Here’s something fun for a Sunday — the winners of The Year’s Best Illusion contest.
From that post, you have to follow additional links to see the examples of the illusions (or you can follow the links below, although the brief article is useful for setting context). Either way, the links are definitely worth checking out. The curve ball animation is just the sort of thing I love — very simple, very clear, and a wonderful reminder to me of the complexity of the brain, which I sometimes find marvelous, and sometimes seems exactly like the tangle of cables and electric cords under my computer/printer/monitor (as in, you call this organization?!).
And I’m fascinated by the biosex/contrast demonstration. I wonder if traditional gendering of women includes deliberate enhancement of contrast through cosmetics because our brains are all wired this way, or our brains respond this way now because women have spent so much time enhancing the contrast — thus demonstrating the power of socialization to influence the way the brain perceives the world. Chicken or egg?
Coming tomorrow, a new essay for @U2 that I will post in its entirety here, so I can include music with it. And besides, I’m sending you all away to other websites today, but really I like having you here. So tomorrow, no revolving door…
It is a remarkably beautiful day in Seattle. I hope that all is well wherever you are.
Those kinds of illusions are fascinating. I like the curve ball one best. The sex one, I’m not sure I’m buying. Isn’t it that the added contrast makes the face on the left appear narrower/slimmer, and that is what makes it seem slightly more feminine? And some of that is actually differences in the structure of femaie/male faces? I don’t think it’s as clear cut for me as they say it is – before I read the text, I wasn’t sure which one was supposed to be male/female. I think contrast with make-up is added to create shaping/slimming effects. Much the way that lighting is sometimes used in photography. But maybe that’s obvious. Kind of like birds with bright feathers try to attract their mates.
But then of course in comes the whole thing in our society about prejudices regarding the way people look and pressures to conform to that. When I was in the 7th grade, a bunch of my ‘friends’ held me down and put make-up on me. I could’ve fought harder, but I didn’t want to really hurt anyone. And I was way outnumbered. It didn’t traumatize me for life or anything, but it was a tough lesson that I have never forgotten. But now I’m getting away from the fun stuff….
I liked the illusions that had to do with colour best, but maybe because I’m reading Oliver Sacks An Anthropologist On Mars and there’s this painter who became colour-blind after a concussion. The descriptions he gives of life-without-colour are so unsettling/creepy/depressing I’ve been turning that story around in my head. His frustration and revulsion with how dirty and pasty the world he perceived felt made him stage an entire room in shades of grey, complete with monochrome fruit and other dishes on the dinner table, as a way of letting others in on the shock of the experience.
“Color dove illusion” and “Contrast color induced by unconscious surround” make me think of how relevant colour is to our perception, so much our brain will hold on to it even when the image we’re looking at has shifted to black and white.
I found the biosex contrast most fascinating. Both by voice and appearance I have been “mistaken” for a man. We have so many prejudices instilled by society, I am not sure whether to be surprised or flattered(ha!).
I’m not sure I find the low-contrast face more masculine so much as less handsome in general. Aren’t photos of males in high contrast equally more striking than photos of males in low contrast?
I love Akiyoshi Kitaoka’s illusions. http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html
Adrian, hmm, yes, I think this might be true for me too, but I don’t think attractiveness is the point for the folks doing the work there. I know you aren’t saying it is. But I wonder what kind of results they’d get if they tested a cross-section of folks (women, men, straight, queer, various ages) regarding which face they found more attractive.
I tend to associate “contrast” with “focus,” and I like focus. So that certainly makes contrast more attractive to me in faces.
Contrast usually makes everything look better — including inanimate things. It’s the contrast in lighting – the difference between light and dark that gives things shape makes more visible to us what they are physically. We are always striving to light things in photography to show the shape. One could say that it gives clarity. But if we’re talking about something that has an ugly feature, it might be nicer to see it with less contrast of light to dark to minimize the feature/shape.
That’s what I was talking about when I mentioned the facial structure of the faces.
Ran across this photographer talking about this today. They are talking about contrast and attractiveness as well as gender. I wonder how thorough his research really was – if it included the groups you mention, Kelley.
Maybe I’m just tired, but this part seems confusing,
“CONTRAST HAS THE OPPOSITE EFFECT ON THE PERCEIVED ATTRACTIVENESS OF MEN AND WOMEN. LOWERING THE CONTRAST MAKES MEN LESS ATTRACTIVE AND RAISING IT MAKES WOMEN MORE ATTRACTIVE. THIS BIAS IS EXPLOITEDâAND REINFORCEDâBY THE COSMETIC INDUSTRY, PHOTO-EDITORS AND MARKETERS IN THE OVERLY-RETOUCHED PHOTOGRAPHS FOUND IN MAGAZINES, NEWSPAPER AND ADVERTISING.”
Seems like they are saying the same thing in that first sentence – lowering the contrast makes men less attractive, and raising it makes women more attractive. ??
You’re right, they said that awkwardly and not clearly at all. They were thinking of their thesis, of course, which is that in the media of popular culture, men are the ones whose contrast gets lowered (as in the photo they showed of OJ Simpson) and women are the ones whose contrast gets raised (as in the photo of Beyonce). So I’m guessing they might agree that men *would* be made more attractive by higher contrast, but it doesn’t happen much because (for example) they’re not objectified like women are. And women *would* be made less attractive by lower contrast, but it doesn’t happen much because (for example) they’re not arrested at the rate that (black) men are.
When I first saw the lower-contrast picture, I actually thought “police booking photo.” Almost instinctually, which surprises me. And maybe I’m in denial if I claim that that didn’t lead me, on some level, to make some mental association with “man” (and “black”).