Enigmatic cubes pair

Visually ambiguous tristability. The top and bottom "cube" animations are identical, except for a half-rotation (in the plane of each frame) and an inversion of the superficial patten's luminance. Also, the top "cubes" occlude the bottom "cubes".

Despite the simplicity of the construction, the visual percept is bewildering. There is a strong bias toward perceiving two convex cubes (at left and right) even though it is not physically plausible they would rotate in this way and interpenetrate. And the connecting faces for half the cycle appears to be a twisting plane, although the cubes have flat faces (no curved lines in the texture). This kind of twisted plane illusion is new to me.

In two other percepts one of the cubes is convex and one is a concave corner, and the rotation is coherent, as if the full figure was rigid. Although this may be harder to see, it is very stable and more physically plausible, except for "disappearing walls".

A fourth possible percept, of two concave corners, is impossible (for me) to lock onto.


MATLAB, Space Software

Category:

Education

Tags:

• ambiguous
• cube
• cubes
• illusion
• motion
• thue-morse
• twisting
• plane
• necker

[markdow2]

@Rxe08 Yes, from a single distant viewpoint.

[Rxe08]

Nice. Do you think the effect would still exist if these models were built in real life?