Mi Illudo d’Immenso

A journey into the science of optical illusions

Scientific exhibition by Antigone Marino and Simona de Luca.

“I delude myself with Immense” is a scientific journey into the fascinating, at times magical, world of optical illusions. From the Latin ĭn and ludĕre, the word contains in itself the meaning of ludos, or the game. To deceive, or to make fun of a person, to mock him, to deceive him with false appearances. And that’s exactly what optical illusions do.
In his hermetic poem “I illuminate myself with immense”, Ungaretti attributed to light the power to connect us to the universe. Optical illusions undermine this connection, disorienting our vision of reality. What appears to be deception, however, has a scientific explanation; so much so that the study of the perception of optical illusions has allowed scientists to map and understand the human brain.
Rotating spirals, squares that appear distorted and dots that glow. And again, ghost figures that disappear and then reappear in the blink of an eye, distorted geometries so deceptive as to seem real: here are the optical illusions, those drawings or graphic effects capable of making us see things that do not exist or that are able to simulate even movements. in completely static images. Some manipulate the way our brains interpret images, others exploit the physiology of our eye.
Born almost for fun, they are an interesting interpretation for scientists engaged in studying the mechanism of vision and perception.
Studies on illusions were in fact among the first to provide information on the map of the brain and the connections between its different areas.
The illusions that we present in this exhibition want to shock you, amaze you, entertain you, but above all scientifically explain what is happening in your brain.
In order to explain them, scientists had to draw on more than one discipline, such as optics, vision, neurology and psychology.