The Use of Manipulation Arts Throughout Time & History

Manipulation arts has been used throughout time and history. Visual illusion on the other side being used in our everyday life, in social media, movies and advertisement. To understand how visual manipulation is maximized we will need to distinguish behaviors and perception of humans. The human perception is limited to quantity and quality of processing and the overall requirement of our perceptual system.

As it was found from the article probing perceptual antinomies with the watercolor illusion, the illusion was precepted in whole and part coexisting although they cannot be logically integrated. All in all, the human perception seeks perfection and thus process the two halves of the image into a more wholeness complex way. The same our brain fills gaps in pictures to produce a full image and the reason is that our brain does not just simply process external information, it actively interprets it. Because of that, visual illusions are possible and mind manipulation tricks are formed. Usually visual illusions are used by neuroscientists to dissociate the neural activity that matches the perception of the stimulus from the neuronal activity that matches the physical reality. These is usually used in illusions such as the Penrose triangle and the Blivet.

Magicians are usually manipulating their audience into perceiving their tricks. They aim to manipulating the attention and awareness of their audience. (2008) lets the Spoon bending trick for example, it appears to the audience that the magician is bending the spoon using only the power of their mind. What’s really happening is that the magicians hold the spoon horizontally and shake it up and down. This illusion is based on the fact that the “end stopped neurons (that is, neurons that respond both to motion and to the terminations of a stimulus’ edges, such as corners or the ends of lines) in the primary visual cortex (area V1) and the middle temporal visual area (area MT, also known as area V5) respond differently from non­end­stopped neurons to oscillating stimuli8–11. This differential response results in an apparent spatial mis-localization between the ends of a stimulus and its center, making a solid object look like it flexes in the middle.” (2008)

In the visual system attended objects can seem to be more salient or to have a higher contrast than unattended objects. This misdirection can be applied to the diversion of the spectator’s attention away from the real image. making our brain perceive that a static image is moving. The concept of covert misdirection is demonstrated by the cognitive neuroscience paradigm of change in contrast and shades of color. People fail to notice that something is different from the way it was before. A recent study has shown that illusion further supports the conclusion that manipulation of position is not critical for effective covert misdirection. (2008)

In every day life, sometimes it appears as if a part of a back group under static conditions emerges as a figure when it starts moving. The same thing happens in wild life when small animals are trying to camouflage. “The motion vs stationary principle is related to the primary kind of camouflage occurring when a prey animal stands stock-still to avoid predators.” (2010) predators also uses the same technique to sneak up on their prey by manipulating their preys’ vision and camouflaging into their surroundings. Motion strengthen the wholeness of the illusion and multiple antinomic specific instances of it in different spatial or temporal locations can also be perceived at the same time. all this occurs without creating a visual inconsistency. These contradictions occur only apparent and are due to their own belongingness to different perceptual levels.