Saturday, November 29, 2008

Persistence of Vision

If you look at an object fixedly, your eyes and mind will try to blank it out. One of the classic examples is the color-opposites of the US flag. After staring at the yellow, green and black image for 30 seconds or so, then switching to a white field, you'll see the image briefly as Red, White and Blue. Now I'm guessing (and it is only a guess) that this is evolutionarily beneficial in that it draws our attention away from things that are static (unthreatening) and to things that are changing (potentially threatening). Images that move in a repetitive manner can also give rise to this. With color, there might be a chemical basis in the eye; with movement, it seems to me it must be a perceptual (mind) phenomenon, so I'm not sure the two aspects of this are really considered the same.

I first saw this as a cut out from Omni Magazine in the late '70's. You took the image and put it on a turntable, and stared at the spindle for 30 seconds to a minute. Yeah, ancient technology, but it still works even in our electronic era. (When the spirals quit spiraling, look at something that has details, not a blank, uncluttered area) Whooooaaaaa! Far out, Dude!

2 comments:

Dean Wormer said...

I wish I had watched that at home where I would have a chance to be less... sober.

Thanks for sharing that. Cool.

Distributorcap said...

that is so twilite zone