Kanizsa's Triangle and Illusory Contours

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.

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.