Fooling Your Senses:

Inversions

What is an Inversion?

An inversion is an image created to be viewed both rightside-up and upside-down. There are a few diferent types of inversions, depending on what the artist wants you to see.

On the left is an inversion created to show how our brains like seeing an image in the way that we are used to seeing things. The face of the woman on the left probably looks fairly normal to you. Her eyes and mouth look the way your brain expects them to look.

Move your cursor over the image to flip it over. You can now see that the image is not a normal picture. Your brain didn't notice the problem in the upside-down image because the eyes and mouth looked correct.

Here's another!

Do you know who the picture is?

Actor, and former star of Star Trek on TV and movies, Jonathan Frakes.

Spot the Fake!

Which picture is the actual Mona Lisa?

Move the cursor over the picture to see.

Upside-down comics?

A second type of inversion are pictures which show two different images, depending on which side is up. This is a very difficult type of inversion to create, so there are few examples.

The best known artist who regularly used this technique was the Dutch cartoonist Verbeck (or Verbeek). He created a series of comics starring Mad Man Muffaroo (in the blue pants and yellow hat) and his girlfriend Lovekins (in the yellow dress and blue bandanna). Verbeck's cartoons were a series of panels meant to be read through, then turned over and read through again.

To the right is a single panel (number 2 and inverted number 11) from a twelve panel comic. Below are two panels from a different comic (panels 5&6 and inverted 7&8).

A figure/ground inversion!

An animated inversion:

Which way is Up?

The final type of inversion is arguably the hardest of all to create. An image which appears the SAME whether viewed upside-down or normally (sometimes called TRUE inversions). The master of this type of inversion (as well as many other visual treats) is Scott Kim. He has an amazing web site devoted to his creations (many of which are animated), including inversions, tesselations, puzzles, and much more.

On the right is Kim's own official logo and a tribute to his favorite school subject. Both are true inversions, reading the same when rotated 180 degrees. Below is another of Scott Kim's images, which (while not an inversion) shows a word with its mirror image.