination, each diamond appears to be a gradient, but that's our brain fooling us. Looking at one diamond, we perceive the shade to change because the lower half of the diamond is adjacent to lighter-colored diamonds, while the upper half is adjacent to darker-colored diamonds.

It would be nice to see this done without the white triangles at the top.

I'd also like to see a strip of gray (the middle shade, perhaps) laid vertically on the pattern.; 12/7/09, 5:33 PM
Peter Hoh said...: The old banner text is back.

Is this some kind of code?; 12/7/09, 6:15 PM
Rick Lee said...: Chip has it right... it took me quite a while to figure it out.; 12/7/09, 6:44 PM
Peter Hoh said...: Supper cooked, children fed. Now I had a chance to check it out with an application similar to Paint.

Yes, there is a gradient to each diamond, and all the diamonds are darn close to identical.

I'm sure that the white triangles at the top help sell the illusion that the diamonds are not identical.; 12/7/09, 8:05 PM