Saturday, May 02, 2009

7 Ways to have Fun with Stereograms.

Stereogram is a three cool things in one: Optical Illusion, Puzzle and Art. And that makes it inexhaustible supply of fun. For some unknown reason people don't view stereograms as much as they used to in 90's, probably because they forgot or worse, never knew how to have fun with it.

So here is 7 ways to have fun with stereograms.

1. Fun solving a puzzle. Lots of puzzles are hard and not fun at all because they make you think too hard to solve them. Stereogram is a different story, there's actually no need to think, your brain resolves hidden image naturally, without any brain strain. And the more you stare the more details you see.

2. Fun seeing someone else solves a puzzle. It's quite amusing to look at person's facial expressions when the magic happens. Usually people smile in this moment, and because their attention mostly goes to the hidden picture, the smile comes up pretty naturally and beautifully. You don't usually see this kind of smile in a real life.

3. Fun seeing someone else can't solve the puzzle. Do you remember that funny episode from Mallrats? "It's not a schooner, it's a sailboat!". Same is in real life, when you can clearly see the picture but someone don't no matter how he or she tries, that looks kind of amusing. And it becomes a comedy if the person claims that it all is a conspiracy, as different people tell the same things they see in the stereogram.

4. Fun seeing the same that others see. And feel yourself a part of conspiracy. No really, who could imaging a dolphin in this messy picture? But I can see the dolphin, and my cousin Frank said he sees a dolphin, and the UPS driver said it's a dolphin, and even that cute girl in hot mini dress sees the same damn dolphin in this messy picture! Now let's go and make fun of someone who can't see the dolphin, let him think we all a part of crazy conspiracy!

5. Fun seeing the Illusion. We usually don't like when someone lies, but we have fun when our eyes do this to us. It's like a Magic, there's nothing, and there's something, and there's nothing again, and look, there's something. Isn't it fun?

6. Fun seeing through the walls. It's like being a superhero, look, there's a strange picture on the wall with undescribeable pattern. But I can see through it into a behind-the-wall world. Can you do it? Are you a superhero too? Well let's then have fun together!

7. Fun to be finding out how it works. You can see the repeating pattern, you can see in some places the pattern brakes, stretches and squeezes, there's definitely some logic behind these changes. You dive in to see the hidden picture again, and here is the object's edge which breaks the pattern. And these are floating objects, the closer they are to each other the closer they appear to you. Isn't it called reverse engineering? Whatever it's called, it's fun. And if you are so good in it can you tell what's hidden without looking into the stereogram?

So you are not having fun yet? Get a book with stereograms or stereogram posters and have much fun!

3Dimka ;)