Gunnar Johansson's `walking lights' animation

Gunnar Johansson's `walking lights' demo, courtesy James Maas

This is a well studied classic in experimental psychology and is one of the most robust perceptual phenomena known. Twelve moving dots in a two-dimensional plane are unconsciously assumed to represent a particular three-dimensional motion. When the dots are moving, everyone with normal vision sees a person walking. This is central to the arguments in my new book Science, Music, and Mathematics: The Deepest Connections.

Animation by kind courtesy of Professor James Maas.


Last updated 26 December 2020
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