We've seen all manner of optical illusions here at Creative Bloq, and they usually involve objects appearing to do things that they aren't actually doing. With that in mind, here are some lines that appear to be curved – but aren't.
Stare at the grid below, and the lines in your peripheral vision will probably appear to curve and distort, but when you fix your focus on them, they straighten out again. It's an oldie but a goodie – and there's a pretty simple explanation. (Looking for more examples? Check out the best optical illusions of all time).
A detail from the illusion (Image credit: Lesha Porche)
The illusion, created by illustrator Lesha Porche, was shared on Twitter this week, and appears to be bending, frying and blowing minds across the board. "This hurts my brain," one user comments, while another adds, "I love these illusions – body karate to the mind!"
So how does it work? Illusion expert Michael Bach recently shared the image on his website, along with an explanation. "The tiles contain a low-resolution brightness curve, which is masked by all the borders," Bach explains. "It can be made more apparent by applying a little blur. The blur occurs automatically in our visual system, because –largely unnoticed– our visual resolution rapidly falls off from the center of gaze: at 10° eccentricity our visual acuity is 1/10th of the central one. However, the periphery does not “feel” blurred, does it? Its sharpness is “invented” by our visual system, just as our blind spots are filled in."
Daniel John is Senior News Editor at Creative Bloq. He reports on the worlds of art, design, branding and lifestyle tech (which often translates to tech made by Apple). He joined in 2020 after working in copywriting and digital marketing with brands including ITV, NBC, Channel 4 and more.
