"The Best Visual illusion of the Year Contest is a celebration of the ingenuity and creativity of the world's premier visual illusion research community. Contestants from all around the world will submit novel visual illusions (unpublished, or published no earlier than 2009), and an international panel of judges will rate them and narrow them to the TOP TEN. At the Contest Gala in the Naples Philharmonic Center for the Arts, the top ten illusionists will present their creations and the attendees of the event (that means YOU!) will vote to pick the TOP THREE WINNERS!"
http://illusioncontest.neuralcorrelate.com/
Illusion of sex 3rd place winner....
I thought that this website and the contest was really interesting. Looking at the winners from last year, it's amazing how people can come up with illusions like they did. I was looking at the first place illusion of the rotating disk and I thought how cool it was that just by focusing your eyes on a different point you change the way that you perceive the disk falling. The second place illusion was a dove that would appear to change colors depending on what the previous background was. I had seen similar illusions before and I have actually had to create illusions like that for a class I was taking when I was an art major, so it was interesting to see how someone else could expand their creativity off of this type of illusion. The third place winner of 2009 was the last illusion that I looked at. This illusion was that of two faces. The creator took an angrogenous face and by changing the contrast of the two photos, made one appear male and the other female, although the same face. I found this illusion to be interesting because I think that the idea of contrast affecting whether or not someone is thought to be male or female can be used in things such as witness identification. Overall, all the illusions were enjoyable to see and show how much our perception of things can at times be deceiving.