Fancy an optical illusion with your flat white?

Color, light, and patterns can be used to produce optical illusions that deceive or mislead our minds. The brain processes the information gathered by the eye, resulting in a perception that does not match the true image. The interpretation of what we see with our eyes is referred to as perception. Our brain tries to interpret what we see and make sense of the world around us, which causes optical illusions. Optical illusions fool our brains into seeing things that aren't necessarily real.
At Creative Bloq, we've seen a lot of optical illusions. Most of them are made with the purpose of demonstrating a strange oddity in human perception or simply to have fun toying with our minds. However, an optical illusion can sometimes appear totally by chance, as was the case with this cafe, which was the genesis of an illusion that has been investigated by scientists and is now gaining popularity on TikTok and Instagram.
 
The black and white tiles on the cafe's exterior appear to have been sliced into a unique wedge-shaped shape, resulting in diagonal lines. They haven't, however. We assure you the lines are exactly straight (enjoy getting perplexed like this? Check out our collection of must-see optical illusions).




Cafe, located on a corner in Perry Road, Bristol, UK, not far from our offices, has become a shrine for optical illusion fans as the origin of the 'cafe wall illusion,' a phenomenon that has been investigated all over the world and even has its own Wikipedia page. Richard Gregory, then a professor of neurology at Bristol University, first noticed it in 1979. (when we assume the cafe had a less hipster name).

Gregory noticed that horizontal rows of alternating dark and light tiles provide the effect of tapering when the tiles are out of line vertically, and he was honoured with a blue historical plaque on the wall outside the cafe. This occurs when the grout lines between the tiles are an intermediate colour, such as grey (if you're remodelling your kitchen and don't want to become dizzy every time you cook, choose white grout).




What causes this to happen? Because different types of neurons react differently to the perception of dark and light colours, the positioning of dark and light tiles causes parts of the grout lines in our retinas to darken or brighten. A slight asymmetry arises when there is a brightness contrast across the grout line, leading half of the dark and light tiles to move towards each other, forming a wedge shape. The grout line is then interpreted as slanted by the brain.
Neuropsychologists have used the café wall illusion to research how the brain interprets visual information, but it's also been employed by artists and graphic designers to generate visually appealing effects.
 

 

How do optical illusions work?

When our brain and eyes try to communicate with one other in simple language, the interpretation gets a little jumbled. It thinks our eyes told it something was moving, but that's not what our eyes were trying to tell us.

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