Last updated: July 2025
I’m fascinated by misperception and misperceptual phenomena. Below are some of smaller projects on the topic, along with my favorite illusions and illusion-based artworks.
Blog posts and talks:
Imperfect Cognitions Blog (2017): Does hallucinating involve perceiving?
APA Eastern blog (2018): Do Visual Hallucinations Involve Perception? You can also watch a video lecture of this here:
Video games:
I began building illusions to better understand the conditions under which they occur. The below video shows work-in-progress from my first illusion game, playable in Dreams on a Playstation 4/5 (along with other games) here. I also have a bigger PC project, which you can download an early version of on my itch.io account here.
Some of my favorite illusion-based art:
In painting, René Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico are my favorite illusion-related painters.
In film, L’Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad) is my favorite illusion-related movie, though I’m also a big fan of David Lynch.
In video games, Echochrome is my personal favorite, but more recently I enjoyed Superliminal.
Some of my favorite illusions:
Below are some of my favorite perceptual illusions. Many of these come from the incredible Akiyoshi Kitaoka. For a more systematic and complete listing, see the Illusions Index.
Above: Bob your head to see the heart seemingly move independent of the background.
Above: a nice instance of conflicting cues. Do the two circles overlap?
Above: Zoom in to see that these circles are all the same color!
Above: Humans ruin illusions by using them for war.
Above: The curves are all the same, but notice how the gray background changes their appearance?
Above: Nice parallel lines!
Above: The table surfaces are identically shaped!
Above: The brown square on the top surface and the orange square on the shaded surface are the same color!
Above: Can you see what’s on the wall? Once you see it you’ll never see what you’re seeing now again!
Above: Zoom in, it’s a black and white photo.
Above: Zoom in, there’s no red.
Above: A nice illustration of what happened with the viral blue/gold dress.
Above: Illusion sometimes fool animals too!
Above: Do we see motion accurately?
Above: What many don’t know above afterimages is that you can keep them longer if you continue to stare. Try keeping the colors in place by continuing to stare at the dot above.
Above: The spinning ballerina illusion with its solution. Occlude one of the two side figures to see the ballerina spin in one of two ways.
Above: The image is changing fairly dramatically, can you spot the difference?
Above: Focus on the center to see a color that isn’t there. Is that color an illusion or a hallucination?
Above: The Ames window, well worth building!
Below: Do we see causation? What about intentions?