Paris' City Hall Showcases Mind-Bending Optical Illusion (VIDEO)
Paris Optical Illusion

The Huffington Post Dean Praetorius Posted: 07/7/11

If you can wrap your head around this one, we'll honestly be impressed.

The image you see above (and in the video below) isn't quite what it seems. In actuality it's a piece of 3D art, creating a mind-bending optical illusion in front of Paris' City Hall.

Designed by François Abelanet, and titled "Who to believe?" the piece is on display through July 15, according to the City of Paris' Official Website. The official release states that the installation is supposed to "question the link between nature and city, and their difficult coexistence."

The video below shows more than just the illusion, delving deeper into its creation.

While pictures may make it seem small, in reality it's enormous.

From Gizmodo:

  The work of art may look small in its 3D form, but it's actually huge. It covers 1500 square meters, measures 100 meters long and uses 1200 square meters of lawn. Approximately, 90 gardeners worked for five days to assemble the entire display.

WATCH:

"Vous êtes ailleurs" ou à l'Hôtel de Ville ? by mairiedeparis

The squares marked A and B are the same shade of gray.

"Rotating snakes"

Circular snakes appear to rotate 'spontaneously'.

If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, you will only see one color, pink. If you stare at the black + in the center, the moving dot turns to green. Now, concentrate on the black + in the center of the picture. After a short period of time, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see a green dot rotating if you're lucky! It's amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don't disappear. This should be proof enough that we don't always see what we think we see.

? Watch the Illusion Animation

May 19, 2004 -- Scientists at the California Institute of Technology have developed a visual illusion that they believe will help explain how human brains make sense of the world. The computer simulation shows how various parts of the brain act together to make a coherent visual image.

NPR's Joe Palca talks with NPR's Michele Norris, host of All Things Considered, about the research, which appears in the current issue of Nature.

Do the Illusion

Step 1: Click on the "Illusion Animation" link in the sidebar on the left.

Sit so your eyes are about 8 inches from the screen. Look at the center of the animation and pay careful attention to the direction the red dots appear to moving.

Step 2: Still sitting with your eyes about 8 inches from the animation, now look at a point about 1 inch from the left hand edge of the screen and note which direction the red dots are now moving.

What You Should See: In step 1, all the red dots in the entire animation appear to be moving up, and the green dots appear to be moving down. In reality, the screen is broken into three columns. In the center column, the red dots are indeed moving down, and the green dots up. But in the other two columns, to the left and right of center, the direction of the dots is reversed.

Fun with stroop effect! I see Nick sent this one. Does he know about the website with optical illusions? http://www.illusionworks.com

this one's cool: http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/f_exhibits.html