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Optical illusions & the art of seeing

Explore optical illusions, impossible objects and illusion art with pictures, viewing instructions and explanations. Follow the science and history behind each example, from classic visual puzzles to fractals and camouflage in nature and human design.

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The collection

Ouchi Illusion — A central checkerboard appears to float against its surroundings.

Ouchi Illusion

Hideyuki Ouchi

A central checkerboard appears to float against its surroundings.

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Burning Ship Fractal — A variation of complex iteration produces forms reminiscent of ships and towers.

Burning Ship Fractal

Michael Michelitsch and Otto E. Rössler

A variation of complex iteration produces forms reminiscent of ships and towers.

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An outlined triangle at the centre of a clock-face arrangement of numbers in the Pointing Triangle figure.

Pointing Triangle

Stephen Palmer, psychologist at UC Berkeley.

You should experience a 'Gestalt switch' between seeing the triangle as 'pointing' in each of the three directions corresponding to its angles.

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Historical engraving showing Robertson’s phantasmagoria, with lantern operators, an apparition and spectators in a dark theatrical setting.

Phantasmagoria — magic-lantern ghost shows

Étienne-Gaspard Robertson and other lantern showmen

Ghosts and skeletons appear in darkness, grow larger and seem to approach the audience. Hidden magic lanterns turn painted slides into an unsettling moving spectacle.

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A pale blue drawing of connected corners whose locally plausible edges cannot form a consistent solid.

Impossible Corners

Oscar Reutersvärd (1915 - 2002), Swedish graphic artist

You should experience a sense of perceptual confusion as you note the paradoxical nature of the corners.

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White disks at gray grid intersections over black squares.

Scintillating grid

James R. Bergen; later Bernd & Elke Lingelbach, Michael Schrauf & E. R. Wist

Black dots flicker across a grid of white dots.

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A colourful treble clef and musical notes illustrating the Shepard scale audio demonstration.

Shepard Scale Illusions

Roger Newland Shepard (1929 - 2022), cognitive scientist

In the first sound file, you should experience the pitch as ever increasing. In the second file, you should experience the pitch as ever decreasing. These are illusory experiences, for the…

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An animated red-and-green ring with striped surfaces whose apparent depth can reverse.Moving image

Ambiguous Ring

Donald E. Simanek

You should experience a sense of perceptual confusion as you note the paradoxical nature of the depicted ring.

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Andrei Rublev’s The Trinity: three seated angels around a pale table, with obliquely drawn seats and footstools opening across the foreground.

The Trinity

Andrei Rublev

Three angels gather around a table in a space whose furniture opens towards the viewer instead of following a single distant vanishing point.

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A single animal head whose left-facing bill can also be read as rabbit ears.

Duck or rabbit?

Anonymous artist; later studied by Joseph Jastrow

A beak becomes a pair of ears. Nothing in the drawing changes.

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Reutersvärd’s triangle — A triangle of blocks recalls Reutersvärd’s pioneering impossible figure.

Reutersvärd’s triangle

Oscar Reutersvärd; modern drawing by László Németh

A triangle of blocks recalls Reutersvärd’s pioneering impossible figure.

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Concentric circular bands with repeated black, blue, white and yellow segments.

Rotating snakes

Akiyoshi Kitaoka

A completely still pattern that seems to turn.

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Impossible cube — A familiar cube frame acquires an impossible set of overlaps.

Impossible cube

M. C. Escher; modern redraw by 4C and Belbury

A familiar cube frame acquires an impossible set of overlaps.

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Enlarged image from the selected gallery entry