MediaSynth 3.1 - Ignis fatuus

Great documentation and project! I've never realized that sound could be used this way in an illusion, and it's really interesting because I've sort of noticed this before but I didn't realize it could go to this extent. It's honestly kind of freaky in a sense (this illusion makes me feel kind of uncomfortable and disturbed), and documenting that is really cool. I think this project could be improved by explaining how this could be used more and actually utilized, as well as how you could potentially use it as well.

Your negative space examples are really interesting and cool to look at! I personally really loved the last one with Merida and the bear, and I never noticed that Fedex had the arrow (I'll see that logo in a new light for the rest of my life). I think your project would have greatly benefited with more documentation and research. Perhaps incorporate more aspects of art and explain more about how the use of negative space can be used in other ways or how you would like to use it.

I really love your project and find it is very well documented. The video clearly explains how the dancer illusion works and I think I totally understand how the illusion works. I think the real life example part is awesome and the picture is very funny. I think maybe you can have more explanation in the cognitive part, say, how our brain perceives the illusion and how the illusion deceives us.
Generally, the project is very interesting and I enjoyed it a lot!

I really enjoy your projects. That is well documented and the representation really helps to explain a lot. I think you can have more examples about how it shows in the real life. For example, not just about how it shows up in media or games those digital forms. Instead, how they will be used in the production, daily life, etc. Also, I think the video is very beautiful and I would love to see maybe one or more video demonstrating this effect.

Very interesting read! I think you did a really nice job of synthesizing the scientific backing behind seeing faces with the applications in art and everyday life. You're point from your own life about easily recognizing a bag on the street is also a nice point that illustrates how familiarity with a thing makes it very recognizable.

I like your choice of negative space and I've never thought of it as an illusion before. It did surprise me that FedEx had an arrow and reminds me of a series of logos that seem to have other images in them. It would be nice to have more of an idea of what you wanted to do with this though

This concept is really cool, and despite it being pretty well known, your project was engaging enough to keep reading. I didn't feel that the silhouette image brought much to the table as I'm unfamiliar with Mystery Science Theater 3000 - you might want to choose a more universal image or give a non-silhouette example of the character. I also would have liked to see more concrete ideas of how you might use this concept in your own work! Your media examples were very good, especially "Rememory", that was an excellent choice. Good topic choice and great job explaining it!

Actually, I often find that the severity of the illusion depends very much on the placement of the two objects. If you remember from the video, they show the illusion where the two semi-vertical edges of the objects are lines up, which increases the severity of the illusion, while if the two objects are just stacked on top of each other, the illusion is much harder to see and usually doesn't actually trick the eye as much. As for using this illusion, well, I've had difficulty thinking about it, but I think a good way would be in a piece that requires either the audience to move around it, so probably a 3D piece, or for the piece to move, like in an animation. Actually, going back to the real world examples, I think perhaps using the rail tracks might be appropriate -two tracks that look to be different sizes but actually are the same length, which can then be disassembled and reassembled. I feel that would definitely make for and interesting animation at least. Another thing, while not digital art, I feel this could definitely be used in sculpture, where looking at the piece from one angle may make certain parts of the piece seem larger, which I think would be fun to trick the viewer

I really enjoyed the negative space examples you chose, especially the fedEx one (took me a second to find the arrow). Also, I think it's a great idea to incorporate negative space into your art and it would be cool to see the result. It will bring out more dimensions to your message and the aesthetic of the piece. In addition, the negative space becomes a fun activity for the audience to find the other image in the piece.

Also, I recommend looking at negative space tattoos for further real life examples! http://blog.tattoodo.com/2015/02/15-creative-negative-space-tattoos/

So cool to see ASMR included in this! Sound creating the illusion of space is a really interesting topic to cover, and one that is definitely still being explored. I think games in particular have an excellent chance to exploit this illusion. I would have liked to see a little more depth to your thinking about how to implement this effect in your own art - despite your focus on visual, I wouldn't limit yourself and avoid working with sound!

I like how you weaved together the dress example, color theory and illusion, and then finally an artist's technique to bring out their "true colors" in their pieces. I never knew what it took for artists to choose the right color and how they had to implement it! In addition, I also never took the time to understand the color theory behind the dress example, but you explained it in a clear and concise way.

Also, I found that this example was very related to your research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvgOOKBvyQU

I thought your project was really interesting. I really like how you used articles to enhance the amount of information given and the examples you chose were great. The one comment I have is that the documentation was slightly confusing the first time I read it. It was probably because I was slightly skimming, but after the first read-through I didn't understand what the illusion was and I didn't understand how exactly the pieces of art that you used as examples created this illusion. I think its because since you're talking about an illusion that occurs only when your senses are deprived and I'm looking at pictures of people experiencing it, I can't tell what the illusion is. I think what might help is to use more varied examples and to go into more depth about what people experience. The piece where you feel like you're in a kaleidoscope would be good to talk about and with the article I think it would have added to your project. Also, this is slightly tangent but would you happen to know if mirages in dessert are also because of this effect or does this effect not create illusions at that scale?

I thought your examples of Jastrow Illusion were great especially the one from Detective Conan which had a good explanation for the effect that was very easy to understand. What was really interesting to me that chose you examples that had varying "severity" (I guess that would be the word) of the illusion, meaning that some of your examples seemed to be much different from each other. For instance, to me, the cats appear to be very similar in size whereas the railroad tracks seem to wildly differ in size. I don't know if that's universal but if so maybe you would want to talk about how placement of the objects increases the sense of the illusion. Also if you were to make a piece using this illusion how would you do it?

This is a great project! First of all, I really liked how you didn't go for an optical illusion, but went for one with different senses. One time when I was listening to a song, there was suddenly a whisper in my ear, and I remember being really scared since I didn't expect that. Also I've never heard about ASMR before, and it sounds really unusual and different. It's making me uncomfortable to listen to, but I think that means that I did get effected by the illusion, just not the intended way. Great project!

Hi! I really liked your project. I especially liked how you chose different examples, and carefully explained each of them. The only thing I was confused about was that you said "the additional dimension really helps the farther sphere seem bigger and not just look bigger.", which I didn't understand very clearly. Other than that, it was a great project!

This was awesome!

The video at the beginning demonstrated how the illusion works really well, and I liked how deep you went into the science behind it. Also, Jigglypuff as seen from above is priceless. I also liked how you related the illusion to an auditory illusion, and that you described your reactions to each image. You really took us step by step through your experience. It's cool to think of bistable perception as a randomized algorithm that your brain is using to fill in the gaps, and making something purposefully ambiguous to have the viewer fill in the rest can be really interesting.

Like Kaalen above, I'd love to hear/see what you can do with this!

I am really interested in this illusion, and I think you describe really well. Maybe next time you can try more to understand why artists decide to draw 3D pictures, and why this certain graph (for example, why snail). I do not really know if there is a reason behind it, but I think it worth thinking. Anyway very good project!

First off, love the photo.

I liked the idea behind this. Using negative space to show a hidden image is a really cool effect to incorporate into an artwork, and I really liked your example of the star in between the trees. Also, I like the idea of using negative space to make your future digital art more dynamic. That said, I feel like you could've used more every day examples in your project. Also, go into a little bit more detail about how being made of negative space changes the picture from how it would be perceived in the foreground.

Also, maybe explain a little bit more about how you can use this in your own work in the future, or talk more about the images instead of just showing them.

Good job!

I really like this because I'm also a fan of impossible objects, especially the impossible triangle. I agree though in that it is hard to find examples of where this illusion is utilized in instances other than those used simply for the sake of example (i.e. this isn't really used to increase the sale of a product or appeal of an artwork). It is difficult to implement impossible objects in the real world because they are usually 2D renderings of a 3D impossibility, but we live in a 3D world so we can only recreate them when viewed at particular angles. Still, it was interesting learning about the different types of impossible shapes that have been created over the years.

It's very interesting how the ability to recognize faces/see faces in everything can affect how we perceive the world. Question is, do people with facial agnosia "see" the same things in ambiguous images? I think that would be an interesting avenue to explore. From the last picture you show it seems obvious that at least some forms of the illusion are effective for those with facial agnosia. I think the double image is also similar to the Penrose triangle and stairs, where the eye follows the lines of the object and recognize them but the impossibility of their progression confuses the mind, while in the ambiguous image changing the center of focus or orientation leads to different images.

Great direction to take this project in. Biased memory can be attributed to how we tend to feel positive nostalgia with regards to things from our past. We tend to remember the good things and filter out the negative. Using debate as an example was good because it perfectly embodies how we bias to reinforce our arguments.

I never really understood the dress phenomenon until now. This was really enlightening. I really liked the examples that you chose. It was really surprising to know that the "vibrant red" hair the girl had was actually a murky brown especially because it seemed to shine in the painting. I guess I can say I understand the phrase "that really brings out your eyes." It's all about what colors make other colors stand out. This was a really great analysis - I liked that the artworks weren't necessarily trying to cause an illusion, but color theory just somehow works that way. Great job!

Dang. The entire analysis coupled with the awesome examples really made for an amazing project. This was pretty incredible. Also, Inception is one of my favorite movies. I know that a lot of video games try to give off the impression of a 3D environment even though they're actually only working with a 2D environment. The examples you picked were very, very fitting! Especially video games, because all that matters is that the user *feels* as though they are in a 3D environment.

My favorite thing was how you tracked down the real world examples of this in media and in art. I thought it very clearly showed how relevant this optical illusion was and how people have used it. I had no idea I was being fooled when I played super Mario 64.Also There is no way it is a coincidence, so really cool job with the descending font sizes in the intro haha its a very good gotcha moment that sets up what the whole feeling of the Shepard tone is.

I really like how you broke down how the brain process the gif and why it does so. The science behind all of these optical illusions is fascinating to me. As well How you brought in the part about sound. Relating visual and aural is very cool thing to do ;) Finally giving a name to those illusions in the real world is fantastic. I have seen the last picture before and no matter how many times I see it I get tripped up. All in all well documented and well though out. I would love to hear an example of you plan to incorporate this into your next work of art.

Nice project! I thought you did a really good job explaining the hypothesized explanation for this illusion, especially considering people are not totally sure how or why it really works. I also really liked how you used such real world examples like the slices of cake and fruit. You did a good job showing that this phenomena is relevant in real life, not just in art.

I enjoyed the anime clip as well as your two amusing examples. What effect do you think this illusion could have in works of art, besides providing a somewhat humorous or entertaining element? What kind of intentional effects could it be used to create?

I love these illusions! It's pretty interesting to see the differences in the illusions, in digital form, when I scroll by hand on a touch device and when I scroll; without the smooth touch-based scrolling, the page jumps in increments as my scroll wheel clicks, creating a much different sensation than a gradual movement.

This is a really interesting illusion that I hadn't seen before! The Einstein animation really freaked me out. It's interesting, though -- I didn't really see the busts as ever being anything but hollow imprints. Is there a subjective force behind that particular illusion that some don't pick up on?

I think -in response to Cloud- that a possible way to incorporate the "slight of hand" trick in a digital medium would probably be via animation. While it might be more obvious, in animation you could completely copy the idea of a trick and simply replicate it. However, I think the more important idea you expressed was the idea of deception and misdirection. Oftentimes a distraction is used in a trick to prevent the audience from noticing the set-up for a trick, so it would probably be easier to incorporate a distraction into the form of a digital medium. For example, light to draw away the audience's attention from an object which is then brought to the forefront at a different angle or something.

Nice project! I thought you did a pretty good job explaining the illusion. It might have been nice to have a little more explanation of “3-dimensional perception” because I got a little confused how we went from discussing arrows on a 2-d page to talking about 3-d relationships between objects. But I liked how you pointed out that this illusion could be exploited to create the effect that objects in art works are different distances from the viewer.
I also though your real world examples were great, especially the penalty kick one. Also, the example of the illusion in architecture was really clearly explained and the image was very helpful. I wish you had an image to go with your discussion of the illusion in paintings, too!

I think the illusion you picked is really cool since those chalk drawings look so 3D! I also especially liked how you talked about sound at the end. You do a great job explaining how this illusion works. One thing that would be cool is to see more of the chalk drawings from another angle, but I don't know how hard it would be to find those images.

I can't think of anything you overlooked, since you explained the way perception creates the illusion, put in a lot of pictures, and even extended the idea to a different medium (sound).

I thought you did a good job giving a general overview about how Ames rooms work and how they relate to the gravity hills we talked about in class. I was surprised at their usage in movies although thinking about it now it's a great way to distort actor heights. I'm actually starting to see a lot of commonality between the optical illusions; I looked at Ebbinghaus Illusions a general principle of them is that two similar;y sized objects can be made to look smaller or larger based on how close the barrier that define "top" and "bottom" are. These same principles are utilized in the Ames room.

I thought you gave a very clear overview what camouflage is and how it is used in art. I'll admit, I've really really thought about camouflage as an optical illusion to be used in art After looking over you're project it's obvious to me now that camouflage is a great technique to hide symbolism in a piece.

I love magic a lot, too. But I only knew the trick of misdirection and that applies at a lot of places. However, I can't really see the point where physical magic tricks you demonstrated meet digital production. So I was thinking how you are going to simulate the "sleight of hand" by digital tools. It would be really exciting if the "sleight of hand" can be shown on digital art and I believe it would be as fascinating as the live show of Shin Lim.

I think it's cool that you chose to focus on slight of hand tricks since they are not a traditional optical illusion. However, I think you could focus more on what specific techniques are commonly used in this illusion. Most of your write-up discusses particular tricks, and it would be nice to see a discussion of the small things that go into this kind of deceit.

I was trying to think of other examples of this illusion, and the only thing I came up with was stage combat since it involves convincing an audience that someone was hit or injured without actual contact or harm. If you do think that that example counts, it might be interesting to include it as another example of slight of hand used to make art.

You did a good job of telling about confirmation bias; it was clear and easy to understand. I thought it was pretty interesting where you were able to find confirmation bias in the art you chose. It hadn't really occurred to me that I was biased in anyway when looking at them. I think "The Treachery of Images (This is Not a Pipe)" might be an interesting piece to discuss about how challenging people's biases can lead to thought-provoking art. It's a painting of a pipe with the caption "this is not a pipe" written below it. Makes people take a second look at it, because surely the painting is a pipe, right?

Have you heard of the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon? It's not exactly confirmation bias, but it's sort of similar in that it illustrates how the brain picks and chooses based on our own knowledge. We have a tendency to pick up on things we recently have heard, so something that we previously thought we never encountered are now encountered in what seems like an improbable frequency. It wasn't that we had never encountered those things before; it's just that we now pay attention to them.

This is one of the coolest illusions I've ever seen (heard). You described the illusion well, giving many details and examples. Like Lucy said, I would have added the simple things you hear in conversation; the one I thought of was "olive juice" sounding like "I love you". I think this connects to mishearing people as well, or hearing things just because you were looking for that thing to be said or sound like that. How perception changes based on how you are primed. Overall, this is very well documented and generally awesome!

This choice of illusion is funny in how ambiguous it tends itself to be! In some cases, the brain picks one pattern and sticks with it, while in other examples, the brain can process both perceptions--or all three--at the same time. What, do you suppose, determines whether we can cognate both patterns at once vs. one over the other?

I found this illusion very interesting due to its simplicity, but also due to the potential implications in reality. Particularly, how it could come up in everyday situations involving food. I thought the music video was very appropriate in the context of your project. However, I've no idea how you'd use this illusion in another work.

I'm fairly interested in the topic you chose. I really like the example of the T-rex illusion, and at first I thought the head was actually moving. One thing I think you could do is explain how the effect works for the T-rex one in terms of how it is actually concave and how we see it "moving" even though it is not. I do like the comments you made in your reflection, about the amount of control the artist has over how people experience a work of art. I also like how you planned on not putting the exact illusion into your artwork, but instead extrapolated the visual experience into a potential audio one.

I was really skeptical going in to the video with the compilation of songs converted into midi, especially because I really couldn't pick anything out at first even with the Pokemon theme song. I was basically just humming along. After a minute in though, it really did sound like voices. Pretty neat!

This project also reminded me of the "heard English" lyrics videos that are frequently put up for songs in foreign languages. The ones I remember the best are "O Fortuna" (Gopher Tuna) and Tunak Tunak Tun (can't find this one now... I vaguely recall it being "Duke Duke" or something haha).

I thought you did a really great job on your description of the illusion. It gave a great amount of context and terminology. One thing you could have done to improve, is to include more about the motion camouflage. I liked that you showed the connection between camouflage and the social issues. Another connection that could be made is puzzles, like Where's Waldo, which deals with finding a specific person among many similarly dressed surroundings. Overall, very interesting!

Excellent choice of optical effect! Whenever people see a screen of any sort, they end up experiencing that idea of motion, and we take it for granted that a lot of the media we encounter rely on persistence of motion to indicate true motion. I must say that I stared at the video of Feral Fount for an extended duration!

You discuss how interwoven frames can make things appear to overlap and move. Not only can objects with frames look like things move, but they can make things look like they're moving in retrograde! Here's an excellent example of what I mean. If an object is oscillating at a certain frequency, and a camera is recording at a certain frequency, the effect recorded may appear bizarre. The video shows water appearing to float in a zigzag--then slowly move forwards--then slowly move backwards. All of this is a trick of the camera and how the camera captures movement!

At first, I was a bit skeptical about the Pareidolia effect. After listening to what was supposed to be "Staying Alive", i wasn't hearing any voices, but after actually listening to the song and going back, what was once cacophony was unmistakably vocals. Very cool topic. I very much like how you presented the variety of ways in which this effect was manifest in both everyday life and in art. I was quite surprised that it appeared in something as mundane as a toy at McDonalds.

I found your topic and all of your examples very interesting. Instead of having your mind tricked, steganography is more of a trick an artist/designer can use to attract more attention. By having the viewers put in effort to see the letters, they become more familiar with the work and thus remember it better. I like how styled the write-up almost like a game, where the person looks for the letters in the original, and then in the next, you write in the solution. I am curious about whether there is a big difference in noticing the letters in the ones that use other objects (Dali's) or ones that use more abstract figures.

At the time I watched the midi piano video, I was shocked: isn't this the same trick I've seen played online for years? There's a kind of funny video that plays a song in foreign language and let the viewer to use Chinese pronunciation to catch the words. This often leads to a hilarious result. Although it's not exactly the same process as those videos I described above, the Pareidolia illusion gives me a "scientific" term for the trick I used to play. To be honest, I can't wait to see your product by using this illusion. I'm sure things will get very funny when your product is out. Looking forward to that moment!

I think the use of words in artwork is interesting, and I really enjoyed looking at your examples. Compared to other illusions that seem like they're tricking your mind, I think the hidden word ones are like puzzles which makes them fun. When I looked some up on google images, my favorite were the 3D ones (http://www.eyetricks.com/3203.jpg). Once you get used to finding the words, it gets easier which while it's cool to see how the human brain adjusts, makes it less fun.

I think it's really fascinating that you go in depth about 3D street art. I like how you used photos to illustrate how our eyes recognize depth in a 2D picture and linking that to the creation of 3D art. It will be even better if you can give more example on how changing angle can change one's perception of the art.

I've seen this optical illusion before, but I never noticed it in more common places like the examples you showed. I also haven't thought about how it could be used to better convey messages or concepts. It's also interesting how some people like that minimalist type of art more than more detailed pieces. Does it have to do with increasing user involvement by forcing them to create parts of the images themselves?
Regardless, this was a good showcase of the phenomenon.

I especially liked that Rememory piece, that really does a number on you all at once. The stairs one is great also, and I've seen all manner of fancy cylindrical shapes in science museums, in the vision section. This link has a study along with a couple of interesting examples, including those wacky photos where you can interpret what belongs where depending on your perception, which is really cool. And of course, the heads and the jars. But I think it'd be especially interesting to look at real life phenomena of this too, and not just abstract shapes.
http://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2192947

That dress fiasco was so silly. It had people arguing about something inherently subjective even after everyone learned the reason behind the differing perceptions. However, it is a good topical example of your chosen topic. The example with the gray tiles in the shadow still gets to me after so many years of knowing that they are the same color. I still have to put my hands over the screen to see them as such. I like how you tied the illusion into works that don't necessarily want an illusion to occur.

I also didn't know the name of this illusion before, and I found it interesting how the word was also used in other contexts. Here is an example I found (http://historiadiscordia.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/greg_hill-1965-drawing-the_blivet-00001.jpg). I agree that because it's not a real thing it's hard to find in the real world, but I wonder if it could be made into a sculpture somehow where it looks like it from a certain angle or something.

Hello!

You did an awesome job in explaining the phenomenon in a simple, concise way, especially with your relatable references to an example illusion (love that you called the partial circles "pacmen"). However, I would've loved to see more explanation on the scientific aspect of the illusion, since I have no idea what visual cortexes are.

Your media art examples, especially the minimalist renditions, really remind me of these images I keep seeing on my Facebook newsfeed:
http://barkpost.com/minimalist-dog-breed-illustrations/
It's interesting how everyone raves about how the above images really capture the essence of a particular dog breed, even though there's barely anything on the canvas. I think that just like the Kanizsa's Triangle and Illusory Contours, these really shed light on how we interpret the world by filling in missing gaps with prior context.

Hello!

While this project did a good job of condensing the explanation of the phenomenon in a concise way, I was left a little uncertain about the scientific technicalities behind why we try to see 90 degree angles, or why the illusion fails when the smaller lines are of equal red and green values (what does that mean exactly either?). In addition, I would've liked to see a bit more elaboration on the acute-angle expansion/contraction, which seem paramount to unraveling the mechanisms underlying the Zöllner Illusion.

Actually, going through this project suddenly reminded me of a phenomenon I learned about in a high school psychology class which really intrigued me. After some Googling, this phenomenon is called the vertical-horizontal illusion, which reveals our tendency to overestimate the length of a vertical line relative of a horizontal line of the same length. This illusion also has much to do with how we interpret angles, and our tendency for nice, 90 degrees; however, interestingly enough, there are studies that show cross-cultural differences in susceptibility to the vertical-horizontal illusion, as people from Western cultures and residing in urban landscapes are more susceptible to the illusion than those living in eastern or open landscapes. I wonder if perhaps the Zöllner Illusion also has such cross-cultural discrepancies?

The project did a good job in explaining Multistable Perception and showing interesting examples of the phenomenon. I particularly thought that the discussion of the art pieces were interesting, as they touched upon how the illusion is used in the piece, going deeper and analyzing why the artists may have chosen to use the optical illusion.

Something that could be explored further is the biological basis for the phenomenon, something which this research paper seems to touch on.
http://www.unic.cnrs-gif.fr/media/pdf/Leopold_Logothetis_-_1999_-_Multistable_phenomena_changing_views_in_perception.pdf

Nonetheless, this project did a good job in all aspects, especially in giving and describing examples in which the optical illusion was purposefully used to achieve an effect.

The project did a good job in explaining what exactly the optical illusion was, giving a detailed account of attempted explanations of the phenomenon. The examples given were good at showing how the illusion appeared in real world examples, but the media examples could have gone more in how exactly the effect was leveraged to enhance the work.

That aside, I was wondering if there's any connection between this illusion and the spiral illusion, as they both seem to be caused by our brains extrapolating information from colors and angles.
http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/uzu-e.html

That coloring tutorial looks incredibly familiar.. I wonder if I've seen it somewhere before? It's totally on point, and it feels strange to still be learning such basic things about vision and colour considering just how much vision contributes to .. well, everything in my life.

I've taken a few psychology classes, and we did read up on how colour and perception affects human behaviour, but I can't say I went out of my way to search it up, since I felt that so much of it was intuitive. But in some sense I might have underestimated the level of individuality in color associations in different people. After all, people's favourite colours seem to vary a great amount, and sometimes they like a colour for the same reason, even though the colours themselves are completely different. (I can understand why blue and green is calming, but sometimes I also think of them is electrifying or pulsing. The result is that I tend to go for black as a more soothing colour... but it tends to have "darker" connotations for other people. heh.)

Ah. About that spelling colour/color thing. I'm from Singapore, tiny Asian island and ex-British colony (like many others). So, I was educated in the Queen's English. I did always feel like the z was underutiliZed though, so I had a bit of fondness for American English. But I prefer the more wholesome, cushioned mental acoustics of padding words with effectively silent consonants like the "u" in colour like some kind of toned-down French impracticality. Needless to say my personal written patois did not impress teachers who were of a more academic and therefore often grammatically inflexible breed. So I had to acquaint myself with switching rapidly back and forth between the two styles. Hence mah all-ova-da-place style and self-expression in writing (and often also speech).

I've seen some of the examples you showed before reading this and I knew that color illusions existed I guess, but I never bothered to look into why. It's interesting though that the background has so much affect on what "color" a color looks like. I wouldn't have thought of this phenomenon as an 'illusion' but now I definitely see why. Color theory is definitely an interesting subject. Definitely didn't realize how much work a painter has to do or how much work the coloring of a piece of art actually is.
Have you ever heard of color psychology? My guess is that you have, but if you haven't, I feel that it's an interesting topic too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_psychology

Also, just wondering, but why do you switch between "colour" and "color"?

One last thing: #blackandblue

I was hoping that someone would cover color theory and how ubiquitous the optical illusion it is in art!

First, great choice of introductory example. It's a fantastic example of how the optical illusion manifests in the everyday and how our brains tune it out.

This set of illusions is incredibly applicable to media synthesis--some people might say that it's a cornerstone of art--so I'm glad that you've covered the illusion in multiple environments. There are plenty of examples and tutorials out on the internet that demonstrate how relative colors affects composition and how viewers perceive the contrast.

I had saved a tutorial from years back that was my first insight into higher-level artistic techniques, and this image in particular is relevant to the topic you covered. I don't feel like I need to add more than what you have already covered, but hey. Here you go.

Oh, yeah, I've seen those games. :D They're great examples of using optical illusions as game mechanics.

I wouldn't say that projections are illusions in of themselves. They have faults, and people use these faults the same way a magician does to deceive and impress the viewer.

Cool! I especially liked how you brought up the use of isometric view in video games, as a way to get past having to do actual 3D rendering - it really shows an applicable side to illusions beyond the typical one-off novelty trick. There're some cool games that let you interact and play around with perspective in games, like http://www.pillowcastlegames.com/ which was exhibited at the Building Virtual Worlds exhibition last year, and was a blast to play. I'd recommend checking it out!

You might also look at Monument valley a recent (and beautiful iOS game) which includes a lot of these features - what they call "sacred geometry"! - see: http://www.monumentvalleygame.com

I think that your explanations were very clear and that your project gave a lot of information in terms of parallel projection. I really like how all of the examples you incorporated were very different from each other because it showcased how through times, we as humans have used this in art and design from buildings to drawings to video games.

While this doesn't seem to be exactly what your project was discussing, I think relatable optical illusions are "Impossible Objects", as found here: http://brainden.com/impossible-objects.htm
These are most similar to the penrose stairs I believe.