Optical and Auditory Illusions- A reality constructed by your brain.
General Definition of Illusion:
An illusion is an inaccurate perception of a stimulus. The term is also broadly used to refer to inaccurate beliefs or perceptions. In scientific usage, however, an illusion is a sensory distortion.
Description:
Illusions provide powerful clues about how the brain processes information. Scientifically, they can pose a problem for empirical research as they demonstrate how even direct observation can be misleading. Most people can be tricked by optical illusions, and scientists can use information about this visual phenomenon to understand perception and brain organization better. Some conditions that affect the brain may also cause delusions. For example, people who experience migraine headaches frequently report seeing auras, which consist of movement or colors along the outer edges of a person’s view.
The most exciting illusions are of two kinds; one is optical, and the other is auditory. There’s no particular one, but every illusion that falls in these two categories is my favorite, and I often spend my sweet time on Pinterest looking at these and watching similar on Youtube. These are:
· Optical Illusional Photography
· 8D (8 dimensional) Audio Music
1. Optical illusional Photography:
When we talk about optical illusion, the most cliché illusions that come to our mind are all those black and white rings, spirals, and boxes. I still remember the time when in the late 90s and early 2000s when DVD/CD players were a new thing to us. Abba used to bring CD/DVD player to clean the DVD disk in which we would put the cleaning liquid on and put the CD in the player and play the disk. It would have different base test audios, optical illusions with rhymes and poems in the background, and we would enjoy the best of us.
Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBuLDukQl5U&ab_channel=hazelnutmediaarchive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBuLDukQl5U&ab_channel=hazelnutmediaarchive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxGuumZ4UxE
Then the era of digital development arose, and we get to see more and more high definition illusionary work. I’ve always been fond of optical illusion photography. The unique ideas and concepts always surprise and amuse me to the core.
Ever since the opportunity has opened before any person to become a photographer, express themselves through photographic creativity. Under the influx of numerous sufficiently high-quality photographs capturing the space of printed publications and the Internet, the thought, creativity, and originality of the photographer’s thinking come to the fore in his evaluation of him. Based on this, more and more photographers are using a variety of illusion photography tricks in their own pictures. An optical illusion is an inaccuracy in the visual perception of a person, conditioned by the physiology of our natural vision and the extraordinary suggestibility of the brain.
The Interesting Part:
Optical illusions are currently actively used in artistic photography, painting, and design. The various optical illusions caused by the inaccuracy of the correction processes of the visual image always lead to genuine interest, thanks to originality and its unusualness. There are many optical distortions and illusions that photographers can use in their own works. This is the location of objects and subjects, the correct lighting or knowledge of what is mirror illusion photography, and certainly photo editors. But one of the most common methods is experiments with the possibility of photography.
Optical illusion photography is an impression of a visible object or phenomenon that is not appropriate to reality, i.e. optical illusion of sight. Today, such an optical illusion is specially or purposefully photographed to make us take a closer look at the photograph and the unique concepts always excite me.
Some illusion photography artists use a double possibility in their images creating optical illusions that make the viewer look at the same photo from different points, trying to catch the individual details hidden at the first sight. Others skillfully manage the volumetric surfaces and chiaroscuro. Still, others photograph on an open diaphragm to get a sharp front plan and a blurry background for fascinating optical distortions.
Cultural and Sensational Effects:
Why are we so fond of optical illusions? Perhaps, on a subconscious level, we like to deceive ourselves? Many get a lot of pleasure from such deceiving pictures and sculptures, and besides including me, this is an excellent source for creating unforgettable photos! In any case, optical illusions are worth it to give them time. :P
But in the meantime, I feel these illusions create a disconnection between reality and realistic perception and create a greater bond with imagination. From a cultural perspective, I feel that our youth is more practical now but emotional too. They fall for philosophical arguments often and these illusions help them to regain their emotional side. Because of this disconnect between perception and reality, visual illusions demonstrate the ways in which the brain can fail to re-create the physical world.
2. 8D (Spatial) Audio Music
Spatial or 8D music is the feeling of being in the middle of an empty environment with the sounds and music all around you. The effect is similar to the one you would hear while walking around the city, with audio coming from all the different directions but, this time, everything comes from your headphones/handsfree.
The Interesting Part:
8D audio aims to create the illusion of a 360-degree sound that moves in circles around your head. This is achieved by mixing the audio and adding spatial reverb. 8D is a new trend among music lovers that allows you to recreate the feeling of listening to music played by speakers distributed around us. A sort of immersive and actually very suggestive experience. 8D audio does not exist for various reasons but, the effect created by the audio is a real thing.
That feeling of music that runs through your head, thanks to the use of headphones, is the result of equalization techniques, panning, and effects combined together. In short, panning is the ability to distribute sound on different audio channels. If you think about your earphones, they have two physical channels: left and right. You can pan the sound all the way to the left or the right or, you can choose a specific sound to be played by one or the other earphone.
The literal definition of 8D sound would place the source of the audio all around us, so technically, it's another word for surround sound only 8d audio has more spatial reverb and you can only hear it on headphones.
8D audio (which has no sense as the physical space where we live is mapped in 3 dimensions) that let you appreciate sounds coming from different directions. You can find on YouTube or Soundcloud this kind of audio recording from the lowest quality where the record simply moves from left to right without a real point or, you can find high-quality records where the sound is correctly located in a specific region of the 3D space and you can clearly hear it through your earphones.
Pros of 8D music:
· It makes audio more relaxing.
· It makes you feel like you are in the middle of a live performance.
Cons of 8D audio:
· If mixed poorly, 8d sound can make you feel nauseous or even dizzy.
· Just like any sound, listening to it too loudly could cause damage like tinnitus in the long run, yes. But as long as you keep it at around 85dB you’re good.
Cultural and Sensation Effects:
To summarize, as discussed in the aforementioned paragraphs We process sounds in three dimensions. This is how we can tell whether a sound is coming from behind us or above us or in front of us. It deceives our perception and creates an illusion for us. In the long run, such music is happening to listen but it might affect our perception or sensation of hearing in terms of being addicted to such music. As I’ve seen plenty of cases with such addiction to music just like normal/regular music.
This illusion has affected our culture in the sense that there are plenty of channels and pages on YouTube and Facebook that upload 8D music and our audience love to listen to it. Frankly, I’m suggesting one YouTube channel that uploads only 8D music. You can listen to it and can experience this illusion if you haven’t. But don’t forget to put on your headphones/handsfree or Aipods :P