The first one is a visual illusion but the second one is a phychological phenomenon called \"pareidolia\" which I learned from my favorite astronomer Carl Sagan. He first used that word when explaining why some people think they see UFO's or images in clouds. I do it all the time. Wiki it for more information.
I've seen a lot of these but never the first one... That one is cool.
Bet51987 wrote:The first one is a visual illusion but the second one is a phychological phenomenon called "pareidolia" which I learned from my favorite astronomer Carl Sagan. He first used that word when explaining why some people think they see UFO's or images in clouds. I do it all the time. Wiki it for more information.
not pareidolia but an afterimage effect. When staring at the same spot, your receptors adapt to the image. If you look away, the receptors are still affected, and you see the negative image. Here's the negative of the original image that you should have seen on the wall.
The reason it's not quite pareidolia is that the image was intentionally created to have a negative which resembles a face (apparently Christ). Pareidolia comes out of random stimuli like clouds (\"Look, it's a bunny rabbit!\") or potato chip ridges (\"Look, it's the Virgin Mary!\" ).
Pandora wrote:One of the greatest afterimage illusions is this one here (.wmv file), where you see a photograph in color even though its really black and white.
I'm sure it's been posted here before (in fact, I think I became aware of it through the DBB), but this is an excellent optical illusions website, worthy of wasting many hours on.
Drakona wrote:I'm sure it's been posted here before (in fact, I think I became aware of it through the DBB), but this is an excellent optical illusions website, worthy of wasting many hours on.
For sure! You can spend hours just making the eyes do tricks with your mouse.
Seriously, that is one incredible site! I'm gonna keep going back 'till I've seen it all.