Apparitions

This ghostly face appears to mysteriously change its features when you look at it for a while (Some viewers have even reported experiencing traumatic visions!). But that’s not all – if you unfocus your eyes and look steadily through the image, you’ll notice that after about 10-15 seconds, the face gradually disappears…

Ghost Faces / Apparition – Mixed media (2011)

This spooky portrait is created by merging together 50 common human faces. The process of averaging multiple exposures of human faces isn’t really new. In fact, as early as 1879, Sir Frances Galton experimented with this photographic technique, and others have since followed suit, using it for artistic or social purposes. Artists like Ken Kitano, Jason Salavon, Donald Scott Bray have all borrowed this technique for their own work.

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Amazing Brightness Constancy Effect

Look carefully at the saw-tooth wave patterns on this picture. Is the background of the picture uniformly gray or are there different shades of gray?

Kolozanges (2013-2021), © Gianni A. Sarcone

Brightness constancy makes some vertical strips look darker, when in fact the gray background is all the same shade of gray.

This op art work is available as prints and canvases from my official online Gallery.

Paradoxical Elastic Squares

A math-magic article I wrote for the German magazine Zeit Wissen: with the 13 triangular and square pieces (fig. 1) it is possible to form two large squares shown in fig. 2. Though the second large square has an extra piece the dimensions of the squares seem to be the same! Can you explain why this is possible?

This puzzle is available as greeting cards from my online store.

Ghost Colors

This is one of my earliest color optical illusions. There is no yellow or green in the diamond shapes, just vertical black lines! (If you don’t believe it, use a eyedropper tool to check it.) This intriguing visual effect is mainly due to “simultaneous color contrast induction“.

Illusive colors
Ghost Squares / Black Diamonds (2002 – 2007)
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Scintillating Starburst: Seeing rays that aren’t there…

This is one of my oldest illusions I created in the 90s. In the picture you may see ghostlike dark radial beams. This illusion is a variant of the Herman’s scintillating grid illusion. I designed this illusion just by turning 45 degrees the Herman grid and then by applying a polar transformation.

From my book “Eye Tricks“, 2001-2007.
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