Fnord wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
You're not supposed to analyze it. It's about your automatic gut reaction the moment you see it. Folks always see him as running. Some see it as toward them. Some as away, and toward the light. Obviously its designed to be "an illusion", and to be ambiguous.
No analysis was involved in my first impression: A man standing on one leg with one arm partially extended. Which way he is facing is not apparent to me. Really?
Your immediate reaction was "there is a dude standing stationary on one leg"? Like Ian Anderson playing the flute on the cover of that Jethro Tull album?
I suppose that would make you "dead center". Halfway between male and female.
I glanced at it and ...had the instant emotional reaction that "that guy is coming at me to attack me".
But since the topic is an "optical illusion" its a tip off that its just that. So then ofcourse I am going to look at it for a second nanosecond and then see how it is cleverly drawn to look like he is running either way. But its that FIRST reaction in the first nanosecond that counts for the survey. So the running at me interpretation is what I went with. Going into analysis about how "well the top looks like he is doing this, and the arms look like that" is just wasting our time telling us what we already know. That its an optical illusion. The question is "what did you see when you first glanced at it?". And
maybe some folks couldnt interpret it at first glance. I dunno. But my guess is that most folks see at as either running toward, or as running away, from the viewer. One or the other.
That initial gut emotional reaction is what counts. Not your ability to solve puzzles.
Interestingly many who see it opposite of me say that he is, not "running away from me", but phrase it that he is "running toward the light". I saw him as a threat. But others may read into it that he is a fellow sufferer of imprisonment seeking escape to freedom...maybe? And that you're right behind him also trying to escape.