You see that? Yeah... its not what you think it is.

Perception, an active process, the ability to see, hear, and become aware of something through the sense... is it the answer to all our questions? We can touch, smell, taste, hear, and see something and determine if it is what it is. But sometime if we are given more information than we need, we often would make mistakes. Researchers looks to visual illusions to find more information toward the matter.

There are 4 types of visual illusions, Distortion, Ambiguous Figures, Paradoxical Figures, and Fictions. I often look into visual illusions, and my friends love to show me how impressive these images are. And there are more and even more impressive visual illusions. But some of simplest ones really does serve its purpose, they show us how we very often go beyond the visual information shown to us. We often see things thats not presented to our eye, thus is where the illusion is.

The first type, Distortions occurs as we attempt to understand something in terms of how we normally look at things, but that can be misleading. Some visual example of Distortion are the "Muller-Lyer Illusion", "Ponzo", and "Titchener's Circles". The lines or circles shown in these images are of same length and size but we see them as if one is longer or larger than the other.

Ambiguous Figures are things that can be seem in multiple ways and forms, depending on which way the viewer choose to look. And because there are multiple aspects, and our attention are focus on one, we fail to see the other possibilities. Examples of Ambiguous Figures are the "Necker Cube" and the "Rubin Vase". Is the box facing left.... or right.... Is the vase really a vase? or are they faces, facing each other.

Paradoxical Figures are figures or objects that we assume (through look) are real objects, are impossible in the real world. Most of which are very logically constructed line drawings of something, but drawn in a way that defies logic. So can they not be anything? well is possible that they are just simple line drawings, instead of objects. We realize they do not make sense yet our eye continues to make perception that these are 3 dimensional objects. Good examples of them are the "Penrose Triangle" and the "Impossible Fork".

And the last type, Fiction are when we see what is not actually there. We are given various elements, most of the time in a certain placement. And from that we see something thats were not initially placed there. Our perception proceeds  to create the extra object from what we were given. A good example of this is the "Kanizsa's Triangle", where we are given some arrows and pacman-like shapes. And from that we see a white triangle forming in the center... but that white triangle is not there, it does not exist... or does it?