Yes, I suppose it is an illusion. But such a baited one, by making the squares appear to be on three dimensional objects cast in a colored light. Because when white-balanced, the surrounding squares on each disc are pretty close to the same color, as well as the white lines, the only large color difference after white balancing is the middle square originally in question. Interestingly, this illusion doesn't work as well when viewed from farther away (or when smaller). And I was wrong to assume that, viewers would be smart enough, to look at the situation and understand, what's going on and rationally see that those two pixel areas are the same value, even though conditioning or heuristics would seem to display otherwise. The robot not having experience with illusions however doesn't (assuming again) have this rational cognitive function. Plus as a painter, this stuff (color theory) is sort of everyday practice to me. And the whole exercise asks you to dumb down and be fooled by it as an exercise, in being fooled. The language and contexts surrounding the visual illusion (suggestion) are more powerful than the actual visual illusions themselves. So, you have fore knowledge that this is an illusion, and hence you are *not* fooled. What's sinister is that the combination of suggestion & visuals really are fooling people everyday, and most people think of this the color illusion, as an illusion not the manipulations by companies, media and government going on in real life.
I'm working on the phenomenology of vision in my MFA thesis, and it occurs to me that no one is being fooled. You and the robots, are correctly perceiving the color balance caused by color of light of the form. And while those two colors may be the same in a 2-d image. In the real world if you saw the one color in red-orange light and the same color in blue light, they would in fact be very different colors. I auto-white-balanced each section to reveal how the colors would look with out being in a tinted light. And Voila, it is exactly as you probably (correctly) perceived them, green & orange. Cheers.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I suppose it is an illusion. But such a baited one, by making the squares appear to be on three dimensional objects cast in a colored light. Because when white-balanced, the surrounding squares on each disc are pretty close to the same color, as well as the white lines, the only large color difference after white balancing is the middle square originally in question. Interestingly, this illusion doesn't work as well when viewed from farther away (or when smaller). And I was wrong to assume that, viewers would be smart enough, to look at the situation and understand, what's going on and rationally see that those two pixel areas are the same value, even though conditioning or heuristics would seem to display otherwise. The robot not having experience with illusions however doesn't (assuming again) have this rational cognitive function. Plus as a painter, this stuff (color theory) is sort of everyday practice to me. And the whole exercise asks you to dumb down and be fooled by it as an exercise, in being fooled. The language and contexts surrounding the visual illusion (suggestion) are more powerful than the actual visual illusions themselves. So, you have fore knowledge that this is an illusion, and hence you are *not* fooled. What's sinister is that the combination of suggestion & visuals really are fooling people everyday, and most people think of this the color illusion, as an illusion not the manipulations by companies, media and government going on in real life.
I'm working on the phenomenology of vision in my MFA thesis, and it occurs to me that no one is being fooled. You and the robots, are correctly perceiving the color balance caused by color of light of the form. And while those two colors may be the same in a 2-d image. In the real world if you saw the one color in red-orange light and the same color in blue light, they would in fact be very different colors. I auto-white-balanced each section to reveal how the colors would look with out being in a tinted light. And Voila, it is exactly as you probably (correctly) perceived them, green & orange. Cheers.