Last week I staged another battle of the clever stuff, and put the trippy thing against the strobe illusion. The strobe illusion won hands down, so it stays on. This week it is up against a great spider illusion (thanks to Ian Broadhead – the illusion is that the image is simply flicking from positive to negative with just a tiny movement of the spider, but it gives the impressive of dramatic zooming). Have a look at them both….
…. to experience the strobe illusion click here….
and the spider illusion is after the break (note, it contains flashing images and a big scary spider)……
Vote now and feel free to explain your choice below…..

Get that spider OFF or at least warn us, and I’m the one in our house that has to get rid of them, but that thing is scary.
Hi,
Just discovered your blog yesterday and been spending my day to look at all the 21 pages
Very addictive ! Great blog (and connected websites)
BRAVO
I vote for the spider illusion.
Great how it can seem to expand in only 2 images.
I know the strobe does the same in only one image but its less original (and scary).
I’m very fond of stereograms and did a few myself.
Here’s one printed in one of my comic-books.
The spider made me think of it as I combined the two (left & right) images in an animated gif to give the impression of 3D :
http://yamaya2012.sur-la-toile.com/codex/cutika3d2.gif
Gah! Being scared like that is not pleasant at 3am. Cool illusion but I’m voting for the strobe effect just so I don’t ever have to see that spider again.
I don’t get what the spider illusion is about :S :S
I threw a shoe across the room, missed the spider, hit the vote button. Since no other illusion before has evoked such a response it can keep the vote.
I’m going to have to check under the bedclothes before hopping in tonight. Thanks, Prof.
I am probably being really stupid here but I dont get the spider illusion
Wow, I’d like the psycho-optical explanation of the spider one. I fully understand the “strobe” one as a “motion aftereffect” thing. But the spider treats some new territory.
For those that don’t “see” the spider, amazing. You are seeing the spider blinking, right? Flipping between normal and inverted? Well, for some reason, this makes it appear as the spider image is rotating (counterclockwise) and almost growning too…. even though it is not (no size or angular change whatsoever exists).
/Z
Woops, mixed up the strobe with the “trippy thing” in previous message… and in vote too.
I’ll try and vote back for the strobe if I can @_@’
damnabit you may want to warn epileptics or the sensitive before watching this horrible flashy spider thing.
Hm, I’m totally not being triggered by the trippy stuff right now. Must be the mild comatic state I’m in at right now (nope, no late night, just one of those days that Í seem to be attached to my body). The strobe thing .. what was the animation .. that small thing on top of the page? The trippy thing was cool (today, although not making me trippy .. so I was doing my cross eyed thing to see if it then triggered something .. nope).
Spiders .. I had just been looking at a lot of pictures of spiders (out of interest, wondered what happened to the ones from australia that had been seen in Belgium a few years ago). And then the lego link .. had just been buying lego for my cousin. We have a special connection wiseman .. ehehe .. Yes, ofcourse not. But hey ..
Yes, completely OT, I’m so easily triggered to follow the other paths that are leading from your topic at times as well ..
For Nopke :
I had a hard time understanding the strobe illusion is when you click on the ‘get me trippy’ link…
For the spider, at first, I didn’t read the explanation ( was it there in the first place ), so I didn’t understand what it was about…
Now that I read it, I am really impressed by how effective it is !
Tegenaria duellica. Lovely beasts. It’s either a monoculture of these guys – who you can see – or a whole collection of other beasts, many of which you don’t see.
Better the devil you know
p.s. Nice effect.
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SWEET JESUS. The spider is clever but I’m voting for the strobe if it saves me having to see that again. Also, even though its effects are less mysterious, I still prefer the strobe
The best
fuck u slut eat my dick
Spider thing was great! I’ve seen another one like that where a mans floating in space, and it flickers like the spider does which makes it look like he’s getting bigger and bigger, and further through space. Weird.
Whilst I’m a big fan of spiders (which is just as well, living in a 17th century farmhouse; three humans, three thousand spiders), I adore the hippy trippy makes-you-feel-dippy thing you’ve got going on with the strobe!
More!
It’s kinda freaky. The Spide just keeps getting bigger and bigger, yet it still fits into his little square
. Still, I vote for strobe. Looking through my room and actually seeing things get larger is way cooler.
Easy choice: although the strobe made me feel nauseous I simply loathe spiders. No contest.
http://doctorbeatnik.wordpress.com/
No arachnophobia here. The spider illusion is –erm– flashy and grabs you, but it doesn’t have the profound weirdness of the strobe illusion.
Out of curiosity, is there a detectable bias in the voting towards whichever is the new illusion? Can the statistics be analyzed that way with only a single question?
Brrrr. That’s given me the shudders. Unfortunately loking at the vots I’m going to have to see that another few times until it’s voted out. Yuck
Watching the animation frame by frame is a little disapointing :
The spider IS really turning and zooming !
Actually there are 4 frames in the animation :
* Pos A, positive
* Pos B = Pos A + turn + zoom, Positive
* Pos A, Negative
* Pos B, Negative
So the illusion is less impressive, because there IS a zoom and a rotation here, the illusion is ‘just’ that returning to Pos A while taking the image negative makes the zoom / rotation last longer…
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I love spiders, but I still think the strobe is better. Sorry Spidey.
Spider rocks!
To “get” the trippy thing, you have to stare at the illusion for 20-30 seconds — Then Look Away. It’s the looking away that simulates the optical illusion you experience on LSD.
And that spider is hands-down the most intense!
For fun put together some gifs that behaved in a similar way (positive normal, positive zoom and tilt, neg normal, neg zoom and tilt). It seems to work best wit images that have some radial symmetry- a spiral seemed to spin and grow, for example, but a rooster head just rocked back and forth (although his comb seemed to grow a bit).
i voted for the spider, but i rly liked the strobe thing too. hard to decide
The spider seems to get larger every time it flashes, if i look at its body closely.
When i just look at the flashing black/white part, the spider grows and then shrinks
SCARY.
What I love best about the spider is that at times my eyes will lock on one image or the other and discard the inversion. sadly I can’t control it, but that means something is going on in my brain that I think is cool. in addition to the zoom effect.
This is a serious suggestion from a photosensitive epileptic:
Could you provide a link to the graphic, not the graphic itself, with a warning that it contains visually “flashing” material likely to trigger photosensitive seizures, in future please?
You may remain assured that I am confidently assured that this particular breach was inadvertent.
Very hard to decide this time.
As my screen is still swimming I’m going to have to vote for the strobe illusion. (Plus, giant spiders are icky.)
Thankyou, sir!
You have earned your moniker ‘Wise-man’ by making the epilepsy-inducing visuals voluntary.
No doubt your have seen this. It’s a very good talk about optical illusions etc
Whoops, I didn’t realize my link would pop up as a frame. Sorry about the rude intrusion on your blog. How rude of me… love your work… sorry!
B. Lotto, blotto. Is that a pseudonym?
I’ve separated the 4 frames in the gif file into 4 individual jpg image files. Here they are:
Something went wrong in my previous post! Here are the links to the images:
http://rs370tl2.rapidshare.com/files/296130017/spidereffect0.jpg
http://rs370tg.rapidshare.com/files/296130019/spidereffect1.jpg
http://rs370gc.rapidshare.com/files/296130020/spidereffect2.jpg
http://rs370tl3.rapidshare.com/files/296130021/spidereffect3.jpg
Aah, then I should totally not have voted for the spider, because it’s a cheat. It’s still “interesting”, but nowhere near as interesting if the “zoom&grow” effect had come SOLELY from the inversion.
Cheat!
/Z
good photo
i like both, but ive seen the strobe one before, so i went for the spider. they’re bth good illusions.
oommgg thats soooooo funny and cool