Will you ever be able to trust your own eyes after seeing this?
Kokichi Sugihara is a man who enjoys making us question our sense of reality. A professor at Meiji University in Japan Sugihara just won second prize in the international Best Illusion of the Year Contest for this brand-new illusion which seemingly shows a series of circular shapes reflected as rectangles.
In the video Sugihara places a number of 3D printed objects in front of the mirror, which seemingly transform in their reflection.
To prove his point even further he swaps rectangles for circles and once again, the opposite appears in the reflection.
So how does the ‘Ambiguous Cylinder Illusion’ actually work?
Well lets put it this way, the explanation is going to bug the hell out of you.
Sugihara explains on the site how it works saying, “The direct views of the objects and their mirror images generate quite different interpretations of the 3D shapes.”
He goes on to point out that while “they look like vertical cylinders, their sections appear to be different; in one view they appear to be rectangles, while in the other view they appear to be circles.”
Why is this? “We cannot correct our interpretations although we logically know that they come from the same objects.”
“Even if the object is rotated in front of a viewer, it is difficult to understand the true shape of the object, and thus the illusion does not disappear.”
To put it simply, the objects are not CGI, and there’s no foul play at work, these are simply very very cleverly built objects.
Enter stage left the fantastic Make Anything YouTube Channel which diligently stayed up all night and built their very own version:
That’s right, they’re actually a hybrid object which is halfway between a circle and a square.
Then thanks to some pretty nifty shaping at the top the edges become blurred and the illusion is complete.
If for some reason you’re a glutton for punishment then check out Sugihara’s other masterpiece: