Abstract
"Project LITE: Light Inquiry Through Experiments" is developing software, as well as two-dimensional images and three-dimensional constructible demonstrations of a wide variety of visual perception phenomena. All of these can be seen at http://lite.bu.edu. Most recently, fully vectorized images have been created of stimuli that are particularly effective when presented on large scales (of order one meter on a side or larger) and at high resolution - as is achievable with readily available poster printers. Among these is an image that appears to be new to the vision science community and that produces a particularly striking visual effect. It is patterned after a screen print that was created by the British artist Peter Sedgley in 1966. His suite of 9 prints - each about 0.5 meters on a side - included one ("Looking Glass No. 3") that consists of a uniform red background with an overlying blue circle with fuzzy edges. Using Adobe Illustrator, vectorized versions of this image have been constructed, as well as versions with sharp edges, and ones with no hue, using gray scale only. The red/blue blurred version has the remarkable property of appearing to expand or contract faster than the surroundings as the observer approaches or recedes from it. In this presentation, this effect will be shown and compared with some other subjective motion phenomena: the Ouchi illusion; Leviant’s traffic illusion; the Pinna circles rotation effect; and Helmholtz’s fluttering hearts. This "Looking Glass" effect, unlike the Ouchi, Leviant and Pinna effects, gains strength with the inclusion of color. The possible roles played by chromatic aberration and other purely geometrical and physical optics contributions to the effect will be analyzed, as well as factors arising further along in the visual system. All of the vectorized PDFs were created in collaboration with Boston University undergraduate Rebecca Puno.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2012