Movies: Spellbound | Main | Movies: Thirteen
January 27, 2004
Talk: Visual Illusions
Went to a very interesting talk today by Al Seckel of CalTech on visual illusions. He showed quite a few amazing illusions including the Ted Adelson checkerboard illusion that made the rounds a while ago. Another interesting one which we tried successfully later involves two people and a mirror and is called the "Cheshire Cat" illusion, as it causes you to see only parts of your partner's face, particularly the eyes and mouth which are most used for recognizing people. Many of the other images he showed are also shown on the site I link to above.
The basic deal with all of these illusions is that our brain expects to see one thing and thus fills in gaps or misinterprets information to better fit our expectations. Basically, we are willing to be wrong in very unusual cases in order to be right in the vast majority of cases. Whether this is genetic or due to experience isn't fully clear. Very cool talk.
Posted by aarondf at January 27, 2004 06:01 PM
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