“All I know is that I know nothing.” – Socrates
Everything we experience is actually a figment of our imagination.
Even if your sensations feel accurate and truthful, they do not necessarily reproduce the physical reality of the world outside of you.
Many of the things you experience during the course of your daily life reflect only the physical stimuli that enter the brain, with the gift of sight probably being the most ‘trickable’ of the five senses you might have.
What is even more remarkable is that the same neural ma-chinery that interprets actual sensory inputs is also respons-ible for our dreams, delusions and failings of memory. In other words, the real and the imagined share a physical source in your brain.
Over the course of human history, visual artists as well as illusionists have used visual illusions to develop deep insights into the inner workings of the human visual system with many having devised techniques to “trick” the brain into thinking that a flat canvas (such as the image you see above) is three-dimensional, or that a series of brushstrokes is actually a still life.
Visual illusions are defined by dissociation between the physical reality and the subjective perception of objects or an event. When you experience a visual illusion, one of three things can happen – 1) you see something that is not there; 2) fail to see something that is there; or, 3) see something different from what is there. As a result of this disconnect between perception and actual reality, visual illusions demonstrate ways by which your brain can fail to recreate the physical world. All is not what it seems.
Take for example the video clip you are about to view below. It is an illusion which tricks you to think you are watching a movie-like progression of 85 beautiful faces of women when actually – it is nothing really more than static photos cleverly stitched together and morphed seamlessly lasting a duration of 3 minutes and 6 seconds by use of software written code.
And here too, as an additional treat for you, is another video clip I think you might enjoy watching because it shows you exactly how one illusion is actually created.
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