Audio-Optical Illusions
Introduction
What we are interested in here is effect of sound stimulus on visual perception. The kind of questions we want to ask are:
Can sound change the way you visually perceive your environment?
Can a sound create an optical illusion?
Can a sound break an optical illusion?
How tightly wound are sound and vision?
To answer these questions I have set up a series of audio-optical illusions that attempt to highlight the effects that sound can have on vision. Many of the illusions that I created either failed or could not be tuned well enough to create reliable results. I was able to come up with a small working subset of illusions. They are listed below:
The Bounce Illusion
The Assumption Illusion
The Flying Ball Illusion
The ventriloquism Illusion
The Multiple Bounce Illusion
At this point I should make a clarification: There really is nothing new under the sun of illusions so what I really did was – recreate- the above illusions. They have all been done before and I am not the first to search in vein for a new illusion. I probably should have taken Brian's advice up front when told me that there are not many illusions like this.
Why is that? Why aren't there that many audio-optical illusions? Seems like there should be to me.
We will try to answer that question too.