Thursday, December 12, 2019

Breathing Illusion




This optical illusion from How Equipment Works demonstrates how breathing seems to be tied in with visual perception.

6 comments:

  1. The movement seems to be tied to which way your head is moving. Breathe in, your head moves up, breathe out, your head moves down. Interesting effect. You can change the direction just by moving your head too.

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  2. Interesting. If I narrow my attention to a single dot, it clicks along clockwise, independent of my breathing. If I unfocus my attention, the dots do seem to alternate direction with the breath.

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  3. I noticed that you can trick yourself into having anything at all control the movement clockwise or counter-clockwise, much like the spinning dancer illusion!

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  4. I'm amazed how instantly and reliably this worked for me. It helps if you breathe deep and seek peace (sorry).

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  5. Interesting. For me, the instructions don't completely describe what I experience. I tend to see them rotating clockwise most of the time. If I breathe slowly or hold my breath, they do change direction 90% of the time. But there's no correlation to whether I'm breathing in or out. Really no matter what direction I perceive, if I change my breathing the direction changes. I didn't experience the changes with my head moving as Samuli says. It seems to be very subjective, and I find everyone's experiences to be fascinating. Maybe a similar thing going on when different artists record the same scene?

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