Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Stupid Spinning Ballerina

(From all my faves but this is not the first place I've seen it.)

Look at the dancer below. What do you see? Is she turning clockwise or counter-clockwise? You just can’t help but love these optical illusions.

ballerina
If you see her turning clockwise (right) then your left side of the brain is doing most of the work, which means you are more of a logic/analyzing person.

If you see the dancer turning counter-clockwise (left) then your right side of the brain is in charge, this means you are the artistic/intuition person.

The first time I saw her somewhere in the world wide web I saw her spinning anti-clockwise. I got my sister over and she saw her spinning clockwise, but after staring for a short while, my sister claims that the ballerina now spins anti-clockwise. But I could still only see her spinning anti-clockwise.

After I came to this webbie again, I still can only see the damned ballerina spinning anti-clockwise. I passed the link over to Someone who proceeds to claim ther he could only see her spinning clockwise. Then I got my sister over just now to examine the gif image again, and she claims that the ballerina sometimes was spinning clockwise then stops and changes direction and spins clockwise, and then stops and changes again, and this went on. Still only being able to see the ballerina spinning anti-clockwise, I protested to my sister that I can't see what she was seeing.

Then my sister went to get a stuffed toy and proceeds to display to me in real life action what she saw, she went and turned the toy first to the left then to the right and to the left and to the right. And I saw none of that happening in that image.

Grr... So in short, I guess me is the artistic/intuitive one while Someone is the logical/analysing person, and my sister is the more balanced person.

What do you see?

31 comments:

Poo said...

Clockwise for me.

Poo said...

Okay, after abit of staring from the corners, I see that it sometimes "changes" direction and becomes anti-clockwise.

Poo said...

Really cool and weird. I see both now.

xxoos said...

haha... seems like you're quite a balanced person, not like me, i still cannot see the clockwise direction!

Massimiliano said...

Cool blog... Clockwise for me i guess xD

Just passing by...

Grettings from Uruguay!

stephanie said...

strangeee! i only see clockwise.. haha so i guess im more logical than artistic:P

Anonymous said...

At first I thought isn't she clearly spinning anti-clockwise? But a while later I saw the trick of the optical illusion that it is.

Try looking at the illusion without the head, as in scroll down and leave the head out, watching only the movement of her legs. Then you will see that her legs can be seen as swinging left or rightaccording to how you see it. :)

Anw, interesting!

-anonymous 2

xxoos said...

joanne! i tried that method, but i still cannot see the clockwise motion leh... geez, i guess i is totally not the logical or analytical person at all.

seems like there are more logical and balanced people out there... wahaha~

Eunique said...

if you all look carefully, the model spins in the clockwise-direction first on her LEFT leg, then after a few rounds, she actually spins in an ANTI-clockwise-direction on her RIGHT leg..

soooooooo... the image isn't consistent, much less can it predict whether we're a logic or artistic person.

hee.

-gunni :)

xxoos said...

gunni, no she doesn't. to me, she's consistently spinning with her right leg as pivot.

it's the kind of thing where everyone sees a different thing. my sister even tried to show me, real time, with the teddie bear, what she was seeing, so it is clear that everyone's seeing a different image.

that you are seeing an inconsistent image is clearly because your mind is being inconsistent.

Eunique said...

LOL, omg I find that really hilarious!

I stick by my belief that this optical illusion is just exactly what it is-- an illusion: "something that deceives by producing a false or misleading impression of reality".

If you watch it long enough and notice her legs, both the leg she pivots on and the direction, switches.

Ahh well~ Let's try this together in real time one day, then we'll see ;)

xxoos said...

it is an optical illusion, meaning different people see differently.

i've seen this in real time with my sister, she was right by my side spinning her teddie bear, we both see differently. then just now i was seeing it again with someone, in real time also, we had our fingers circling the screen, and yes, i'm still seeing it differently from everyone.

and ya, i've been staring at this stupid ballerina for months already. seen it in some other blog before, then i saw it in this link again, and was looking at it for weeks before putting it up, and now that it's on my blog, i'm staring at it for hours every day.

Anonymous said...

It quickly changes direction after a while...

xxoos said...

it doesn't for me

Matt M said...

Haha no I can't see the clockwise way at all.

Unknown said...

she spins counter clockwise on her right foot note her head is tilting to her left side. then she switches to her right foot and spins clockwise while also switching her head tilt to her left shoulder. She does spin both ways just look closely. So this will not tell you if you are right left or both brained.

xxoos said...

that's what you think.
i still cannot see that damn thing turn clockwise.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to burst some bubbles, but the explanation of this was incorrect.... if you see the ballerina spinning CLOCKWISE, you are RIGHT-BRAINED; if you see the ballerina spinning COUNTER-CLOCKWISE, you are left-brained. If she switches for you, you use both sides of your brain to a fairly matched amount.

Go google this ballerina test and look at the other websites to confirm. Still a very crazy-interesting thing! I found myself staring at the ballerina for 30 minutes at least, trying to switch from left to right sides by doing multiplication problems and other ridiculous tests... haha!

Cheers

Anonymous said...

its turning both ways for me, like it'll be going left then right then left again! whats that supposed to mean i am? middle brained?

polty said...

cover her shadow when you look at it, her shadow always moves from right to left, which might alter how you see it

also, focus on one part of her body, such as one of her arms, then, when it's overlapping her body, pretend it's either behind or in front of the body, that should help change the direction in which she turns !

Anonymous said...

I also see her spinning both ways. I don't know what that means though and I can't find the answer anywhere...

Unknown said...

I finally had enough of guessing after seeing this little spinning ballerina over and over again, so I decided to figure out the answer once and for all. Here's what's happening:
- When the ballerina is facing you, that is you're looking at her front-side, her right leg (the one that's raised) moves across the frame from right to left.
- When the ballerina's back is facing you, her right leg travels from left to right.
If you imagine a large clock face painted on the floor beneath where the ballerina is standing and spinning, it's clear that her right foot is traveling around in a clock-wise direction.
If you then stand in the same pose as the ballerina and try to spin like she does - hopefully not falling flat on your butt like I did - you'll realize that she is indeed spinning in a clockwise direction.
There! Now I can get on with my life! LOL! :)
Hope this helps!

Anonymous said...

Google it people. The animated image spins in one direction then switches direction and switches back again, so on and so forth. It is not a psychological test as it was supposedly claimed. Just something to mess with your brain

Anonymous said...

Okay, let me help you guys.

The ballerina does spin both ways. This isn't an optical illusion, it's an actual computer program that randomly switches the direction of spin. Want to know how you can tell?

When the ballerina is spinning clockwise, she is bouncing on her left leg. When she spins anti-clockwise, she bounces on her right leg.

While spinning clockwise, she leads with her right arm extended. Anti-clockwise has her left arm extended. This little computer program has nothing to do with measuring which side of your brain is dominant. It honestly DOES alternate the motion. Everyone will see it spin in both directions if they simply watch long enough. The problem is she may switch every few seconds or every few hours. The time between switches is totally random.

Now, one other things.

Humans don't have dominant sides in their brains. That theory has been disproven by many many neurological studies.

While certain tasks, placing certain tasks on one side of the brain and certain tasks on the other, all humans use both sides of their brains in roughly the same proportions.

In fact, if you were to LOSE half of your brain, the other side would grow new synaptic pathways to compensate for the loss.

Anonymous said...

BOTH :)

i was like wow when it switched directions :)

Anonymous said...

Well always different but i learned how to control way I want her to spin.
You just need to cover her body and watch the legs, they will just move left right not spining ... then as it moves left you uncover balerina and she continues spining anti clockwise, or when leg moves right you uncover and then she spins clockwise.
You can later learn how to just focus yourself on watching legs then whole picture without covering. Key is to notice legs just going right left right left without spining, when watching them seperate.

Also if you experianced both turns you can visualise how she will turn better. Making it even more easy to control.

To put it short she can move way you want with a bit of training.
(or mb im special, i dont think so)

Anonymous said...

I thought it was a program that changed the direction, but it really isn't. You can control the direction it goes just by covering up her body like the other poster said. You can even make it switch halfway through. I really don't think it's a program.

Anonymous said...

I could only see it one way untill I saw it on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spinning_Dancer


there is a blue bar which says
"Versions of the image with an additional visual cue"

click {show} in the right hand corner and you will see it change. It's a mind blower..

Anonymous said...

HAHA Apparently you can make her pivoting foot spin in a different direction from the rest of her body. lol sorry I just had to laugh... looks hilarious.

Anonymous said...

tilt your head to the side(like almost side ways) if you see her spinning clockwise tilt your head on its left side so the left side of your head is facing down and she will switch. do a few blinks as well.

dumb thing.

Anonymous said...

Is the shadow incorrect for a clockwise spin?

The right leg's shadow appears when said leg spins out of the image but is not present when the leg is spinning into the image. No matter where I imagine the light source, this rotation doesn't make sense to me.

Note I see both the reality and illusion. If I am correct, the illusion being her spinning clockwise where in actuality she's spinning counter-clockwise.