http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1w0Adq/www.bored-to-death.com/32844/9-Logos-with-Hidden-Messages-Pics

"****FINAL CALL FOR ILLUSION SUBMISSIONS: THE WORLD'S 7TH ANNUAL BEST ILLUSION OF THE YEAR CONTEST****

http://illusioncontest.neuralcorrelate.com

The 2011 Best Illusion of the Year Contest will be held in Naples, Florida (Naples Philharmonic Center for the Arts, http://www.thephil.org/) on Monday, May 9th, 2011, as an official satellite of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS) conference. The Naples Philharmonic Center is an 8-minute walk from the main VSS headquarters hotel in Naples, and is thus central to the VSS conference.

Past contests have been highly successful in drawing public attention to vision research, with over ***FIVE MILLION*** website hits from viewers all over the world, as well as hundreds of international media stories. The First, Second and Third Prize winners at the 20019 contest were Koukichi Sugihara (Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences, Japan), Bart Anderson (University of Sydney, Australia), and Jan Kremlacek (Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic)."

Which illusions do you think best help us inderstand the visual system?

Why do you think scientists woudl put on a contest for illusions?

Check out the parent site as well at (http://neuralcorrelate.com/) they are up to some cool stuff.

What would you do if you were a student in this lab?

"The car and motorcycle company worked with lighting manufacturer Profoto to produce a commercial with light effects that allow viewers to temporarily see the letters "BMW" when they close their eyes."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/16/bmw-ad-vide-burns-logo-into-eyes-_n_797981.html

 

"The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?full=true

"The Best Visual illusion of the Year Contest is a celebration of the ingenuity and creativity of the world's premier visual illusion research community. Contestants from all around the world will submit novel visual illusions (unpublished, or published no earlier than 2009), and an international panel of judges will rate them and narrow them to the TOP TEN. At the Contest Gala in the Naples Philharmonic Center for the Arts, the top ten illusionists will present their creations and the attendees of the event (that means YOU!) will vote to pick the TOP THREE WINNERS!"

http://illusioncontest.neuralcorrelate.com/

Illusion of sex 3rd place winner....

The two images below are widely available on the web but not attributed to any particular source. In the top image, do you perceive the balls as resting on the checkerboard in a diagonal line? But in the bottom image, as the three balls on the right floating, each a little higher than the one before?

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/ballshadow/

Visual "illusions" aren't "tricks" but rather windows into how the brain makes informed guesses.

 

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/contrastcolor/

Most people assume that what you see is pretty much what your eye sees and reports to your brain. In fact, your brain adds very substantially to the report it gets from your eye, so that a lot of what you see is actually "made up" by the brain (see Seeing more than your eye does).

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/latinhib.html

 

Welcome to Super Senses!

Our sense organs link us with the outside world.

They take in information and send it to the brain. Here it's deciphered and turned into something meaningful.

We communicate through our sense organs - touching, seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling.

http://www.youramazingbrain.org/supersenses/default.htm#

 

 

After you get inspired by this site, try your hand at sidwalk art, by yourself or with a group of friends. What special challenges did you face?

http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm