When Perception Resets: Optical Illusions

There’s a meme video going around right now. A simple stream of water flowing from a tap. The familiar rushing sound. You know: water pouring from a tap.

Completely ordinary.

Then a hand appears with a pair of scissors. The scissors reach out and ... cut the water. In half.

The water wasn't water. It’s paper.

The bottom half drops into the sink and your brain scrambles to recalibrate. You hit replay. Again. And again. (I'm not including the link because it's from an account literally called 'Internet Bastard'; search at your own risk.)

Once your perception resets, you start to see it. The too-white whiteness of the paper. The too-perfect recorded sound.

Nothing changed, except context.

Perception is a wild, wild thing

As we've been developed this game, I've started to read more about perception, the senses, and how our brains construct our world. Reality is perception; perception is reality. If you're from a culture that doesn't have a different word for blue vs green, you see blue and green as the same color of one spectrum.

Optical illusions* expose how much of our perception runs on autopilot. The brain fills in gaps. It predicts. It connects dots in the same way it make assumptions.

Creativity, though, requires interrupting that autopilot.

(Which makes me wonder: do optical illusions nudge us toward creative thinking? Ooh, ooh -- I hear the beginnings of another post.)

But here’s the thing I've been learning since I first invented the Sense Ratings game for my creativity clients, the Third Layer exercise that launched Third Layer Games.

Perception and creativity are intimately connected. Our perception is shaped by culture, emotional state, preconceptions, motivation, context.

Sound familiar? Where does your creativity come from if not culture, emotional states, preconception, motivation, context. We don’t just see the world; we interpret it. And when we have any shift in interpretation? When a dot is out of place, and we rush to connect it?

Welp, that's where creativity comes in.

*If you want to watch something I *do* trust, Wired magazine has a great video about water optical illusions.