18th Annual Dinner and Demo Night

Beach BBQ: Monday, May 16, 2022, 6:00 – 8:00 pm EDT, Beachside Sun Decks, limited seating in Banyan Breezeway
Demos: Monday, May 16, 2022, 7:00 – 10:00 pm EDT, Island Ballroom and Jacaranda Hall

Please join us Monday evening for the 18th Annual VSS Dinner and Demo Night, a spectacular night of imaginative demos solicited from VSS members. The demos highlight the important role of visual displays in vision research and education.

Demos are free to view for all registered VSS attendees and their families and guests. The Beach BBQ is free for attendees, but YOU MUST WEAR YOUR BADGE to receive dinner. Guests and family members must purchase a VSS Friends and Family Pass to attend the Beach BBQ. You can register your guests at any time at the VSS Registration Desk, located in the Grand Palm Colonnade. Guest passes may also be purchased at the BBQ event, beginning at 5:45 pm.

demo_night_program_5.15.22 Download

The following demos will be presented from 7:00 to 10:00 pm, in the Island Ballroom and Jacaranda Hall:

A joint attention game using Gazer, a system for web-based eye tracking

Amy vanWell, University of Victoria, Dr. James Tanaka, University of Victoria

At the University of Victoria, we have developed a web-based eye-tracking system to track gaze locations using personal laptop cameras. Come demo our system by playing a joint attention task. Participants will be scored on how quickly they can follow the gaze direction of cartoon eyes, for a prize.

Anisotropy of 3-D Non-Rigidity

Akihito Maruya, State University of New York, Graduate Center for Vision Research, Qasim Zaidi (State University of New York, Graduate Center for Vision Research)

When two rigidly linked rings rotate horizontally around a vertical axis oblique to both, by manipulating motion-energy responses with random flicker, and feature-tracking with salience of features, we can change the percept from rigid rotation to non-rigid wobbling. However, rotating the image 90o always gives non-rigid percepts indicating motion-mechanism anisotropy.

Artist as Vision Scientist: ‘Brain Lessons’ From The Surreal Art of René François Ghislain Magritte

RUSSELL D HAMER, Florida Atlantic University

Can Visual Art teach us about the Visual Brain? Yes, indeed. This demo is a Safari through the panoply of surprising lessons in two iconic paintings by the Surreal Artist, René Magritte. Exploration of space/scene construction in both; exploration of the nature of representation and visual experience itself in another!

Contour Erasure Filling-in Effects

Yih-Shiuan Lin, University of Regensburg, Chien-Chung Chen/National Taiwan University; Mark W. Greenlee/University of Regensburg; Stuart Anstis/University of California, San Diego

Here in our demos, you will see several examples of the fascinating contour erasure effect: objects completely disappear into the background or merge together after only a short adaptation period on their contours. We will also demonstrate the application of such effect in our contour adaptation contrast threshold paradigm.

Duchamp-Style Rotoreliefs

Christopher Tyler, Smith-Kettlewell Eye Reearch Institute

One form of Marcel Duchamp’s lesser-known works are his rotoreliefs, that sit faded and static in many modern art museums. In fact they are designed to be viewed while rotating, when they generate vivid and unexpected forms of dynamic 3D depth structure that tap into unexpected aspects of perceptual processing.

Exploring the Frame Effect

Patrick Cavanagh, Glendon College, Stuart Anstis, UCSD

Probes flashed within a moving frame are dramatically displaced (Özkan et al, PNAS 2021). The effect is much larger than that seen on static or moving probes. Here we show that this frame effect is robust to many variations in its shape and path and type of motion.

Hidden in Plain Sight!

Peter April, VPixx Technologies, Jean-Francois Hamelin, Dr. Lindsey Fraser, Dr. Amanda Estephan (all VPixx Technologies)

Can visual information be hidden in plain sight? We use the PROPixx 1440Hz projector to demonstrate images which are invisible until you make a rapid eye movement. Do your eyes deceive?

High Speed Gaze-Contingent Visual Search

Kurt Debono, SR-Research Ltd, Marcus Johnson

Try to find the target in a visual search array which is continuously being updated based on the location of your gaze. High speed video based eye tracking combined with a high speed monitor make for a compelling challenge.

Mind control in motion perception

Carolin Hübner, Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Martin Rolfs, Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

In an interactive setting you will experience objects moving in ambiguous ways. Using mysterious powers of mind control, the demonstrators will influence your percept or predict what you see. Along the way, you will learn about some of the most secret powers of motion processing.

Mixed Reality Experiences on Magic Leap Device

Jacob Duijnhouwer, Magic Leap, Agostino Gibaldi (Magic Leap)

We will present a Magic Leap augmented reality device with color stereo displays, head tracking, and eye tracking. We will demonstrate the mixed reality experience and vision research possibilities via various sample applications.

Retinal painting using (intra-saccadic) anorthoscopic presentations

Richard Schweitzer, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Tamara Watson (Western Sydney University), John Watson (independent researcher), Martin Rolfs (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

Anorthoscopic presentation devices show stimuli in a piecewise manner, as if seen moving through a narrow slit. At extremely high velocities, such presentations appear like brief flashes, but not during saccades: When spread across the retina, they produce well resolvable images that briefly remain visible due to visual persistence!

Saccadic Persistence of Vision

Rolf Nelson, Wheaton College (MA), Elizabeth Shelto, Wheaton College (MA)

A rapid sequential presentation of vertical slices of an image can be shown on an LED strip during a saccade. This image is “painted” on the retina and can be perceived during a saccade, which is atypical, since saccadic suppression typically operates during saccades. In addition to being an interesting demonstration, it also provides a way to understand mechanisms of saccadic suppression and attention.

The Caricature Effect in Graphical Communication

Jeremy Wilmer, Wellesley College, Sarah H. Kerns, Wellesley College

Come participate in a hands-on exploration of a striking phenomenon in graphical communication: the Caricature Effect!

The McGurk effect – When visual and auditory information clash

Jonathon Toft-Nielsen, Intelligent Hearing Systems / JÖRVEC, Özcan Özdamar, University of Miami

Are you more inclined to trust your eyes or your ears? The McGurk effect is a well know auditory illusion which occurs when we are presented with conflicting audio and visual information. Experience the illusion yourself in our live demonstration and afterwards you may not believe your ears!

The UW Virtual Brain ProjectTM: Virtual reality exploration of the visual, auditory, and touch systems

Melissa Schoenlein, 1Department of Psychology 2Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Nathaniel Miller3, Chris Racey4, Simon Smith2, Ross Treddinick2, Kudirat Alimi2, Chris Castro5, Bas Rokers6, & Karen B. Schloss1,2 1Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison 2Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, University of Wisconsin-Madison 3University of Minnesota Medical School 4Psychology, University of Sussex 5College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison 6Department of Psychology, New York University, Abu Dhabi

Explore the UW Virtual Brain ProjectTM visual, auditory, and touch system lessons in virtual reality or on a desktop display. Each lesson provides an immersive experience of information flow from sensory input to cortical processing. Evidence suggests these experiences are fun and easy to use, which can advance neuroscience education.

Transparency despite Pattern, Junction, Luminance and Color Incongruity: The Power of Common Fate.

Zhehao Huang, SUNY Optometry, Qasim Zaidi

We show that motion-defined common fate overrides geometric, pattern and color incongruities in transparency perception. We demonstrate transparency percepts despite the combination of T-junctions and overlaid surfaces with different patterns and colors than surround surfaces.

Video communication through MPdepth

Niko Troje, Centre for Vision Research, York University

Turn directionality back on. Establish true dynamic eye contact. Feel free, to look into her eyes or avoid her gaze. Let your visual system take advantage of the amazing wealth of mutual eye gaze again that thought you had lost over Zoom-ing and Skype-ing. No, you don’t need a headset for that. Check it out.

Visual awareness modulated by edge detector adaptation

Shinsuke Shimojo, California Institute of Technology, Shao Min Hung (California Institute of Technology)

VIsual awareness of an object can be suppressed (ie. made invisible) by adapting to the same-shaped higher-contrast adaptor (Moradi & Shimojo, ’04). A variety of new observations indicate a failure of edge detection, being consistent with the interaction between the boundary and the feature systems.

StroboPong

VSS Staff

Back by popular demand. Strobe lights and ping pong!

17th Annual Dinner and Demo Night

Monday, May 20, 2019, 6:00 – 10:00 pm

Beach BBQ: 6:00 – 8:00 pm, Beachside Sun Decks and limited indoor seating in Banyan Breezeway
Demos: 7:00 – 10:00 pm, Talk Room 1-2, Royal Tern, Snowy Egret, Compass, Spotted Curlew and Jacaranda Hall

Please join us Monday evening for the 17th Annual VSS Dinner and Demo Night, a spectacular night of imaginative demos solicited from VSS members. The demos highlight the important role of visual displays in vision research and education. This year’s Demo Night will be organized and curated by Gideon Caplovitz, University of Nevada, Reno; Karen Schloss, University of Wisconsin; Gennady Erlikhman, University of Nevada, Reno; and Benjamin Wolfe, MIT.

The following demos will be presented from 7:00 to 10:00 pm, in Talk Room 1-2, Royal Tern, Snowy Egret, Compass, Spotted Curlew and Jacaranda Hall:

For the Last Time: The Ever-Popular Beuchet Chair

Peter Thompson, Rob Stone, and Tim Andrews, University of York

A favorite at demo Night for many years, the Beuchet chair is back for one last hurrah. The two parts of the chair are at different distances and the visual system fails to apply size constancy appropriately. The result is people can be shrunk or made giants.

Paradoxical impact of memory on color appearance of faces

Rosa Lafer-Sousa, MIT

What is the function of color vision? In this demo we impair retinal mechanisms of color using monochromatic sodium light, and probe memory colors for familiar objects in a naturalistic setting. We showcase a surprising finding: faces, and only faces, provoke a paradoxical memory color, providing evidence that color contributes to face encoding and social communication.

Immersive and long lasting afterimages – experiences of altered self

Daw-An Wu, California Institute of Technology

Dark Adaptation + Bright Flashes = Rod Afterimages!

Shikaku no Mori: gamified vision tests

Kenchi Hosokawa, Kazushi Maruya, and Shin’ya Nishida, NTT Communication Science Laboratories

We gamified several vision tests. Those games can be played in a short time (~ 3 minutes) and with a more entertained way. Test sensitivities are enough to be used as initial screening tests (see pretest data on poster in Sunday Pavilion session). Those games are usable for self-check.

The UW Virtual Brain Project: Exploring the visual and auditory systems in virtual reality

Karen B. Schloss, Chris Racey, Simon Smith, Ross Tredinnick, Nathaniel Miller, Melissa Schoenlein, and Bas Rokers, University of Wisconsin – Madison

The UW Virtual Brain Project allows you to explore the visual system and auditory system in virtual reality. It helps to visualize the flow of information from sensory input to cortex cortical processing. The ultimate aim of the project is to improve neuroscience education by leveraging natural abilities for space-based learning.

Fun with Birefringent Surfaces and Polarized Light

Gideon Caplovitz, University of Nevada Reno

What could possibly go wrong?

Generating hyper-realistic faces for use in vision science experiments

Joshua Peterson, Princeton University; Jordan Suchow, Stevens Institute of Technology; Stefan Uddenberg, Princeton University

Easily alter your photographic appearance in a bunch of interesting ways! We have developed a system to morph any face image along psychologically relevant dimensions using recent advances in deep neural networks (namely GANs).

Hidden in Plain Sight!

Peter April, Jean-Francois Hamelin, Danny Michaud, Sophie Kenny, VPixx Technologies

Can visual information be hidden in plain sight? We use the PROPixx 1440Hz projector, and the TRACKPixx 2kHz eye tracker, to demonstrate images which are invisible until you make a rapid eye movement. We implement retinal stabilization to show other images that fade during fixations. Do your eyes deceive?

The Magical Alberti Frame

Niko Troje and Adam Bebko, York University

Pictures are two things: objects in space and representations of spaces existing elsewhere. In this virtual reality experience, users use a magical frame to capture pictures that momentarily appear identical to the scene they reside in, but when users move, the pictures evoke unexpected and eerie perceptual changes and distortions.

Café-Wall illusion caused by shadows on a surface of three dimensional object

Kazushi Maruya, NTT Communication Science Laboratories; Yuki Fujita, Tokyo University of the Arts; Tomoko Ohtani, Tokyo University of the Arts

Café-Wall illusion is a famous optical illusion that parallel gray lines between displaced rows of black and white squares are appeared to be angled with respect to one another. In this demonstration, we show that the Café-wall pattern can be emerged when shadows are cast by multiple cuboids onto a 3D surface of varying depths.

Foveal Gravity: A Robust Illusion of Color-Location Misbinding

Cristina R. Ceja, Nicole L. Jardine, and Steven L. Franconer, Northwestern University

Here we present a novel, robust color-location misbinding illusion that we call foveal gravity: objects and their features can be perceived accurately, but are often mislocalized to locations closer to fovea under divided attention.

Multi Person VR walking experience with and without accuracy correction

Matthias Pusch and Andy Bell, WorldViz

Consumer VR systems are great fun but they have limited accuracy when it comes to precisely tracking research participants. This demo will allow participants to experience first hand how inaccurate these systems can be in an interactive multi-user setting within a large walkable virtual space.

Impossible Integration of Size and Weight: The Set-Subset Illusion

Isabel Won, Steven Gross, and Chaz Firestone, Johns Hopkins University
Perception can produce experiences that are *impossible*, such as a triangle with three 90° sides, or a circular staircase that ascends in every direction. Are there impossible experiences that we can not only see, but also *feel*? Here, we demonstrate the “Set-Subset Illusion” — whereby a set of objects can, impossibly, feel lighter than a member of that set!

The Illusory and Invisible Audiovisual Rabbit Illusions

Noelle Stiles, University of Southern California; Armand R. Tanguay, Jr., University of Southern California, Caltech; Ishani Ganguly, Caltech; Monica Li, Caltech, University of California, Berkeley; Carmel A. Levitan, Caltech, Occidental College; Yukiyasu Kamitani, Kyoto University; Shinsuke Shimojo, Caltech

Neuroscience often focuses on the prediction of future perception based on prior perception. However, information is also processed postdictively, such that later stimuli impact percepts of prior stimuli. We will demonstrate that audition can postdictively relocate an illusory flash or suppress a real flash in the Illusory and Invisible Audiovisual Rabbit Illusions.

Chopsticks Fusion

Ray Gottlieb, College of Syntonic Optometry

Have you noticed that your normal stereoscopic perception is never as strong as the stark, solid 3-dimensionality that you see in a stereoscope or virtual reality device? Chopstick Fusion is a simple and inexpensive stereo practice that develops spatial volume perception. I’ll bring chopsticks for everyone.

Moiré effects on real object’s appearances

Takahiro Kawabe and Masataka Sawayama, NTT Communication Science Laboratories; Tamio Hoshik, Sojo University

An intriguing moiré effect is demonstrated wherein a real bar object in front of stripe motion on an LCD display apparently deforms or rotates in depth. Changing bar orientation and/or a bar-display distance drastically modulates the appearance. Even invisible stripe motion causes a vivid change in bar appearances.

The motion aftereffect without motion: 1-D, 2-D and 3-D illusory motion from local adaptation to flicker

Mark Georgeson, Aston University, UK

Adapting to a flickering image induces vivid illusory motion on an appropriate stationary test pattern: a motion aftereffect without inducing motion. Motion can be seen in 1-D, 2-D or 3-D, depending on the images chosen, but the basis for the effect is local adaptation to temporal gradients of luminance change.

Monocular rivalry

Leone Burridge

An iphone 5 drawing printed onto paper. The perceived colours fluctuate between blue/yellow and red /green.

A Fast and blurry versus slow and clear: How stationary stimuli modify motion perception

Mark Wexler, Labotatoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS & Université Paris Descartes

Why do shooting stars look the way they do? Why do most moving objects look clear, even at saccadic speeds? Are there motion effects waiting to be explored beyond the frequency range of computer monitors? Come and find out!

Thatcherize your face

Andre Gouws, York Neuroimaging Centre, University of York; Peter Thompson, University of York

The Margaret Thatcher illusion is one of the best-loved perceptual phenomena. Here you will have the opportunity to see yourself ‘thatcherized’ in real time and we print you a copy of the image to take away.

The caricature effect in data visualization: typical graphs produce negative learning

Jeremy Wilmer, Wellesley College

Graphs that display summary statistics without underlying distributions (e.g. bar/line/dot graphs with error bars) are commonly assumed to support robust information transfer. We demo an array of such graphs that falsify this assumption by stimulating negative learning relative to baseline in typical viewers.

Look where Simon says without delay

Katia Ripamonti, Cambridge Research Systems; Lloyd Smith, Cortech Solutions

Can you beat the Simon effect using your eye movements? Compete with other players to determine who can look where Simon says without delay. All you need to do is to control your eye movements before they run off. It sounds so simple and yet so difficult!

Illusory color induced by colored apparent-motion in the extreme-periphery

Takashi Suegami, Yamaha Motor Corporation, Caltech; Yusuke Shirai, Toyohashi University of Technology; Sara W. Adams, Caltech; Daw-An J. Wu, Caltech; Mohammad Shehata, Caltech, Toyohashi University of Technology; Shigeki Nakauchi, Toyohashi University of Technology; Shinsuke Shimojo, Caltech, Toyohashi University of Technology

Our new demo will show that foveal/parafoveal color cue with apparent motion can induce illusory color in the extreme-periphery (approx. 70°-90°) where cone cells are less distributed. One can experience, for example, clear red color perception for extreme-peripheral green flash, with isoluminant red cue (or vice versa).

The Magical Misdirection of Attention in Time

Anthony Barnhart, Carthage College

When we think of “misdirection,” we typically think of a magician drawing attention away from a spatial location. However, magicians also misdirect attention in time through the creation of “off-beats,” moments of suppressed attention. The “striking vanish” illusion, where a coin disappears when tapped with a pen, exploits this phenomenon.

How Can (Parts of) Planarians Survive Without their Brains and Eyes? -Hint: Its Extraocular UV-Sensitive System

Kensuke Shimojo, Chandler School; Eiko Shimojo, California Institute of Technology; Daw-An Wu, California Institute of Technology; Armand R. Tanguay, Jr., California Institute of Technology, University of Southern California; Mohammad Shehata, California Institute of Technology; Shinsuki Simojo, California Institute of Technology

Planarian dissected body parts, even with incomplete eyespots, show “light avoiding behavior” long before the complete regrowth of the entire body (including the sensory-motor organs). We will demonstrate this phenomenon live (in Petri dishes) and on video under both no-UV (visible) and UV light stimulation. In a dynamic poster mode, we show some observations addressing whether or not the mechanical stress (dissection) switches dominance between the two vision systems.

The joy of intra-saccadic retinal painting

Richard Schweitzer, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Tamara Watson, Western Sydney University; John Watson, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Martin Rolfs, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Is it possible to turn intra-saccadic motion blur – under normal circumstances omitted from conscious perception – into a salient stimulus? With the help of visual persistence, your own eye and/or head movements, and our custom-built setup for high-speed anorthoscopic presentation, you can paint beautiful images and amusing text directly onto your retina.

Build a camera obscura!

Ben Balas, North Dakota State University

Vision begins with the eye, and what better way to understand the eye than to build one? Come make your own camera obscura out of cardboard, tape, and paper, and you can observe basic principles of image formation and pinhole optics.

The Role of Color Filling-in in Natural Images

Christopher Tyler and Josh Solomon, City University of London

We demonstrate that natural images do not look very colorful when their color is restricted to edge transitions. Moreover, purely chromatic images with maximally graded transitions look fully colorful, implying that color filling-in makes no more than a minor contribution to the appearance of extended color regions in natural images.

Chopsticks trick your fingers

Songjoo Oh, Seoul National University

The famous rubber hand illusion is demonstrated by using chopsticks and fingers. A pair of chopsticks simultaneously moves back and forth on your index and middle fingers, respectively. One chopstick is actually touching the middle finger, but the other one is just moving in the air without touching the index finger. If you pay attention only to your index finger, you may erroneously feel the touch come from the index finger, not from the middle finger.

Spinning reflections on depth from spinning reflections

Michael Crognale and Alex Richardson, University of Nevada Reno

A trending novelty toy when spun, induces a striking depth illusion from disparity in specular reflections from point sources. However, “specular” disparity from static curved surfaces is usually discounted or contributes to surface curvature. Motion obscures surface features that compete with depth cues and result in a strong depth illusion.

High Speed Gaze-Contingent Visual Search

Kurt Debono and Dan McEchron, SR Research Ltd

Try to find the target in a visual search array which is continuously being updated based on the location of your gaze. High speed video based eye tracking combined with the latest high speed monitors make for a compelling challenge.

Interactions between visual movement and position

Stuart Anstis, University of California, San Diego; Sharif Saleki, Dartmouth College; Mart Ozkan, Dartmouth College; Patrick Cavanagh, York University

Movement paths can be distorted when they move across an oblique background grating (the Furrow illusion). These motions, viewed the periphery, can be paradoxically immune to visual crowding. Conversely, moving backgrounds can massively distort static flashed targets altering their perceived size, shape, position and orientation.(flash-grab illusion).

StroboPong

VSS Staff

Back by popular demand. Strobe lights and ping pong!

16th Annual Dinner and Demo Night

Monday, May 21, 2018, 6:00 – 10:00 pm

Beach BBQ: 6:00 – 8:00 pm, Beachside Sun Decks
Demos: 7:00 – 10:00 pm, Talk Room 1-2, Royal Tern, Snowy Egret, Compass, Spotted Curlew and Jacaranda Hall

Please join us Monday evening for the 16th Annual VSS Dinner and Demo Night, a spectacular night of imaginative demos solicited from VSS members. The demos highlight the important role of visual displays in vision research and education. This year’s Demo Night will be organized and curated by Gideon Caplovitz, University of Nevada, Reno; Arthur Shapiro, American University; Gennady Erlikhman, University of Nevada, Reno; and Karen Schloss, University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The following demos will be presented from 7:00 to 10:00 pm, in Talk Room 1-2, Royal Tern, Snowy Egret, Compass, Spotted Curlew and Jacaranda Hall:

Paradoxical memory color for faces

Rosa Lafer-Sousa, MIT; Maryam Hasantash, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences, Iran; Arash Afraz, National Institute of Mental Health, NIH; Bevil R. Conway, National Institute of Mental Health, NIH and National Eye Institute, NIH

In this demo we use monochromatic sodium light (589 nm), which renders vision objectively achromatic, to elicit memory colors for familiar objects in a naturalistic setting. The demo showcases a surprising finding, that faces, and only faces, provoke a paradoxical memory color, appearing greenish.

Vision in the extreme periphery: Perceptual illusions of flicker, selectively rescued by sound

Daw-An Wu, California Institute of Technology; Takashi Suegami, California Institute of Technology and Yamaha Motors Corporation; Shinsuke Shimojo, California Institute of Technology

Synchronously pulsed visual stimuli, when spread across central and peripheral vision, appear to pulse at different rates. When spread bilaterally into extreme periphery (70˚+), the left and right stimuli can also appear different from each other. Pulsed sound can cause some or all of the stimuli to become perceptually synchronized.

Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls

Matthew Harrison and Matthew Moroz, University of Nevada Reno

‘High Phi’ in VR, illusory motion jumps are perceived when the random noise texture of a moving 3D tunnel is replaced with new random textures. In 2D, these illusory jumps tend to be perceived in the direction opposite the preceding motion, but in 3D, this is not always the case!

The UW Virtual Brain Project: Exploring the visual system in immersive virtual reality

Chris Racey, Bas Rokers, Nathaniel Miller, Jacqueline Fulvio, Ross Tredinnick, Simon Smith, and Karen B. Schloss, University of Wisconsin – Madison

The UW Virtual Brain Project allows you to explore the visual system in virtual reality. It helps to visualize the flow of information from the eyes to visual cortex. The ultimate aim of the project is to improve neuroscience education by leveraging our natural abilities for space-based learning.

Augmented Reality Art

Jessica Herrington, Australian National University

Art inspired by vision science! Come and explore augmented reality artworks that contain interactive, digital sculptures. Augmented reality artworks will be freely available for download as iPhone apps.

Staircase Gelb effect

Alan Gilchrist, Rutgers University

A black square suspended in midair and illuminated by a spotlight appears white. Now successively lighter squares are added within the spotlight. Each new square appears white and makes the other squares appear to get darker. This demonstrates the highest luminance rule of lightness anchoring and gamut compression.

Hidden in Plain Sight!

Peter April, Jean-Francois Hamelin, Stephanie-Ann Seguin, and Danny Michaud, VPixx Technologies

Do I know you? Discover your eye gaze strategy for face recognition

Janet Hsiao and Cynthia Chan, University of Hong Kong

At VSS, do you often wonder whether you’ve seen someone before? Are you using good gaze strategies for face recognition? Try our hidden Markov modeling approach (EMHMM; http://visal.cs.cityu.edu.hk/research/emhmm/) to summarize your gaze strategy in terms of personalized regions-of-interest and transition patterns, and quantitatively assess its similarity to commonly used strategies.

Virtual Reality reconstruction of Mondrian’s ‘Salon for Madame B’

Johannes M. Zanker and Jasmina Stevanov, Royal Holloway University of London; Tim Holmes, Tobii Pro Insight

We present the first Virtual Reality realisation of Mondrian’s design for a salon painted in his iconic style which was never realised in his lifetime. Visitors can explore the VR space whilst their eye-movements are tracked allowing the researcher to evaluate possible reasons why Mondrian did not pursue his plan.

Hidden Stereo: Hiding phase-based disparity to present ghost-free 2D images for naked-eye viewers

Shin’ya Nishida, Takahiro Kawabe, and Taiki Fukiage, NTT Communication Science Lab

When a conventional stereoscopic display is viewed without 3D glasses, image ghosts are visible due to the fusion of stereo image pairs including binocular disparities. Hidden Stereo is a method to hide phase-based binocular disparities after image fusion, and to present ghost-free 2D images to viewers without glasses.

Quick estimation of contrast sensitivity function using a tablet device

Kenchi Hosokawa and Kazushi Maruya, NTT Communication Science Laboratories

Contrast sensitivity functions (CSFs) are useful but sometimes impossible in practical uses due to imitations of time. We demonstrate web-based applications to measure CSF in a short time (<3 min) at moderate precisions. Those applications allow collecting CSFs’ data from various types of observers and experimental circumstances.

The optical illusion blocks: Optical illusion patterns in a three dimensional world

Kazushi Maruya, NTT Communication Science Laboratories; Tomoko Ohtani, Tokyo University of the Arts

The optical illusion blocks are a set of toy blocks whose surfaces have particular geometric patterns. When combined, the blocks induce various types of optical illusion such as shape from shading, cafe wall, and subjective contour. With the blocks, observers can learn rules behind the illusions through active viewpoint changes.

Dis-continuous flash suppression

Shao-Min (Sean) Hung, Caltech; Po-Jang (Brown) Hsieh, Duke-NUS Medical School; Shinsuke Shimojo, Caltech

We report a novel variant of continuous flash suppression (CFS): Dis-continuous flash suppression (dCFS) where the suppressor and suppressed are presented intermittently. Our findings suggest approximately two-fold suppression power, as evident by lower breaking rates and longer suppression duration. dCFS thus may be suitable for future investigations of unconscious processing.

Virtual Reality Collaboration with interactive outside-in and tether-less inside-out tracking setup

Matthias Pusch, Dan Tinkham, and Sado Rabaudi, WorldViz

Multiple participants can interact with both local and remote participants in VR – the demo will contain both, outside-in tracking paradigm for some participants, in combo with inside-out integrated tracking for other participants. Importantly, the inside-out system will be entirely tether-less (using so-called consumer backpack VR ) and the user will be free to explore the entire indoor floor plan.

The illusion of floating objects caused by light projection of cast shadow

Takahiro Kawabe, NTT Communication Science Laboratories

We demonstrate an illusion wherein objects in pictures and drawings apparently float in the air due to the light projection of cast shadow patterns onto them. We also conduct a demonstration of a light projection method making an opaque colored paper appear to be a transparent color film floating in the air.

Extension of phenomenal phenomena toward printed objects

Takahiro Kawabe, NTT Communication Science Laboratories

We demonstrate that the phenomenal phenomena (Gregory and Heard, 1983) can be extended toward printed objects placed against a background with luminance modulation. In our demo, the audience experiences not only the illusory translation of the printed objects but also their illusory expansion/contraction and rotation.

Stereo Illusions in Augmented Reality

Moqian Tian, Meta Company

Augmented Reality with environmental tracking and real world lighting projection can uncover new perspectives of some classical illusions. We will present Hallow Face Illusion, Necker’s Cube, and Crazy Nuts Illusion in multiple conditions, while observers can interact with the holograms through Meta 2 AR headset.

A Color-Location Misbinding Illusion

Cristina R. Ceja and Steven L. Franconeri, Northwestern University

Illusory conjunctions, formed by misbound features, can be formed when attention is overloaded or diverted (Treisman & Schmidt, 1982). Here we provide the opportunity to experience a new illusory conjunction illusion, using even simpler stimulus displays.

Thatcherize your face

Andre Gouws, York Neuroimaging Centre, University of York; Peter Thompson, University of York

The Ever-Popular Beuchet Chair

Peter Thompson, Rob Stone and Tim Andrews, University of York

A favorite at demo Night for the past few years, the Beuchet chair is back again. The two parts of the chair are at different distances and the visual system fails to apply size constancy appropriately. The result is people can be shrunk or made giants.

Illusory grating

William F. Broderick, New York University

By windowing a large two-dimensional sinusoidal grating, a perpendicular illusory grating is created. This illusion is quite strong, and depends on the overall size of the image, as well as the relative size of the grating and windows.

Look where Simon says without delay

Katia Ripamont, Cambridge Research Systems; Lloyd Smith, Cortech Solutions

Chromatic induction from achromatic stimulus

Leone Burridge, Artist/ Medical practitioner in private practice

These are acrylic paintings made with only black and white pigments. On sustained gaze subtle colours become visible.

Grandmother’s neuron

Katerina Malakhova, Pavlov Institute of Physiology

If we could find a grandma cell, what kind of information would this cell code? Artificial neural networks allow us to study l atent representations which activate neurons. I choose a unit with the highest selectivity for grandmother images and visualize a percept which drives this neuron.

Planarian Eyespot(s) – Amazing redundancy in visual-motor behavior

Kensuke Shimojo, Chandler School, Pasadena, CA; Eiko Shimojo, California Institute of Technology

The planarian dissected body parts, even with incomplete eyespots, show ‘light avoiding behavior” long before the completion of the entire body (and sensory-motor organs). We will demonstrate this live (in Petri dishes) and in video.

Real-Life Continuous Flash Suppression – Suppressing the real world from awareness

Uri Korisky, Tel Aviv University

‘Real life CFS’ is a new method for suppressing real life stimuli. Using augmented reality goggles, CFS masks (“mondrians”) are presented to your dominant eye, causing whatever is presented to your non-dominant eye to be suppressed from awareness – even real objects placed in front of you.

The Motion Induced Contour Revisited

Gideon Caplovitz and Gennady Erlkhman, University of Nevada, Reno

As a tribute to Neomi Weisstein (1939-2015) we recreate and introduce some novel variants of the Motion Induced Contour, which was first described in a series of papers published in the 1980’s.

Illusory Apparent Motion

Allison K. Allen, Nicolas Davidenko and Nathan H. Heller, University of California, Santa Cruz

When random textures are presented at a moderate pace, observers report experiencing coherent percepts of apparent motion, which we term Illusory Apparent Motion (IAM). In this demo, we will cue observers to experience different types of motion percepts from random stimuli by using verbal suggestion, action commands, and intentional control.

Illusory color in extreme-periphery

Takashi Suegami, California Institute of Technology and Yamaha Motors Corporation; Daw-An Wu and Shinsuke Shimojo, California Institute of Technology

Our new demo will show that foveal color cue can induce illusory color in extreme-periphery (approx. 70°-90°) where cone cells are less distributed. One can experience, for example, clear red color perception for extreme-peripheral green flash, with isoluminant red foveal pre-cueing (or vice versa).

Silhouette Zoetrope

Christine Veras, University of Texas at Dallas; Gerrit Maus, Nanyang Technological University

A contemporary innovation of the traditional zoetrope, called Silhouette Zoetrope. In this new device, an animation of moving silhouettes is created by sequential cutouts placed outside a rotating empty cylinder, with slits illuminating the cutouts successively from the back. This new device combines motion, mirroring, depth, and size Illusions.

Spinning reflections on depth from spinning reflections

Michael Crognale, University of Nevada, Reno

High Speed Gaze-Contingent Visual Search

Kurt Debono and Dan McEchron, SR Research Ltd.

The photoreceptor refresh rate

Allan Hytowitz, Dyop Vision Associates

A dynamic optotype Dyop (a segmented spinning ring) provides a much more precise, consistent, efficient, and flexible means of measuring acuity. Adjustment of the rotation rate of the segmented ring determined the optimum rate as well as the photoreceptor refresh rate for perceived retrograde motion.

Stereo psychophysics by means of continuous 3D target-tracking in VR

Benjamin T. Backus and James J. Blaha, Vivid Vision Labs, Vivid Vision, Inc.; Lawrence K. Cormack and Kathryn L. Bonnen, University of Texas at Austin

What’s your latency for tracking binocular disparity? Let us cross-correlate your hand motion with our flying bugs to find out.

Motion-based position shifts

Stuart Anstis, University of California, San Diego; Patrick Cavanagh, Glendon College, York University

Motion-based position shifts are awesome!

StroboPong

VSS Staff

Back by popular demand. Strobe lights and ping pong!

15th Annual Dinner and Demo Night

Monday, May 22, 2017, 6:00 – 10:00 pm

Beach BBQ: 6:00 – 8:00 pm, Beachside Sun Decks
Demos: 7:00 – 10:00 pm, Talk Room 1-2, Royal Tern, Snowy Egret, Compass, Spotted Curlew and Jacaranda Hall

Please join us Monday evening for the 15th Annual VSS Dinner and Demo Night, a spectacular night of imaginative demos solicited from VSS members. The demos highlight the important role of visual displays in vision research and education. This year’s Demo Night will be organized and curated by Gideon Caplovitz, University of Nevada, Reno; Arthur Shapiro, American University; Gennady Erlikhman, University of Nevada, Reno and Karen Schloss, Brown University.

The following demos will be presented from 7:00 to 10:00 pm, in Talk Room 1-2, Royal Tern, Snowy Egret, Compass, Spotted Curlew and Jacaranda Hall:

Rotating squares look like pincushions

Stuart Anstis, Sae Kaneko, UC San Diego

A square that rotates about its own center appears to be distorted into pincushions with concave sides. This illusory shape changes is caused by a perceived compression along the curved path of motion. Corners stick out furthest from the center of rotation so they get apparently pinched the most.

The Rotating Line

Kyle W. Killebrew, Sungjin Im, Gideon Paul Caplovitz, University of Nevada Reno

If a line changes size at it rotates around its center it will appear to speed up and slow down as a function of its length. Speeding up as the line gets longer and slowing down as it gets shorter. Why can’t the visual system get even this simplest of things right?

Biological Motion

Andre Gouws, Tim Andrews, Rob Stone, University of York

A real-time demonstration of biological motion. Walk, jump, dance in front of the sensor and your actions are turned into a point light display, Using an X-box Kinect sensor and our free software, you can produce this effect for yourself.

Thatcherize your face

Andre Gouws, Peter Thompson, University of York

The Ever-Popular Beuchet Chair

Peter Thompson, Rob Stone, Tim Andrews, University of York

A favorite at demo Night for the past few years, the Beuchet chair is back with yet another modification. The two parts of the chair are at different distances and the visual system fails to apply size constancy appropriately. The result is people can be shrunk or made giants.

Hemifield-specific camouflage and persistence

Zhiheng Zhou, Lars Strother, University of Nevada Reno

Zhou and Strother (2017) recently reported a new psychophysical method of studying contour visibility under conditions of impending camouflage. Here we show that portions of a single contour or two simultaneously visible contours, one viewed in each hemifield, can succumb to camouflage at different times.

Full immersion in VR with remote interactivity

Matthias Pusch, WorldViz

We will immerse two participants at a time with a high end VR system, and have them experience interactivity with a remote (west coast or Europe) set of participants in the same VR session. What can be observed is the level of natural interaction that evolves. Such co-located and/or remote interactivity is an eye opener for understanding the potential and implication of VR for the future of communication and training.

Audio-Visual Perceptual Illusions: Central/Peripheral Flicker Synchronization by Sound

Shinsuke Shimojo, Caltech, Kensuke Shimojo, St. Mark’s School, and Mohammad Shehata, Caltech

We will demonstrate that simultaneously pulsed circular targets (with a flicker frequency of 4 to 6 Hz), one viewed centrally and the other peripherally, appear to pulse at different rates (likely due to differences in the cone and rod systems), but can be synchronized with a pulsed audio stimulus that captures the visual percept.

Audio-Visual Perceptual Illusions: Expanding/Contracting Double Flash and Spatial Double Flash

Bolton Bailey, Caltech, Noelle R. B. Stiles, University of Southern California and Caltech, Shinsuke Shimojo, Caltech, and Armand R. Tanguay, Jr., University of Southern California and Caltech

At VSS 2016 we demonstrated the “Illusory Rabbit” and “Invisible Rabbit” illusions, both of which indicate that auditory stimuli can capture and modify the perceptual structure of visual stimuli postdictively. This year we will demonstrate two novel variants of the classical double flash illusion, one in which the visual stimulus is a circular contrast gradient that appears to vary dynamically in size, and another in which sequential tones from two separated speakers paired with a single flash induce an illusory flash displaced in the direction of apparent auditory motion.

Virtual Reality Real-time Multiple Object Tracking Psychophysics Platform

Steven Oliveira, Mohammed Islam, Elan Barenholtz, Mike Kleinman, Shannon Whitney, Florida Atlantic University

Experimental platform for immersive multiple object tracking experiment using state-of-the-art virtual reality system. Come enjoy the next generation of psychophysics experiments in a fully immersive 3D environment.

Egocentric and egophobic images

Dejan Todorovic, University of Belgrade, Serbia

Some portraits look (generally) at you from (almost) everywhere – but others never do. Likewise, some depicted roads (practically) always point (by and large) at you – but others never do. Check out how salient these effects are simply by inspecting pairs of identical large images spaced widely apart.

Using Mixed Reality to Study the Freezing Rotation Illusion

Max R. Dürsteler, University Hospital Zurich, Dep. of Neurology

Using a Microsoft Hololens, I demonstrate 3D versions of the “Freezing Rotation Illusion”. When using a back and forth rotating tubular structure surrounding a constantly turning air plane model, the plane is perceived a slowing down, when it co-rotates with its surrounds, speeding up otherwise regardless of the observer’s position.

BrainWalk: Exploring the Virtual Brain in immersive virtual reality

Simon Smith, Bas Rokers, Nathaniel Miller, Ross Tredinnick, Chris Racey, Karen B. Schloss, University of Wisconsin – Madison

We will present a Virtual Brain, which uses immersive virtual reality to visualize the human brain. Wearing an Oculus Rift, you can explore a 3D volumetric brain built from real neuroimaging data. You can also play BrainWalk, a game created to help improve the visual design based on user performance.

Augmented BrainWalk: Hands-on Augmented Reality 3D Brain Exploration

Stefano Baldassi, Moqian Tian , Meta Company; Bas Rokers, Nathaniel Miller, Ross Tredinnick, Chris Racey, Karen Schloss, University of Wisconsin, Madison & Wisconsin Institute for Discovery

We present an Augmented Reality tool that allows users to visualize brain structures in 3D and manipulate them directly. This tool has special advantages in education, in that users can see through the real world, allowing direct teacher-student communication while interacting with the same brain model.

See your own Saccades

Peter April, Jean-Francois Hamelin, Danny Michaud, Stephanie-Ann Seguin, VPixx Technologies

VPixx Technologies presents a series of demonstrations which combine the PROPixx 1440Hz refresh rate visual display, and the TRACKPixx 2kHz eye tracker. See your own saccadic eye movement path plotted directly onto your own retina. Question saccadic suppression by examining objects which are visible only during saccades. See what happens when visual stimuli are stabilized on your retina.

High Speed Gaze-Contingent Visual Search

Kurt Debono, Dan McEchron, SR-Research Ltd

Eyes Wide Shut Illusion

Shaul Hochstein, Hebrew University, Jerusalem

The “Eyes Wide Shut” illusion uses a curved/enlarging mirror to observe one eye at a time, and then, surprisingly, both eyes together in one integrated view. It demonstrates mirror action, binocular integration, and how prior assumptions determine how very approximate information from the world creates perception.

Visual Attention EEG Challenge

Lloyd Smith, Jakob Thomassen, Cortech Solutions, Inc., Cambridge Research Systems, Ltd.

Take the EEG Frequency Tagging Challenge to see whether you or your colleagues will take home the prize for most robust visual spatial attention as measured in an EEG SSVEP paradigm. Don’t look away, though, because moving your eyes might be cause for disqualification! Find out once and for all who among you is best able to focus visual attention and avoid distractions.

The Box that Defined a Movement

Joshua E Zosky, Michael D. Dodd, University of Nebraska – Lincoln

By surrounding objects (which can be perceived moving leftward or rightward) with a three- dimensional box that has a clear direction of motion, viewers are induced to see a directionally congruent perception of motion. Examples of the phenomenon include: spinning orb, spinning dancer, and The Orb that Destroys Stars.

The size-weight illusion

Cristina de la Malla, Vrije universiteit Amsterdam

A small object feels heavier than a larger object of the same mass. This is known as the size-weight illusion. We will provide the opportunity to experience several variations of the illusion.

The FechDeck: a handtool for exploring psychophysics

James Ferwerda, Center for Imaging Science, Rochester Institute of Technology

The FechDeck is an ordinary deck of playing cards modified to support exploration of psychophysical methods. The deck allows users to conduct threshold experiments using Fechner’s methods of adjustment, limits, and constant stimuli, scaling experiments using Thurstone’s ranking, pair comparison, and category methods, and Stevens’ method of magnitude estimation.

Going to the movies: Immersion, visual awareness, and memory

Matthew Moran, Derek McClellan , Dr. D. Alexander Varakin, Eastern Kentucky University

The observer will view a movie clip through a scaled down detailed replica of a movie theater that served as the experimental condition of the study. An unexpected stimulus will cross the stage area in front of the movie screen at the 6:36 mark.

StroboPong

VSS Staff

Back by popular demand. Strobe lights and ping pong!

3rd Annual Dinner and Demo Night

Monday, May 9, 2005, 7:00 -9:30 pm, G.WIZ Science Museum

The third annual VSS Demo Night is a social event with a barbecue and refreshments to accompany the presentations of demos. There will be 20 demos presented in a variety of formats from laptop displays to room installations, organized by Richard Brown, San Francisco Exploratorium and Shinsuke Shimojo, California Institute of Technology. These presentations highlight the importance of demonstrations of visual phenomena in vision research and education, and provide a forum for sharing techniques and tips for developing effective demonstrations. In addition, G.WIZ features many interactive exhibits on optics and vision, including a traveling NEI exhibition and exhibits on loan from the Exploratorium, which will also be available to use during this event. There is no additional registration required, just come on over to G.WIZ, and enjoy!

BBQ and sodas are complimentary. Beer and wine: $2. Your first drink is on VSS – pick up your free drink
ticket at the front door.

LITE Vision: An Atlas of Visual Phenomena

Kenneth Brecher
Over 200 visual phenomena, spanning color, motion, depth, lightness and form, are presented on an interactive educational website.

MT Illusory Motion After-Effect

Tuan Cao-Huu
A demonstration and analysis of optical imaging studies of illusory motion after-effects will be presented.

Mach Card With Isoluminant Targets

Alan Gilchrist
A folded Mach card with two apertures, whose perceived shape flips between monocular and binocular viewing, demonstrates 3-D context effects in lightness.

Staircase Gelb Effect

Alan Gilchrist
Black and grey squares suspended in midair and illuminated by a spotlight provide a compelling demonstration of the Gelb Effect in perceived lightness.

The Enigmatic Enigma and Related Phenomena

Kai Hamburger and Simone Gori
New, more impressive variations of Leviant’s Enigma figure (traffic-illusion) and other related phenomena will be presented.

Transq

Thorsten Hansen
Color images resembling a natural spectral distribution of 1/(f^n) are temporally modulated by different noise processes to create appealing color landscapes.

Undefeatable Rock Paper Scissors

John Jacobson
A computer program learns to repeatedly defeat human opponents in Rock Paper Scissors, even though it is seen to move first.

Waving Illusion Produced By The Peripheral Drift Illusion

Akiyoshi Kitaoka
A novel static image provides a really waving appearance, based on the peripheral drift motion illusion.

Physics Education Courseware – Integrating Virtual-Reality-Simulations and Real Experiments

Maria Kozhevnikov
A VR interface is used in conjunction with real experiments in mechanics, in individual and collaborative tasks, to study new approaches in science education.

Change Blindness to Gradual Changes: A New Example

Cedric Laloyaux, Christel Devue, Elodie David and Axel Cleeremans
This new example of change blindness extends previous findings to the psychologically important domain of
emotional facial expressions.

Motion Induction by Walking

Songjoo Oh
Walking disambiguates flickering gratings positioned in ground locations such that the grating appears move
opposite the walker’s direction.

McGill Colour Calibrated Image Database

Adriana Olmos
The McGill Colour Calibrated Image Database will be presented, with some demos showing its use in analyzing the chromatic and luminance channels.

Illusions

Baingio Pinna
Presentation of visual illusions.

Head-mounted VR

Matthias Pusch
Users will walk through a variety of virtual environments and phenomena, among them a virtual city, using an
interactive, immersive, high-resolution VR display.

Pitchroom

Adam Shavit, W. Li & L. Matin
A small pitchroom without a floor will be installed. Rotating it will induce large geometric illusions and errors in manual localization.

Posture-dependent Tilted Room

Shinsuke Shimojo, Noriyuki Tanaka, and Shana Mabari
A new and unique variation of the tilted room will be demonstrated in which the perceived tilt depends critically on the observer’s posture.

Failure of Binocular Noise Cancellation

Bill Simpson
This demonstration shows that binocular combination of contrast does not use an algorithm anything like addition.
Pure First-, Second-, and Third-order Motion

Displays

George Sperling
Examples of stimuli that excite only the first-, only the second-, and only the third-order motion systems will be displayed on a laptop computer screen.

The First Stereoscopic Stimulus Ever Seen

Hadley Tassinari
A point source of light and an aluminum disk recreate Wheatstone’s observation of an illusory tilted line passing through the disk.

“Stereoscopic” Perspective

Christopher Tyler
High-resolution perspective images viewed from their center of projection give a sense of depth as vivid as that obtained from binocular stereopsis.

4th Annual Dinner and Demo Night

Monday, May 8, 2006, 6:30 -9:30 pm, G.WIZ Science Museum

Please join us Monday night at the G.WIZ Science Museum for the 4th Annual VSS Demo Night, with a barbecue and beverages to accompany the demonstrations.

Richard O. Brown and Shinsuke Shimojo have curated 20 demonstrations of visual phenomena by VSS members, in a variety of formats and scales, illustrating the important roles demonstrations play in vision research and education. These demonstrations will be distributed throughout G.WIZ, amongst the museum’s existing interactive scientific exhibits, including 30 exhibits on physics and visual perception on loan from the Exploratorium.

No registration required. Wear your VSS badge for entry. Guests and family members of all ages welcome.

Schedule of Events
6:30 – 8:00 pm Complimentary BBQ served on the grass at the back of G.WIZ
6:30 – 8:00 pm Outside bar open – Beer and wine for $3; sodas and water complimentary
7:00 – 9:30 pm Demos open inside G.WIZ
7:00 – 9:30 pm Inside bar open – Beer and wine $3; sodas and water complimentary
8:00 – 9:30 pm Complimentary dessert and coffee served

Demonstration of Cue Recruitment

Benjamin Backus, Qi Haijiang, University of Pennsylvania
When a visual signal is paired with trusted visual cues, it can become a cue itself. This demo illustrates the effect by making the apparent 3D rotation of a Necker cube contingent on stimulus position.

Embodying Bottom-Up Visual Attention in a Robotic Monkey Head

David J. Berg, Lior Elazary, Laurent Itti, University of Southern California
A robotic monkey head with a mounted camera will compute salient/surprising locations in its environment and make combined head/eye movements toward them. The monkey will look around the room at interesting things or people as they pass by. The robot has several controllable facial features which create a more natural and entertaining experience.

Demonstration of Curved Visual Space, and Project LITE Vision Interactive software

Kenneth Brecher, Boston University
Novel anamorphic demos combining art, physics and visual perception to explore the curvature of visual space will be presented. Also, Project LITE – Over 250 visual perception applets.

Strobe Room with Balls and Cell Phones

Richard O. Brown, The Exploratorium
A dark room will be illuminated only by slow (~5Hz) stroboscopic flashes. Experience how difficult it becomes to play a simple game of catch under these conditions. Also, bring your cell phone or other glowing objects for fun with the flash-lag effect.

The Touch of Light

Frank H. Durgin, Swarthmore College
Observer places hand into a box, only to see it replaced, via mirror, with a rubber hand. The rubber hand is “stroked” with a laser-pointer light. Most observers feel thermal or tingly sensations from the light. The sensations are localized to the corresponding surface of their own unseen hand.

The Bicycle Illusion: A True Story of Sidewalk Science

James T. Enns, Michael Dodd, Michael Masson, University of British Columbia
The apparent path of a moving object is influenced by the shape of stationary forms at low levels of acuity. This illusion is dissociated from more familiar illusions of induced motion.

Demo With White Disk and Spotlights

Alan Gilchrist, Rutgers University
A disk of white paper and a projected circle of light on a black background can be indistinguishable, with both appearing as white paper disks. But when the spotlight is moved so as to partially overlap the white paper disk, the percept changes dramatically. One of the two disks appears to be composed of illumination, while the other can continue to appear as white paper. But either disk can appear as the spotlight, and the display is reversible. The true state of affairs can be easily revealed, by various methods, such as waving a hand directly in front of the display, and this typically produces visual surprise in the observer

Breathing Light Illusion and Other New Motion Illusions

Simone Gori, Boston University
The Breathing Light Illusion is a challenge for the constant of size and for the constant of color. The Gori-Hamburger Illusion (Rotating Tilted Lines Illusion) is a static pattern that elicits illusory motion. Moreover, other variations of the previous illusions and different new illusions will be shown during the demo.

Enigmatic Variations of Illusory Streaming Motion

Kai Hamburger, Justus Liebig, University Giessen
Novel variations of streaming motion in static patterns (as observed in Leviant’s Enigma figure) will be presented.

Why Images Look Right When Viewed From the Wrong Place

David Hoffman, Ahna R. Girshick, & Martin S. Banks, University of California Berkeley
When a picture is viewed from the center of projection, the retinal image is the same as that from the original scene. As the picture surface is rotated, the retinal image distorts. When one looks monocularly through a pinhole, objects appear to change shape as the picture-surface slant changes. However, when one views binocularly without an aperture, perceived object shape remains stable.

The Attentional Centrifuge

Alex Holcombe, Patrick Cavanagh, Harvard University
The “attentional centrifuge” separates the human visual computations that occur at a local retinotopic stage from those that occur at more global integration stages. Things that cannot be seen with an alternating non-spinning display suddenly become visible when the centrifuge is activated and global processing stages are activated.

Boolean Nature of Conscious Access

Liqiang Huang, Hal Pashler, Anne Treisman, Princeton University
These are the demos from a paper we are revising for Psychological review. (1) What visual contents can we consciously access at one moment? (2) How can we voluntarily select what to access? Boolean map theory offers a unified interpretation of a wide variety of visual-attention phenomena usually treated in separate literatures.

Luminance Re-Mapping for the Control of Apparent Material

Isamu Motoyoshi, Shin’ya Nishida, NTT Communication Science Labs, Japan
I will present a technique that can dramatically alter the apparent material of object surfaces from glossy opaque ones to translucent, metallic, or even sking-like ones. The method is base on a very simple manipulation of the image histogram.

Monochromacy in Photopic Vision

Ken Nakayama, Harvard University
This exercise in monochromatic vision is designed to stimulate thinking about our color experience which we otherwise take for granted in our usual multi-spectral environment. Method: Sodium lamps, perhaps one of the most common sources of highway and street lighting, is practically monochromatic. We will provide illumination from two street lamps, plus some colored objects, including appetizing foods. VSS members are encouraged to bring in their own colored objects.

Proper-/Reverse-spectives – “Paper-thin reality”

Thomas V. Papathomas, Rutgers University
Hughes’s “reverspectives” are stationary stimuli that appear to move as observers move in front of them. I present an interesting variant: Rotating “proper-/reverse-spectives” are paper-thin non-planar objects that contain both protruding illusory reverspectives, and hollow veridical “properspectives”. They appear to rotate in a direction opposite to the physical rotating direction.

Interactive, Immersive Virtual Reality System Demonstration

Matthias Pusch, Brian Rossini, WorldViz LLC
WorldViz will demonstrate an interactive, immersive virtual reality system that can be viewed through a high-resolution head-mounted display and will be navigated by walking and looking around in a large space, tracking the user with a six degrees of freedom optical/inertial tracking system. Users will experience a variety of virtual environments and phenomena, among them several high-quality architectural models.

Artificial Vision Simulation

George Scarlatis, University of California, Los Angeles
A normal-sighted individual can wear a head-mounted display and have a visual experience similar to that of a blind patient implanted with an epiretinal prosthesis.

Swimmers, Eels and Other Gradient-Gradient Illusions

Arthur Shapiro, Emily Knight, Yehonatan Palmor, Daniel Mancusi, Bucknell University
I will present a number of interactive illusions that have been developed in my lab over the past year. Most of these illusions consist of stationary gradient objects placed in front of a moving gradient background, or moving gradient objects in front of a stationary gradient background. The gradient objects can appear to bob up and down (“swimmers”) or contort in shape (“eels”).

Synchronous and Asynchronous Audiovisual Perception

Yasuto Tanaka, Takeshi Nogai, Shinji Munetsuna, Natunal Institute of Information and Communications Technology
When brief auditory signals precede visual signals, both briefly presented, auditory signals are perceived to come ahead in time. However, when the visual signals precedes the auditory signals, they are perceived to occur simultaneously within a certain time window.

ViperLib – Visual Perception Library

Peter Thompson, University of York
Viperlib is a web-based resource library of images and presentation material illuminating the study of visual perception. All images are given freely by the vision research community and are available for educational, non-profit use only.

5th Annual Dinner and Demo Night

Monday, May 14, 2007, 7:00 -10:00 pm, G.WIZ Science Museum

Please join us Monday night at the G.WIZ Science Museum for the 5th Annual VSS Demo Night, with a barbecue and refreshments to accompany the demonstrations.

Richard O. Brown and Arthur Shapiro have curated 25 demonstrations of visual phenomena by VSS members, highlighting the important roles demonstrations play in vision research and education. These demonstrations will be distributed throughout G.WIZ, amongst the museum’s existing interactive scientific exhibits, which includes 35 exhibits on physics, math and perception on loan from the Exploratorium.

Meal tickets are required. Please wear your VSS badge for entry. Guests and family members of all ages are welcome. You must register your guests at the front entrance of the G.WIZ Science Museum to obtain their entry badges and meal tickets.

Schedule of Events
7:00 – 9:00 pm Complimentary BBQ served on the grass at the back of G.WIZ
7:00 – 9:45 pm Outside and inside bars open – Beer and wine for $3; sodas and water are free
7:00 – 10:00 pm Demos open inside G.WIZ
8:30 – 9:30 pm Complimentary dessert and coffee served inside G.WIZ

Digital Embryo Workshop

Mark Brady, Jay Hegde & Dan Gu, NDSU
Visitors will use the new Digital Embryo Workshop software to simulate various mechanisms in embryological development. The resulting objects are useful tools in the study of camouflage, object learning and object recognition.

LITE and Depth

Kenneth Brecher, Boston University
I will show some new JAVA applets from “Project LITE – Light Inquiry Through Experiments” and some real world devices (Swan cube, pseudoscope, tapered mirror kaleidoscope) that illuminate issues of depth perception.

Fast Faces – An Illusory Reversal Of Temporal Order

Richard Brown & Erik Thogersen, The Exploratorium
This demo combines several paradigms and phenomena to produce an illusion of reversed temporal order in a single location. When a purple square is embedded in a rapidly presented sequence of familiar faces, people commonly report that the face directly preceding the purple square was distinctly perceived as occurring after the purple square.

Aperture Induced Motion

Gideon P. Caplovitz, Dartmouth College
A grating drifting back and forth behind a rectangular aperture will appear to “bounce” up and down, depending on the relative angle between the orientations of the grating and aperture.

Stereo Depth Changes Without Changes in Disparity

Yu-Chin Chai & Bart Farell, Syracuse University
Here we demonstrate that ‘what’ matters for stereo depth perception, which has traditionally been regarded exclusively as a ‘where’ function. The demo shows modulation of stereoscopic depth due solely to changes in relative orientation.

Deforming Grating and Other New Illusions

Simone Gori & Enrico Giora, University of Padua
We will present a new set of illusions where the surprising deformation of the image is due to the motion of the observer or to the motion of the stimuli.

Geometric-Optical Illusions At Isoluminance!

Kai Hamburger, Thorsten Hansen & Karl R. Gegenfurtner, Justus Liebig University
Find out yourself whether geometric-optical illusions break down under conditions of isoluminance. At this demo you can interactively manipulate 9 geometrical-optical illusions shown in classical black-white and under isoluminance.

‘Weaves’

Kai Hamburger & Arthur G. Shapiro, University of Giessen & Bucknell University
We present ‘Weaves’, a pattern that consists of intertwined horizontal and vertical bars. When the vertical and horizontal bars have different luminance levels (luminance-defined weaves), perceptual smudges arise at every other intersection. But when the bars have the same luminance levels (equiluminant weaves) the smudges arise at every intersection–just like the Herman grid.

Visual Therapy Activities

Paul Alan Harris & Susan Barry, Optometric Extension Program Foundation
At this demo you can try for yourselves several activities used in visual therapy for developing binocularity. These will include tabletop and free-space activities, including the Brock String and yoked prism activities.

Anamorphic Stereograms

David Hoffman, Robin Held, Ahna Girshick, & Martin Banks, UC Berkeley
We will show the influence of oblique viewing on perceiving conventional and unconventional stereo pictures. In the conventional case, the 3D scene appears to shear and change in depth, as expected from changes in the retinal images. In the other case, we correct the images so that as viewing position changes, the retinal images remain constant, and the perceived scene changes little if at all.

Gradient-Offset Induced Motion

Po-Jang Hsieh, Gideon Caplovitz & Peter Tse, Dartmouth College
When a gradient stimulus, whose luminance contrast ranges gradually from white on one side to black on the other, is made to disappear all at once so that only the uniform white background remains visible, illusory motion is perceived.

He is Looking at You

Dr. Bernd Kersten & Ruth Walter, University of Bern
Hollow face illusion: A very nice pair of paper-made hollow face figures.

Classification of the Fraser-Wilcox Illusions

Akiyoshi Kitaoka, Ritsumeikan University
Four types of the optimized Fraser-Wilcox illusion will be demonstrated.

Paradoxical Size Reduction in Dynamic Figure/Ground

Lora T. Likova, Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute
A dynamically-defined figure on a static surround exhibits an illusory size change to appear smaller than its physical extent, while a static figure on a dynamic surround texture appears substantially larger. The size reduction in the dynamic relative to the static figure a paradoxical illusion that challenges conventional explanations at several levels of visual processing analysis.

Paper Folding Demonstration Accompanied with Computer Animation

Keh-Ming Lu & Alan S Tsaur, Asia University, Taiwan
Continuous rotating Napoleon paper building blocks/tessellation

Real-Time Algorithms for Visual Attention and Object Recognition Embodied in a Robotic Head

Robert J. Peters, Lior Elazary, David Berg, Jonathan Harel, Christof Koch, & Laurent Itti, USC & Caltech
A robotic head will make head and eye movements to follow the activity of people and objects in its surroundings, while learning and recognizing visual objects in real time. Viewers will be able to interact with the robotic head by showing new objects for it to learn.

The Phantom Pulse

David Peterzell, UC-San Diego
The demo causes some people to experience what feels like a “phantom limb.” A real-time video image of the observer flickers rapidly between a normal image and a mirror-reversed image. When observers move one of their arms, the other, unmoving arm often begins to tingle, change temperature, and move involuntarily.

Immersive Virtual Reality System Demonstration with Physiological Monitoring

Matthias Pusch, WorldViz LLC
Users will be invited to don a stereo head-mounted display for immersive virtual reality experiences of driving a racecar around a curvy track, and riding a glass elevator in a skyscraper. Simultaneously, finger sensors will measure their Galvanic Skin Responses (GSR) to precisely correlate physiological responses with visual stimuli.

Where Has All The Motion Gone?” And Other Interactive Visual Effects

Arthur Shapiro, Emily Knight, & Tim Johnson, Bucknell University
We present stimulus configurations that create the impression of motion when the stimulus is blurred, but no impression of motion when the stimulus is not blurred. Why is there no motion in the unblurred condition, which must still contain motion signals at low spatial frequencies? We will also present a series of other interactive motion and lightness illusions.

Tilt Effects in Chinese Characters

Shinsuke Shimojo & San-Yuan Lin, Caltech & National Taiwan University.
This demonstration will show tilt illusions in a display of Chinese characters.

DIY Stereograms

David R. Simmons , University of Glasgow
Make simple stereograms and stereo glasses using coloured pencils, coloured filters and cardboard.

Different Realities Using Visual, Auditory, and Audiovisual Stimulations

Yasuto Tanaka, NICT
When we watch video movies, we recognize the reality of the scene in a different manner as situations change, such as visual stimulation only, auditory stimulations only, and visual and auditory stimulations together. I will evaluate these situations by asking observers impressions as well as physical states such as heartbeat.

Infinite Regress Illusion

Peter Ulric Tse & Po-Jang Hsieh, Dartmouth College
Fixate and watch a moving object move continuously away from fixation.

The Induced Spider Web

Christopher Tyler, Smith-Ketlewell Eye Research Institure
Observation of a large uniform aperture within a field of high-frequency dynamic noise reveals that it does not appear uniform but is covered with a tracery of fine dynamic ‘threads’ extending across many degrees of visual space. The tracery lines appear to be near the limit of visual resolution, as though a manic spider were spinning threads to span the aperture in an attempt to fill it with visual structure.

Action-Judgment Dissociation with the Ames Trapezoidal Window Illusion

Albert Yonas & Carl Granrud, University of Minnesota & University of Northern Colorado
The Ames Trapezoidal Window creates a powerful illusion that it is slanted in depth when it is, in fact, in the frontal plane. When viewed with two eyes it appears to be slanted, but when a viewer is asked to point to the edges of the window the illusion is greatly reduced. this action-judgment dissociation is a new finding.

Marilyn Einstein

Aude Oliva, MIT
A hybrid face, combining the low spatial frequencies of Marilyn Monroe’s face with the high spatial frequencies of Albert Einstein’s face, appears to change identity as viewers move closer or further from it.

6th Annual Dinner and Demo Night

Monday, May 12, 2008, 6:30 – 9:30 pm

BBQ 6:30 – 8:30 pm Vista Ballroom, Vista Terrace and Sunset Deck
Demos 7:30 – 9:30 pm Royal Palm foyer, Acacia Meeting Rooms

Please join us Monday night for the 6th Annual VSS Demo Night, a spectacular night of imaginative demos, social interaction and delectable food. This year’s BBQ will be held on the beautiful Sunset Terrace and Vista Deck overlooking the Naples Grande main pool. Demos will be located upstairs on the ballroom level in the Royal Ballroom foyer and Acacia Meeting Rooms.

Richard O. Brown, Arthur Shapiro and Shin Shimojo have curated 21 demonstrations of visual phenomena by VSS members, highlighting the important roles demonstrations play in vision research and education.

Demo Night is free for all registered VSS attendees. Meal tickets are not required, but you must wear your VSS badge for entry to the BBQ. Guests and family members of all ages are welcome to attend the demos, but must purchase a ticket for the BBQ . You can register your guests at any time during the meeting at the VSS Registration Desk located in the Royal Ballroom foyer. A desk will also be set up at the entrance to the BBQ in the Vista Ballroom beginning at 6:00 pm on Monday night.

Guest prices: Adults: $30, Youth (6-12 years old): $15, Children under 6: free

Wide field of view HMD walking experience in Virtual Reality

Bryce Armstrong and Matthias Pusch; WorldViz LLC
New demo worlds by WorldViz will immerse participants at higher levels with a new high-speed wide area tracking system and new wide FOV HMD setup with improved resolution.

LITE Vision Demonstrations

Kenneth Brecher; Boston University
I will present the most recent Project LITE vision demonstrations (including ones not yet posted on the web) – both computer software and new physical objects.

The Blue Arcs – functional imaging of neural activity in your own retina

Richard O. Brown; The Exploratorium
A simple demonstration of the Blue Arcs of the Retina, a beautiful entoptic phenomenon with a long history (Purkinje 1825, Moreland 1968), which deserves to be more widely known.

An opti-mechanical demonstration of differential chromatic and achromatic flicker fusion

Gideon P. Caplovitz and Howard C. Hughes; Dartmouth College
We will present a classic dynamic demonstration of differential flicker fusion rates for achromatic and chromatic flicker, using birefringent materials and polarized light.

Stereo rotation standstill

Max R. Dürsteler; Zurich University Hospital
A rotating spoked wheel defined only by disparity cues appears stationary when fixating the center of rotation. With peripheral fixation, one can infer the wheel’s rotation by tracking single spokes.

Sal, an embodied robotic platform for real-time visual attention, object recognition and manipulation

Lior Elazary, Laurent Itti, Rob Peters and Kai Chang; USC
An integrated robotic head/arm system, controlled by a pair of laptop computers (“dorsal” and “ventral”), will be able to locate, learn, recognize and grasp visual objects in real time.

“The impossible but possible transparency” and other new illusions

Simone Gori and Daniela Bressanelli; University of Trieste and University of Verona
We will demonstrate new motion illusions , including a new effect of transparency that arises in a special condition in which the colors combination contradicts the transparency rules.

A novel method for eye movement detection and fixation training

Parkson Leung, Emmanuel Guzman, Satoru Suzuki, Marcia Grabowecky and Steve Franconeri; Northwestern University
We will demonstrate a rapid contrast-reversing display of random-dots which appears uniform during fixation, but in which the random-dot pattern is perceived during eye movements or blinks.

3D shape recovery from a single 2D image

Yunfeng Li, Tadamasa Sawada, Yll Haxhimusa, Stephen Sebastian and Zygmunt Pizlo; Purdue University
We will demonstrate software that can take a single 2D image of a 3D scene and recover 3D shapes of objects in the scene, based on contours of the objects extracted by hand or automatically.

Rolling perception without rolling motion

Songjoo Oh and Maggie Shiffrar; Rutgers-Newark
We will show that contextual cues systematically trigger the perception of illusory rotation in optically ambiguous, moving homogeneous circles, in which visual cues to rotation are absent.

Pip and pop

Chris Olivers, Erik van der Burg, Jan Theeuwes and Adelbert Bronkhorst; Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
In dynamic, cluttered displays, a spatially non-specific sound (“pip”) dramatically improves detection and causes “pop out” of a visual stimulus that is otherwise very difficult to spot.

The Phantom Pulse Effect Revisited

David Peterzel; UCSD, SDSU, VA Hospital
The “phantom pulse effect”, in which rapid mirror reversals of one’s body can evoke powerful and unusual visual-tactile, has been optimized and will be demonstrated by two distinct methods.

Mega suppression (aka Granny Smith illusion)

Dr Yury Petrov and Olga Meleshkevich; Northeastern University
A brief change of an object’s color is completely masked when an object of a matching color is simultaneously flashed nearby, when presented in the visual periphery.

Strong percepts of motion through depth without strong percepts of position in depth

Bas Rokers and Thad Czuba; The University of Texas at Austin
Binocularly anticorrelated random dot displays yield poor or nonexistent percepts of depth, but motion through depth percepts for the same stimuli are relatively unaffected.

Perpetual collision, long-range argyles, and other illusions

Arthur Shapiro and Emily Knight; Bucknell University
We will show novel interactive visual effects. Perpetual collisions illustrate global motion percepts from local changes at boundaries. Long-range argyles show strong lightness/brightness differences over large distances.

Illusions that illustrate fundamental differences between foveal and peripheral vision

Emily Knight, Arthur Shapiro and Zhong-Lin Lu; Bucknell University and USC
We will present a series of new interactive displays designed to test the hypothesis that peripheral vision contains less precise spatial and temporal phase information than foveal vision.

Smile Maze:Real-time Expression Recognition Game

Jim Tanaka, Jeff Cockburn, Matt Pierce, Javier Movellan and Marni Bartlett; University of Victoria
Smile Maze is an interactive face training exercise, incorporating the Computer Expression Recognition Toolbox developed at UCSD, in which players must produce target facial expressions to advance.

The Rubber Pencil Illusion

Lore Thaler; The Ohio State University
I will demonstrate the Rubber Pencil Illusion. When a pencil is held loosely and wiggled up and down in a combination of translatory and rotational motion, it appears to bend.

Edgeless filling-in and paradoxical edge suppression

Christopher Tyler; Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute
I will demonstrate that ‘edgeless’ afterimages (Gaussian blobs) appear much more readily than sharp-edged ones, which exhibit a prolonged appearance delay. This is the reverse of edge-based filling-in.

Perception of depth determines the illusory motion of subjective surfaces within a wire cube

Albert Yonas; University of Minnesota
When 3 sides of a concave wire cube are viewed monocularly in front of a surface with minimal texture, it most often appears convex. When the viewer moves, both the cube and the surface appear to rotate.

7th Annual Dinner and Demo Night

Monday, May 11, 2009, 6:00 – 9:00 pm

Dinner: 6:00 – 8:00 pm, Vista Terrace and Sunset Deck
Demos: 7:00 – 9:00 pm, Royal Palm Ballroom 4-5 Ballroom and Acacia Meeting Rooms

Please join us Monday evening for the 7th Annual VSS Demo Night, a spectacular night of imaginative demos solicited from VSS members, delectable food, and social interaction. This year’s dinner theme is Caribbean Night!

The demos highlight the important role of visual displays in vision research and education. This year, Arthur Shapiro and Bart Anderson are co-curators for Demo Night, and Gideon Caplovitz is assistant curator.

The Caribbean-themed buffet dinner will be held on the Sunset Terrace and Vista Deck overlooking the Naples Grande main pool. Demos will be located upstairs on the ballroom level in the Royal 4-5 Ballroom and Acacia Meeting Rooms.

Demo Night is free for all registered VSS attendees. Meal tickets are not required, but you must wear your VSS badge for entry to the Dinner Buffet. Guests and family members of all ages are welcome to attend the demos, but must purchase a ticket for dinner. You can register your guests at any time during the meeting at the VSS Registration Desk located in the Royal Ballroom foyer. At 6:00 pm Monday, a desk will also be set up at the entrance to the dinner in the Vista Ballroom.

Guest prices: Adults: $25, Youth (6-12 years old): $10, Children under 6: free

Immersive Virtual Reality

Bryce Armstrong, Edzard Ulrichs and Matthias Pusch; WorldViz
We will use a 6DOF tracked environment to immerse users in virtual environments. Our goal is to show some of the VSS members experiments to demonstrate the relevance of using VR for vision science research.

Unbound Rivalry

Derek Arnold, Holly Erskine, Warrick Roseboom and Tom Wallis; The University of Queensland
We will demonstrate that exposure to a coherent moving stimulus can induce a dynamic competition for perceptual dominance involving illusory forms signaled by motion streaks and direction-sensitive mechanisms.

LITE Vision Demonstrations

Kenneth Brecher; Boston University
I will present the most recent Project LITE vision demonstrations (including ones not yet posted on the web) – both computer software and new physical objects.

The Bar Cross Ellipse Illusion

Gideon Caplovitz and Peter Tse; Princeton University and Dartmouth College
A quad-stable stimulus leading to drastically different percepts based on differential figure-ground segmentation, assignment and integration of motion sources.

Bypassing V1: Motion through depth from monocular pattern motions

Thaddeus B. Czuba, Bas Rokers, Lawrence K. Cormack and Alex C. Huk; The University of Texas at Austin
We show that percepts of motion through depth are supported by stimuli that effectively bypass significant binocular processing in primary visual cortex (V1).

Helmholtz/Zanforlin illusion

Peter Thompson and Rob Stone; University of York
Asked to make a pile of coins as high as it is wide, subjects make it up to 30% too low. Simple demo with no computer! Interactive for subject. Cheap.

Perceptual Conduits for Attentional Flow: Contour Interpolation Exerts Automatic Effects on Multiple Object Tracking

Brian P. Keane, Everett Mettler, Vicky Tsoi and Phil J. Kellman; UCLA
We explore multiple object tracking in which moving items do or do not form interpolated connections with one another. Our demonstrations show that the ability to track clearly depends on interpolation.

Subjective disappearance of targets induced by flickering illumination

Sung-Ho Kim; Rutgers University
Under flickering illumination, peripherally presented target lines or dots disappear.

Failure of slope constancy

Zhi Li and Frank Durgin; Swarthmore College
Viewed from the top, the downward slope of a hill or ramp appears shallower when standing at the edge and steeper when standing back from the edge. The surface can appear to rotate upward as the observer approaches it.

Growing and Shrinking: The Body-Based Rescaling of Apparent Size

Sally Linkenauger and Jessica Witt; University of Virginia
We will demonstrate that apparent size is judged relative to one’s body. Using magnification and minification goggles, we will show this using a newly discovered visual illusion to disrupt the relationship between physical object size and body size.

Marilyn-go-round: the moving hybrid-image

Takao Sato and Kenchi Hosokawa; University of Tokyo
Hybrid-images combine high and low spatial frequency components from two separate images. We remove the low spatial frequency content from hypbrid images by spinning them along a curved orbit. The demo is interactive and amusing.

Motion induces overestimation (MIO)

Maryam Vaziri Pashkam and Arash Afraz; Harvard University
We will demonstrate the motion-induced overestimation illusion. On a rotating spoked disk,as the rotation speed increases, the perceived number of spokes increases.

Binocular shape, unlike binocular space, is perceived veridically

Tadamasa Sawada, Yunfeng Li, Zygmunt Pizlo and Robert M. Steinman; Purdue University
It is widely believed that binocular space perception is inaccurate and unreliable. We will show that this applies only to depth perception, not to the perception of complex 3D shapes. The geometry responsible for this useful accomplishment will be explained.

Dynamic Object Formation: Perceptual Reality Combines the Visible and Recently Visible

Tandra Ghose, Evan Palmer, Brian P. Keane and Phil J. Kellman, UCLA
We demonstrate perceptual completion in dynamically occluded and illusory stimuli. We explore the conditions favoring spatiotemporal completion and demonstrate the effects of component processes leading to object formation, including illusions resulting from non-veridical updating of occluded object position.

The break of the curveball, rolling rolls, and other illusions

Arthur Shapiro; American University
I will demonstrate new visual effects involving “rotation from shading,” differences between peripheral and foveal processing, and a variant of hybrid images.

Smooth pursuit suppresses motion processing

Peter Tse; Dartmouth College
When smoothly pursuing a moving fixation spot, real motion in the background is suppressed.

Slant stereomotion from modulation of interocular spatial frequency difference

Christopher Tyler and Lora Likova; Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute
If gratings are presented with an interocular spatial-frequency difference (ISFD), modulating the ISFD over time generates strong percepts of slant stereomotion, even when orientation or velocity differences exclude the use of conventional binocular disparity cues.

8th Annual Dinner and Demo Night

Monday, May 10, 2010, 7:00 – 10:00 pm

Dinner: 7:00 – 9:00 pm, Vista Ballroom, Sunset Deck and Mangrove Pool
Demos: 7:30 – 10:00 pm, Royal Ballroom 4-5 and Acacia Meeting Rooms

Please join us Monday evening for the 8th Annual VSS Demo Night, a spectacular night of imaginative demos solicited from VSS members. The demos highlight the important role of visual displays in vision research and education.

This year, Arthur Shapiro (chair), Peter Tse, and Alan Gilchrist are co-curators for Demo Night, and Gideon Caplovitz is assistant curator.

A buffet dinner will be held in the Vista Ballroom, on the Sunset Deck and Mangrove Pool. Demos will be located upstairs on the ballroom level in the Royal Ballroom 4-5 and Acacia Meeting Rooms.

Some exhibitors will also be presenting demos in the Orchid Foyer.

Demo Night is free for all registered VSS attendees. Meal tickets are not required, but you must wear your VSS badge for entry to the Dinner Buffet. Guests and family members of all ages are welcome to attend the demos but must purchase a ticket for dinner. You can register your guests at any time during the meeting at the VSS Registration Desk, located in the Royal Foyer. A desk will also be set up at the entrance to the dinner in the Vista Ballroom at 6:30 pm.

Guest prices: Adults: $25, Youth (6-12 years old): $10, Children under 6: free

The Ambiguous Corner Cube and Friends

Kenneth Brecher (Boston University)
Several three-dimensional visually ambiguous objects that are bi-stable, tri-stable (and possibly more) will be displayed. The missing corner cube in particular probes interesting questions about the number of possible visual interpretations of such objects and their relative strength.

The Not-So Rotating Snakes

Christopher Cantor, Humza Tahir (University of California, Berkeley)
This illusion is an extension of our poster: we will show how certain optical manipulations kill the rotating snakes illusion.

Fun with stick shadow motion

Gideon Paul Caplovitz (Princeton University), Marian E. Berryhill (University of Pennsylvania)
Shadows of objects moving in 3D that are projected on a 2D surface move in ambiguous ways and have been used to provide insight into how our brains construct motion percepts. Here we re-create a simplified and interactive version of the original ‘stick shadow motion’ apparatus (Metzger 1934).

Tangible display systems: bringing virtual objects into the real world

Jim Ferwerda (Rochester Institute of Technology)
We are developing tangible display systems that allow people to interact with virtual surfaces as naturally as they can with real ones. We integrate accelerometers and webcams in laptops and cell phones with 3D surface models and computer graphics rendering, to create images of glossy textured surfaces that change realistically as the user manipulates the display.

Sharon Gershoni Photographs: Aesthetic Studies in Visual Perception

Sharon Gershoni, Shaul Hochstein (Neurobiology Department, Hebrew University)
I am an artist and a scientist. Since 2000 I have been pursuing graduate studies in visual perception in Japan, as well as being an artist in residence at visual perception labs. There I started developing the visual sciences-art connection, which I currently continue at the ICNC and Bezalel Art Academy. The photographs are the product of this interdisciplinary path.

Waves of Lights, Magic Flowers and Unchained Dots illusions

Simone Gori (Department of General Psychology, University of Padua), D. Alan Stubbs (University of Maine)
We will present three new motion illusions. Wave of Lights and Magic Flowers present surprising size and brightness variations due to observer motion, while the Unchained Dots Illusion is characterized by the misperception of dot trajectory.

Free the Ring!: Striking Color Spreading Induced Transparency

Abigail Huang, Alice Hon and Eric Altschuler (New Jersey Medical School)
We read/saw that vertical yellow bars can appear to spread geometrically faithfully through a black horizontal bar. Here we show that in a stereopsis display this effect can give striking transparency—e.g., a white ring inside a black pyramid.

Coming face to face with 2-faced faces

Melinda S. Jensen and Kyle E. Mathewson (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
In this demo, we present pairs of identical ambiguous figures. Even with intentional effort, observers typically cannot hold opposing interpretations of the two figures. However, with a simple and powerful technique, observers can see the alternative interpretations side by side.

The Jaggy Diamonds Illusion

Qian Kun and Takahiro Kawabe (Kyushu University)
We report a new illusion where the edges of diamonds placed at the intersections of crossing grids are perceived to be jaggy (the jaggy diamonds illusion). Luminance contrast among diamonds, grids, and background is a strong determinant for this illusion.

Stretching out in the tub

Lydia Maniatis (American University)
A large image of a bathtub appears to change shape as the viewpoint changes.

Smoothness Aftereffect

Emmanuel Guzman Martinez, Marcia Grabowecky, Laura Ortega-Torres, and Satoru Suzuki (Northwestern University)
Adaptation to a grainy, randomly black and white flicker produces an apparently smoother region on a subsequent gray display. This percept can appear in rivalry with the afterimage of the adaptor when a proportion of white-black pixels differs.

Steerable Spirals

Peter B. Meilstrup and Michael N. Shadlen (University of Washington)
When local features are put in conflict with global trajectories, the result can depend on long range competition between features. In our demo viewers interactively adjust the spacing of an array of identical elements resulting in different perceived global directions.

The Wellcome Trust Illusion

Michael Morgan (Max-Planck Institute of Neurology, Koeln, Germany)
A page of the Wellcome Trust Grant Application form has a series of vertically aligned text boxes that are distorted in shape by surrounding text.

Variations on the hollow mask illusion

Thomas V. Papathomas and Manish Singh (Rutgers University)
In the hollow-mask illusion, a rotating hollow mask is perceived as a convex face rotating in the opposite direction. Variations of the hollow mask (featureless mask; random-textured; realistically painted; “smoking” a cigarette) illustrate how various manipulations affect the illusion.

Positive Afterimage

Maryam Vaziri Pashkam (Harvard University), Daw-An Wu (California Institute of Technology)
A powerful flash will burn a long-lasting positive afterimage on your retina that you can experiment on. Make the whole room tilt, make an object float in the air, or take a standstill picture of your friend’s funny gesture with your eyes.

Exploring YOUR Phantom Limb: Paresthesias Elicited by Three Webcam Video Demonstrations

David Peterzell (University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University)
Three webcam-based procedures were designed in hopes of facilitating treatment of phantom limb pain in amputees (based on modifications to theories of VS Ramachandran), but cause unusual sensations (paresthesias and sense of limb movement) in many ‘’normal’’ observers.

Star Trek (lightness from depth) illusion

Yury Petrov and Jiehui Qian (Northeastern University)
We will demonstrate how lightness and contrast of objects can be modulated up to 50%, when the objects appear to move in depth. Surprisingly, radial optic flow produces a much stronger illusion than binocular disparity.

Real-Time Avatar Animation in Virtual Reality

Matthias Pusch and Michael Schaletzki (WorldViz)
Live animation of an avatar in virtual reality through natural body movements via simple-to-use WorldViz PPT motion capture. This next generation real-time technology empowers researchers to inject living human beings into virtual worlds and give them the ability to engage in interactions, which opens new avenues for avatar-based visual perception and spatial cognition experiments.

Stroboscopic training for an Athletic Task

Alan Reichow and Herb Yoo (Nike, Inc.), Stephen Mitroff (Duke University), Graham Erickson (Pacific University)
A new product called Nike Strobe uses stroboscopic filters to limit participants’ available visual information. This interactive experience demonstrates a tool to enhance visual information processing. Participants play a simple game of catch while wearing the Nike Strobe.

Recovering a naturalistic 3D scene from a single 2D image

Stephen Sebastian, Joseph Catrambone, Yunfeng Li, Tadamasa Sawada, Taekyu Kwon, Yun Shi, Robert M. Steinman, and Zygmunt Pizlo (Purdue University)
We will demonstrate how a naturalistic 3D scene can be recovered from a single 2D image taken with a calibrated camera like the human eye once Figure and Ground are organized and providing that the direction of gravity is known.

Silent updating of color changes

Jordan Suchow and George Alvarez (Harvard University)
When a vivid display of many color-changing dots is rotated about its center, the colors appear to stop changing.

Face-Face-Revolution: A game in real-time facial expression recognition

Jim Tanaka (University of Victoria), Marni Bartlett, Javier Movellan, and Gwen Littlewort (University of California, San Diego), Serena Lee-Cultura (University of Victoria)
Face-Face-Revolution is an interactive computer game intended to enhance the facial expression abilities of children with autism. The game utilizes the Computer Expression Recognition Toolbox (CERT) developed by Marni Bartlett and Javier Movellan at UC San Diego’s Machine Perception Lab.

Perceived gaze direction does not reverse in the mirror (although everything else does)

Dejan Todorovic and Oliver Toskovic (University of Belgrade, Serbia)
When a mirror is set at 90 degrees to a portrait that appears to gaze at the observer, the mirror image of the portrait also appears to gaze at the observer, rather than at the mirror image of the observer.

Attention-based motion displacement

Peter Tse (Dartmouth College), Patrick Cavanagh (Université Paris Descartes)
Attention-based motion displacement.

The plastic effect: perceiving depth quality

Dhanraj Vishwanath and Paul Hibbard (University of St. Andrews)
We demonstrate stereoscopic quality in the absence of binocular disparities and even under depth cue conflict. The effects suggest that depth quality (the plastic effect) is a fundamental aspect of depth and distance perception and not an epiphenomenon of binocular vision.

Two faces of Albert Einstein: The effects of realism on the concave/convex face illusion

Albert Yonas and Sherryse Corrow (University of Minnesota)
A concave mask of a face may appear convex when viewed monocularly. This demo will allow the viewer to discover whether a realistically colored rendering of a face produces a more powerful convex illusion than an unpainted grey plastic face.

VPixx Technologies

Peter April and Jean-Francois Hamelin
VPixx Technologies, a VSS exhibitor, will be hosting the second annual response-time showdown during demo night this year. The demo is a simple game in which you must press a red or green button as fast as you can when the button lights up and you hear a beep. Do it well, and win a prize! The fastest hands in 2009 came from the University of Montreal. Who will win this year? Jointly sponsored by VSS and the Renaissance Academy of Florida Gulf Coast University.