Marie Paccou makes hypnotizing parasols that show little movies when spun around

Originally published at: Marie Paccou makes hypnotizing parasols that show little movies when spun around | Boing Boing

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A wonderful thing!

snoop-dogg-yep

Does the illusion work only when mediated by the camera frame-rate? Or does it also work with just the naked eye?

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This effect is know as persistence of vision. It works by giving your brain images faster than it can process individually, giving the appearance of motion.

This video does a great job of demonstrating this effect.

Here is another video by Steven Mould that deals with the same effect, but with lasers!

As to how camera frame rate can influence what you are seeing, here is a video on the rolling shutter effect by Tom Scott.

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Ooh, that is excellent!

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Thanks for that!

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You will not see the animation with just the naked eye. It’s one of my pet peeves (as someone who collects and makes such things) that posts like these don’t make that clear. I hope people aren’t buying this stuff with the expectation that you can.

There’s a reason why the zoetrope shown in the post (which is otherwise unrelated to the story – why has boingboing started doing this with images?) has slits to view through. As you speculated, the illusion only appears in relation to the camera’s frame rate, or a strobe light, or a barrier with slits to view through. To the naked eye, it’s just a blur.

It’s also a little odd that another of her pieces is called a flip book, when it’s really just an animation done in a book. It would be impossible to “flip” it in the manner of a “flip book”.

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phenakistiscope… beat me to it.

There’s a whole category of “toys” that create moving images, including optical illusions and more. I’ve collected a few.

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