Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes! (2/2)

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Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes! (Part 2/2). TED talks - Beau Lotto: Optical illusions show how we see (Recorded at TEDGlobal, July 2009, Oxford, UK).

A fascinating demonstration of how our visual system is conditioned by what we perceive as 'Reality', with unexpected conclusions about what we call Illusions.

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Beau Lotto's color games puzzle your vision, but they also spotlight what you can't normally see: how your brain works. This fun, first-hand look at your own versatile sense of sight reveals how evolution tints your perception of what's really out there.

Neuroscientist and artist Beau Lotto is founder of Lottolab, a hybrid art studio and science lab. With glowing, interactive sculpture -- and good, old-fashioned peer-reviewed research -- he's illuminating the mysteries of the brain's visual system.

Why you should listen to him:

"Let there be perception," was evolution's proclamation, and so it was that all creatures, from honeybees to humans, came to see the world not as it is, but as was most useful. This uncomfortable place -- where what an organism's brain sees diverges from what is actually out there -- is what Beau Lotto and his team at Lottolab are exploring through their dazzling art-sci experiments and public illusions.

Their Bee Matrix installation, for example, places a live bee in a transparent enclosure where gallerygoers may watch it seek nectar in a virtual meadow of luminous Plexiglas flowers. (Bees, Lotto will tell you, see colors much like we humans do.) The data captured isn't just discarded, either: it's put to good use in probing scientific papers, and sometimes in more exhibits.

Outside the studio work, the brain-like (that is, multidisciplinary) organization is also branching out to bigger public engagement works. It's holding regular "synesthetic workshops" where kids and adults make "color scores" -- abstract paintings that computers interpret into music, as with scrolls fed to a player piano.

And lately they're planning an outdoor walkway of color-lit, pressure-sensitive John Conway-esque tiles that react and evolve according to foot traffic. These and Lotto's other conjurings are slowly, charmingly bending the science of perception -- and our perceptions of what science can be.

Beau Lotto teaches at University College London.

"All his work attempts to understand the visual brain as a system defined, not by its essential properties, but by its past ecological interactions with the world. In this view, the brain evolved to see what proved useful to see, to continually redefine normality." (British Science Association)

• http://www.ted.com/speakers/beau_lotto.html
• http://www.lottolab.org/
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Category:

Education

Tags:

• optical
• illusions
• believe
• lying
• eyes
• beau
• lotto
• demonstration
• reality
• games
• brain
• lottolab
• experiments
• neuro
• science

[SuperiorApostate]

I want software that makes music out of colors.

[HConstantine]

@boomkablamo Life evolved to fit the conditions it found, so naturally they're perfect for life.

[prchecker]

brilliant video

[Champignon1000]

@SuperiorApostate fl studio fl harmor there you go

[distractionxx]

interesting video and very informative

[rodswebdesign]

i enjoyed this vid

[mrsnipersi]

@acdiabloc lol he states that we didnt evolve to see it how we wanted but how it is..... so he stated we still evolved... problem religion??

[Spasatcom]

Good Video... Thanks for vids

[acdiabloc]

3:24 DING DING DING!!!!!!! WINNA.....oh wait.....he.....ugh....still got it wrong....we didnt evolve dope....problm solved (problem athiests)

[kenny3685]

@SuperiorApostate try lsd it makes colors taste too

[GeekProdigyGuy]

@Zorgonia First, you're using "troll" incorrectly. Troll refers to a person who enjoys annoying people.

Second, they could completely accept, but still dislike, this video. Perhaps they felt that he wasn't explaining the illusions very well. What if they think that it's a waste to worry about optical illusions when there's a WAR going on somewhere?

I agree that this video was great. But! There's a big leap from "this is correct" to "I like this", and the same from "dislike" to "don't get"