Spirals or Circles Optical Illusion?

Spirals or concentric circles? Look at the figures below, What do you see? Are both of these images of spirals plummeting toward the center or does one of these images have only concentric circles?





The truth here is that both images are of concentric circles. The top image is very hard to believe and many of you will mark up your screen with finger prints trying to trace the circles. Here is a little hint, trace the circles on the top image in a clockwise direction otherwise you could go crazy and swear that I'm lying to you.

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Escher's Infinite Circle - II

Stacy of She Dreams in Digital has an excellent site full of interesting digital art creations. She offers many fine prints for sale and many great fractals suitable for wallpaper free of charge.

The below is crossposted with permission of Stacy Reed from She Dreams in Digital.

This one was created using the script ~ datagram wrote upon my request and though it takes some real manipulating, in effect, Escher's idea to create an infinite pattern in a predefined shape can be achieved and in such a beautiful way.

Those of you who are familiar with M.C Escher have probably seen his woodcut series titled Circle Limit I - IV in which the center pattern is the largest, and scales down considerably until it is infinite around the perimeter. The other day, I applied a few scripts, and pushed Apophysis to it's limits until something like this began to show. I was truly amazed, and I was so obsessed with this, that I begged Matteo to help me write a script so that I could obtain these results again. I sent him some of my sample flames and he figured it out from there.

I am always amazed at the different things I can achieve with fractal software like Apophysis. With this script, we can now put Escher's vision into a new modern perspective. M.C. Escher was brilliant. Indeed, he was one of the most fascinating artists ever to grace the planet, and he gets all the credit for this one. If you don't know of him, (and I can't imagine that there are many fractal lovers out there who don't) you need to do a google search right now. Go on... do it. You won't be disappointed!

Created with Apophysis only. No postwork.

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Bubblybabs Optical Illusion

I found this on BubblyBabs FractalFairy's personal art album at FE Users Art Gallery.

In this illusion the apparent orifice in the center expands and contracts as
you move your head closer to the image and pull back from the image.

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Circles in Motion

I have seen this before but it never triggered as a great illusion. That is until I found it on a site that explained its activation. This is a great anomalous motion optical illusion.

Stare at the center dot and move your head toward the illusion, now pull back. The circles appear to move in one direction on the way in and reverse their motion when you pull back.

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The Enigma

The below image was done in 1984 by French artist Isia Leviant. The complete explanation for the activity around the circles is still not understood.



Stare at the center of the figure for a while. Some ‘scintillating’ activity will build up in the violet and blue annuli. Some observers also report a circular rotation within these regions; things will begin to “run around in circles”.

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Concentric Circles

Below are two perfectly concentric circles. One floating perfectly centered in the other. I hear a murmur of disbelief.... Print it out and measure it for yourself.

"Kitaoka Strange Appearance"

I think this may have been created by Akiyoshi Kitaoka.

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