What is happening in this picture?

[lvx35]

This is weird. I saw the picture on this page:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22556281-661,00.html

And to me the dancer is CLEARLY turning clockwise (if you were to look down from above) but I asked my family and friends, and I get totally different answers. I know this really isn't political, but DU is the only place I know I can place a poll and I'm wondering what the consensus is...which way do you see the dancer turning?

[billyskank]

1. I just can't stop looking at her tits.

:blush:

[MrCoffee]

2. omg

does she have nipples?!?

[billyskank]

3. I believe so.

Somebody went to a LOT of effort on that model. :rofl:

[WCGreen]

7. And apparently...

I see a pubic mound as well...

[China_cat]

19. No they didn't. That's the standard Poser

Victoria 3.

[BarenakedLady]

5. ...

:spank: :spank:




:rofl:

[lvx35]

8. SILENCE! That's all part of science!

;)

[bicentennial_baby]

24. Kinda like the first night you got to Boston!

:rofl:

I was having a fantastic cleavage day though... :P

:loveya:

[billyskank]

25. There's nothing wrong with sniffa's man boobs.

:D

[bicentennial_baby]

26. Hey now!!

Give credit where credit is due!! :spank:

[billyskank]

29. Alright, you win.

I am not worthy in the presence of your magnificent cleavage.

;)

[bicentennial_baby]

30. Yes! Victory!!!

:woohoo:

I wiiiin! I wiiin! :bounce:

My life is complete now, thank you. :D

:*

:loveya:

[ghostsofgiants]

4. I can make her go either way, but she usually starts clockwise for me.

[lvx35]

6. Yeah I figured out how to do that after a lot of work.

I have to squint and look at her feet, then it "flips" in my mind.

[Sequoia]

10. Right on.

But when I see cars and carriages on tv, old movie projectors with a spool of film, they always seem to go the other way, always, until they start slowing down. Never could understand why I always see it wrong.

[lvx35]

11. According to the the article, it's because we are all a bunch of artsy fartsy types.

Right brained folks, and our artistic brains make the world the way it is. I'm not sure I buy it...

[MrCoffee]

12. 2 of my coworkers saw counterclockwise right off the bat.

[lvx35]

13. Yeah, my dad and step mom both did too.

While my mom and step dad were both clockwise.

[WCGreen]

9. She's Bi.....

[lvx35]

18. That seems to be the consensus!

According to the test, a lot of balanced people at DU. Which doesn't surprise me too much. I wonder what would happen if I ran the test in freeperland!

[mike_c]

14. it only looks that way because we interpret the image as 3-D, but it's not....

Think of the image as a 2-D shadow-- as the dancer turns, parts of the silhouette sweep back and forth in a plane, not forward and back as we're interpreting the image. All we actually see are elements of the black object moving back and forth in the viewing plane. When we interpret that object as a 3-D figure it must be spinning to produce that effect, but the object doesn't really contain any information about the direction of "spin," so our brains fill that in. For example, when the outstretched arm is moving from left to right, we interpret that as clockwise because we "see" the arm pointing away from the viewer, but if it is pointing toward us it would move from left to right if the dancer were spinning in the other direction. A silhouette doesn't offer any information about what part of an object is pointing forward and what part is pointing backward. Our brains are adding that info.

This is a really clever trick. It is aided by the background, which also mimics a 3-D space, but is really only a 2-D gradient. It helps to FORCE our brains to consider the figure as a 3-D shape rotating in a 3-D space.

[lvx35]

17. Wow, that reminds me of Chompksy.

He was the one who said our brains have an innate language capacity, right? I wonder if our brains also have an innate 3D interpretation capacity, that lets us build 3D images out of 2D data from our eyes.

[mike_c]

22. yes they do....

That's an especially useful adaptation for arboreal primates, LOL. It's a long way down if you misjudge the relationships of objects in 3-D space!

This sort of illusion exploits that innate capacity for modeling 3-D space from 2-D images projected onto the plane of the retina.

[azmouse]

15. I can only see her going counter-clockwise.

I wouldn't have thought I was the left-brained type. :shrug:

[lvx35]

16. Yeah, I'm not so sure about the thesis, but its interesting.

I'm a computer programmer who's into math and I saw her going clockwise...It held for my mother and father though (she is an artist he interprets math tests)

[mike_c]

23. try looking off to the side so she's in your perpheral vision....

eom

[azmouse]

31. Nope. No matter how I try or where I look

I only see her spinning counter-clockwise.
Strange.

[lvx35]

32. Here's my trick:

I could only see her spinning clockwise for the longest time. Scroll down in the window so you can only see her feet. Now squint your eyes so they are blurry, and realize that what you are seeing could be going either way. (so when you thought one leg was going behind the other, its actually going in front of it) then once you trick yourself to see her feet going to other way, unblur your eyes so you can see it clearly. Then scroll up so you can see her whole body going the other way.

[azmouse]

33. Ah! I see clockwise for a few spins that way.

Thanks.

[Omphaloskepsis]

20. Clockwise at first...

Then I went to read what that meant and when I looked back she was going the other way.

[trof]

21. And here she is:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5693171,00.gif

[lvx35]

27. Thanks! I wish I had just done that.

I probably would have got purer poll results, as there would be no suggestion of what any of it means.

[Dukkha]

28. It's an Australian site and it's counter-clockwise

shouldn't the southern hemisphere be clockwise? I forget how that goes.

[applegrove]

34. The link didn't work for me but I've seen that dancer before and she switched back

and forth.