Sensory Illusions

Our brain tries to fill in the gaps in what we perceive and sometimes errors occur. Optical illusions, auditory illusions, and magic tricks take advantage of this.


Test your own senses and take the BBC's sense challenge: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/interactives/senseschallenge/

Some sites that have specific illusions:
            Spanish Castle Illusion: http://www.johnsadowski.com/big_spanish_castle.php
            Watercolour Illusion: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Watercolor_illusion

            Dragon Illusion: http://www.grand-illusions.com/opticalillusions/dragon_illusion/

            Stroop Test: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/words.html#seffect

            Backmasking of Music: http://jeffmilner.com/backmasking/stairway-to-heaven-backwards.html

            Above is the Hermann Grid Illusion

The following are links that contain various optical illusions:

http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/index.html

http://psylux.psych.tu-dresden.de/i1/kaw/diverses%20Material/www.illusionworks.com/html/hall_of_illusions.html

 This is the Rene Magritte Museum in Brussels, Belgium. He was a surrealist artist in the early 1900s and famously exploited human perceptual errors to make interesting, thought-provoking paintings. You can see more of his work here: http://www.all-art.org/art_20th_century/magritte1.html

Many artists use a knowledge of perception to create art, but another famous and very clear example of this is M.C. Escher.