Are you left- or right-brained? Take the test!

fortunately you have the half that notices nipples.

When the gif is slowed you can see that it basically shows her leg moves to the left and then moves back to the right - how your brain constructs that into a 'reasonable' representation of a three dimensional 'person' moving in two dimentional space is what's interesting

too right ... why d'you think i've gone back to university? :)

i can see what the shadow's doing (ie flipping) but my brain gets suckered by the silhouette every time.

Well yeah or I wouldn't be able to tell where to feed my future offspring!
(haha no really that is the 'undocumented wet nurse' part of my brain.)

xp to kenan

the leg switch is pretty dope

Also someone explain to me how's really moving: she's slanted, circling on her heel. IMPOSSIBLE.

YES. so she is actually STANDING STILL and it is the camera moving around her, ie an answer of clockwise means anticlockwise and vice versa!

The ponytail thing is just a bit of wind in the room where she is standing still.

btw I used the most-extended arm to flip her rather than a leg. The key thing for me was to think "it's the LEFT arm, not the right", rather than visualising the rotation, I think.

If you pause individual frames you can see the animation is made up of images that can be viewed two ways, i.e. because there is no detail, just the silhouette, she could be looking forward or backward in any given moment. Like one of those wire-frame cuboids that you can see from two different perspectives.

I mean, the side-on silhouettes have that dual-directional property.

All the frames have that, since the facing-you vs facing-away thing must also be ambivalent for this to work.

(Actually, the purely side-on don't need ambiguity, since that's where the two aspects meet.)

yeah, I can't see it in the purely front on/back on either, since that's the same with either direction of spin. It's the 45 degrees to the left/right frames. Like this:

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3834/80604037ya3.jpg

If straight into the screen = North, she could be facing NW or SW in that one.

ok, i managed to make her reverse to counter-clockwise (while watching her), and I did it by looking at her head, not her feet

this thread needs a "not safe for being high" tag

i would have sex with this silhouette

if I blink at the proper rate I can get her to switch with each blink so I never have to see her face.

whoa blinking is mentalllll. i can get her to spin counter-clockwise if i start at the shadow and scroll up, but if i blink it snaps back to going clockwise

it's a metaphor for life: never blink

I saw clockwise & I could not see a way to reverse it. I isolated every section of the body and tried to make it reverse & it would not. I tried it on & off for two hours & it seemed to me that looking at the half-circle made by the shadow especially it was logically clockwise & those who saw it otherwise were mad or liars.

Suddenly I can only see it the other way round & the other way seems impossible now & I want it to go back.

I'm waiting for that to happen. So far I can only see her going clockwise and it's driving me insane.

Oh my god. Suddenly I can only see it the opposite way from what I've been saying is the only possible way all day.

xpost!!

try just looking at the feet

Whoa, now the new trick for me is to look at her shadow and concentrate on her moving the opposite direction.

My brain is boggled.

i bet if you took an mri of your brain when you're concentrating on the switch it's a big image of your brain giving you the finger

^^^^word

My new thing is to try to stop the extended foot at the 45 deg points, so it seems like she's just wagging it back and forth in front of her. Once I get that working then I can mostly choose when I let it just keep going around in the same direction.

So this is what this image is all about. I've seen it uploaded to delicious like a 100 times in the last week. That, and the "changing alphabet".

I can't make her counter-clockwise, but i did notice that she's got nipples.

I thought this was simply a matter of whether you thought about looking at her turn from the top or the bottom. OK WTF NOW SHE'S GOING THE OTHER WAY NEVER MIND

what bearing does left-handedness / right-handedness have on this?

also is this real science at all?

It certainly qualifies as weird science.

she changes direction regardless of whether i want her to or not. very dizzying.

Same here, she was going anti clock wise, and I was thinking "oh I cant see how I could make that look any dif...." then blink, suddenly she's going the other way? AND NOW I CANT FORCE IT :(

OK somehow looking at her shadow helps me flip.

I feel carsick :(

wow, that is something. i saw clockwise and it took a long, long time to figure out how to see the other way - i had to put my hand over the screen so i could only see the one foot and really, really focus on making it turn counter clockwise

This is like magic eye pictures, ow my freaking head.

what characterizes the left brain and right brain?

internal phrenology

No matter how much I look at this, it seems like she's moving in a clockwise direction. When I scroll down and hold the mouse so that it freezes when I come back up, she clearly starts moving in a clockwise direction as soon as I let go. Looking at the shadow and everything. It disturbs me a bit that there's a whole perspective on this thing that I'm missing. I just got results from a psych test that said my visual/spatial skills are seriously underdeveloped in comparison to my verbal skills (is that left vs right?) and I fear this might confirm it.

yeah... but that's pretty normal. the vast majority are strong in either direction... rare are those in the middle.
m.

Hm, by the distinctions here, though, I would have thought that I'm ultra-left-brained.

im ascared like sundar!

Now I get it.

http://koti.mbnet.fi/diablosk/itam/random/dancer2.gif

Holy shit!

(Oddly, the moment I scroll away and look back, she's going clockwise again.)

Huh. Now she's just kind of wildly switching back and forth.

what characterizes the left brain and right brain?

-- CaptainLorax, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 01:54 (3 hours ago) Link

internal phrenology

-- remy bean, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 01:55 (3 hours ago) Link

Yes, exactly. Remy otm.

This is a fun metafilter thread, packed with links.

Even better: this article about what happens to a brain when half (yes, half!) of it is removed. Short answer: it adapts.

The human brain is literally the most complicated organ... system... thing in the known universe. Literally.

This is some hilarious prank you're all playing on me, isn't it? She is clearly spinning clockwise. No amount of blinking, squinting, looking away or anything else is making it change.

Even better: this article about what happens to a brain when half (yes, half!) of it is removed.

I feel I should re-emphasize this. This is a really good article.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/03/060703fa_fact

Still counterclockwise & no switching at all. :-/

Now I can see her moving anticlockwise when I look at the one with the blue leg, but the original is still clockwise only.