2023

2023 First prize
Matt Pritchard – “Platform 9 3/4s”
UK

Author description: The illusion is of a LEGO car driving through a solid wall. The reality is there is a car sized hole in the middle of the wall for toy to drive through. The missing brick work is replaced by an anamorphic illusion on the floor behind the wall. When viewed from one perspective, the vertical bricks and horizontal bricks line up and appear to be one solid wall. The pattern camouflages the edges and makes it extremely hard to distinguish any discontinuities.

2023 Second prize
John Salmon – “Tower of Cubes?”
USA

Author description:  In the “Tower of Cubes?” illusion, the viewer is shown a stack or tower created with three perfect, 3D-printed cubes on the left beside a tower on the right. Once assembled a straight wooden stick is driven through the left tower from the top to bottom. The stick is likewise pushed through the tower of cubes on the right but now appears to bend around the structure in a surprising and impossible manner. The illusion is resolved by disassembling the tower on the right revealing warped 3D-printed cubes that are anything but perfect.

2023 Third prize
Wendy van Boxtel – “ Cornelia ”
USA

Author description: After discovering hollow face illusions, I was obsessed to create an inside out sculpture where the face and hair gradually emerges into the painting this to create a custom illusion that make people stare. I experimented with many materials, colors and depth, after lots of attempts I found a method that worked.
You might think it would trick everyone’s eyes BUT not exactly, People who have schizophrenia have a disconnect from what the eyes see and from what the brain is thinking and are not capable to see the illusion.

James Crocker – “The Accelerando Illusion”
USA

Author description: The Accelerando Illusion is an original musical illusion implying an endlessly rising tempo. Try clapping along! A steady whole-note morphs into a half-note pulse, then quarter-notes, eighth-notes and soon you are at the limit of how fast your hands can move…yet the music sounds the same as when you started! Make sure to start slowly; the tempo begins at a moderate 115 beats per minute, but ends with a BPM somewhere in the region of 100 quintillion!

Kokichi Sugihara – “One-Way Flight”
JAPAN

Author description:  An ordinary object facing toward a mirror, when reflected in a mirror, changes its orientation to the opposite with respect to the mirror surface. Our objects, however, just translate into the mirror without changing their orientations. This illusion is strong in the sense that the illusion does not disappear even if we change our viewpoint in a certain area.

Gideon Paul Caplovitz, Eleanor Caplovitz, Evelyn Caplovitz, Original Music by Jean-Paul Perrotte – “The Poggendorff Triangles”
USA

Author description: The Poggendorff Triangles highlights the neural processes by which our brains represent partially occluded objects. The illusion reveals an interaction between two classic phenomena: The Poggendorff Illusion in which misaligned segments of a partially occluded line can appear collinear, and the formation of Illusory Contours. While we are unlikely to experience the illusion in our everyday lives, the neural mechanisms underlying the illusion contribute to how we experience the occluded portions of an object despite not being visible. My daughters and I accidentally discovered the illusion while I was teaching them how to draw and manipulate shapes on the computer.

Gavin Buckingham – “The paperclip illusion”
USA

Author description: This illusion makes straight diagonal lines overlaid atop a grip appear bent, or kinked, like a paperclip. It is particularly strong in peripheral vision, and varies depending on the thickness and contrast of the various elements in the images. It is unclear exactly how the illusion works, but it might show us something about how the human visual system segregates distinct elements (e.g., individual lines) of complicated images.

Kento Imai, Haruka Kayano, Kenri KodakaUSA – “XRAYHEAD”
JAPAN

Author description: XRAYHEAD creates the striking illusion of seeing a skeleton inside one’s head when the experimenter touches the interior skeleton. This illusion is examined in a darkroom using a setup where the participant views a specially designed skeleton through a half mirror, and the experimenter touches the participant and the skeleton’s head with both hands. In this specific arrangement, the distance between the skeleton head and the palm of the experimenter’s hand determines the brightness of the skeleton. In our laboratory exhibition, 77 out of 101 participants reported experiencing a strong tactile sensation of the illusory skeleton within their heads.

William H. Alexander – “The Scream”
USA

Author description:Edvard Munch’s expressionist ode to existential angst, “The Scream,” comes to life. On their own, Munch’s bold, curvilinear strokes give the impression of a person trembling in the face of an unnameable dread. When optic flow information is added to the image, this impression becomes palpable. Although the image of the Screamer itself remains static, it appears to pulse and throb as if experiencing wave after wave of soul-crushing despair for the futility of existence. This effect demonstrates the influence of unrelated motion cues on the perception of object movement.

Yutaro Sato, Kento Imai, Kenri Kodaka – “Buddha’s Ear Illusion”
JAPAN

Author description: The Buddha’s Ear Illusion creates the sensation of earlobe stretching. To induce this illusion, the experimenter pinches the participant’s earlobe with one hand and pulls it downward. Simultaneously, with the other hand, the experimenter stretches and contracts an uninflated balloon within the participant’s peripheral view, while maintaining the anchor by continuing to hold the earlobe. As a result, the participant experiences the incredible sensation of their earlobe stretching. Interestingly, this illusion can also be achieved without the use of balloons, allowing for illusory experience of having Buddha’s ear anytime, anywhere, as long as there is someone available to stretch it.