Thursday, February 6, 2020

Optical Illusion: Sloping Blue Stripes

In this optical illusion by Victoria Skye, the blue stripes seem to slope up and down, but they're actually level and parallel. 


On close examination, the little diamond shapes in the top blue stripe tilt a little to the left. They tilt to the right on the second and fourth stripe. Those tilting diamonds seem to influence our perception of the slope of each blue stripe.

Squinting overcomes the illusion because it eliminates those fine grained distractors.
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Visit her website of illusions and impossible objects

5 comments:

  1. If you focus your eyes you can see that all the boxes between the darker blue lines are straight and the same size, but somewhere between our eyes and brain we are convinced that the darker blue lines are on opposite angles. Victoria did a great job twisting our perceptions.

    A boss once told me this, "There are three sides to every story: your side, their side, and the truth."

    Pictures like this are a stark reminder that our perceptions of what we see are not always enough to see the truth. It is these amazing twists in perceptions that allow artists to turn 2 dimensional papers and canvases into beautiful illusions with depth and breadth. It is a powerful tool, and potentially a dangerous weapon if used incorrectly.

    (Not too get too political, but recently I am again reminded that there are three sides to each story- and that perhaps both sides of the political aisle aren't seeing the whole truth. I hope there is room for kindness and forgiveness on both sides.)

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  2. Imagine making this as a quilt and hanging it on your wall to annoy guests. :-D

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  3. I did some quick edits to try to isolate which element was causing the effect. For me it's the diagonal checkerboard corner pieces, but it may be something different for different eyes/brains.. (or it could be down to the sloppiness of the edits as well)
    https://imgur.com/a/kTsHhQd

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  4. Shape and value relationships. Color moot. Valuable lesson for designing space (on paper, canvas).

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  5. If I squint my eyes to eliminate much of the details, the blue stripes straighten horizontally. The same is true if the image is made much smaller which also eliminates the details that are causing the distortions.

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