Illusions

By: Paula Parungao

According to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, all that a person sees of the world are mere shadows; an interpretation of the "real world" that continuously eludes our perception because we are considered prisoners of our own realities. The world, at least, for individuals, is not based on what is truly real. Instead it is based on our interpretation of what is real.

This concept can be better understood through the study of Shinsuke Shimojo, entitled Self and world: Large-scale installations at science museums. Shimojo introduces readers to the fact that our proprioreceptive senses can fool us. Even when given the true knowledge, our bodies still become confused with the illusions presented. For the study, Shimojo collaborated with Tanaka and Kobayashi, along with the Science Museum Tokyo.

Three installations were used for the study. Namely a rotating cylinder, a tilted room, and a mirror ball. Each installation produces a different effect on the individual but still retains the same theme, which is basically to mess with the person's head. For the first installation (rotating cylinder), the person goe

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inside a cylindrical room striped with a spiral pattern with a rotating cylinder in the middle. As the cylinder rotates, the

individual starts to feel like he/she is moving even though they are aware that their position is stationary. Some even begin to feel off balance especially if they lift one leg. The next installation is a little bit more complicated with the illusion depending

on what angle the body is aligned with. Different alignments within the tilted room produces different perceptions on the person. For the last installation, the mirror ball, a disco-like ball is place in the middle of the room, lighted by fixtures located in the ceiling. The illusion is supposed to make even a live human target invisible to the individual. Even if the target moves his/her arms, with the manipulation of light, the observer will only see the arms and not the body connected to it.

Shimojo then goes on to explain how art and science can come together and provide insights as to how the mind works. For art, the benefits may be to create better installations while for science, researchers can gain a better understanding of how the brain works. The study also demonstrates that even though we seem to be aware of what's going on around us (at least, in the cognitive sense), it is possible to still fool the brain when the stimuli is presented correctly. Truly, we are only observing the world through our interpretations of the latter. Everything presented to us is merely a shadow of what we deem as reality. Almost two thousand years later, it seems that Plato might still be on to something.

Sources:
Shimojo, S. (2007). Self and world: large scale installations at science museums [Electronic version]. Spatial Vision, 21.

(n.a.). (2010). Allegory of the cave. Retrieved on July 6, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave

Images from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2517625/