sebruiz.net

The head is leaning to the left. Must be counter-clockwise!

By Brad Hards on Oct 13, 2007

I’ve read that this doesn’t really work; it doesn’t depend on left/right-brainedness, only some sort of visual processing biases or something. I’ve seen it spinning in different directions whenever another site I read discovered this thing :/. The only accurate way to determine left/right brainity is supposedly to get the person talking and moving their hand around, and then to temporarily put half of their brain to sleep (forget how) — if they stop, that was the dominant half.

By illissius on Oct 13, 2007

I thought thats kool, i tried to get my brain to switch how i thought of that, forcing it to think its going counter-clockwise, and thats really really hard… I keep putting it in 3d which makes the transistion harder…

By timrs on Oct 13, 2007

I’m convinced I am both left and right brain dysfunctional. ^_^;;

It’s interesting how polar my perception of the rotation is, either clockwise or counter-clockwise. With many dual-perception illusions I can make myself see both at the same time, but this one I can’t. Pretty neat.

It’s also kind of fun switching back and forth. It’s getting easier the more I do it…

By Jerry on Oct 13, 2007

I don’t see it spinning at all. Does that mean I’m brain-dead?

By David on Oct 13, 2007

I am with Jerry on this. Depending on where you are looking, and yes I know where you geeks were looking ;p She seemed to spin in different directions…I thought I was going nuts…well I am nuts, but anyways, I sat there and tried to examine it, then my head exploded. I would look down for a second and then back up, and she was spinning in a different direction..so I thought it was a trick, and studied her for 5 minutes and she stayed in the same direction…this is cool

By nixternal on Oct 13, 2007

Fun fact: Opera plays the (a?) gif file always from the first frame on when the picture leaves the view (e.g. by scrolling down) and enters it again, you can never catch it in the middle of the animation. So you will have a hard time recognizing another spinning direction.

The direction you see is likely determined when you see the figure start spinning and where you think the leg is going - forwards or backwards. That’s the part where you can trick yourself (concentrating on the shadow first helps).

(More browser testing fun: Opera always restarts the gif when entering the view, Konqueror and Firefox do not. The animation in Firefox is blazingly fast, while Opera and Konqueror play the file rather slowly (stuttering). Also Konqueror has vertical syncing issues between the single frames of the animation (the tearing of the picture known from games when framerate and monitor refresh rate don’t match — but might be blitting problems here) when playing the gif, especially under high system load (nearly 100% CPU), caused by e.g. playing a spinning animated gif file in Konqueror. Akregator on the other hand has none of these problems, it doesn’t play gifs at all.

By Phase II on Oct 13, 2007

Correction: Akregator plays gifs, sometimes. Choppy and tearing.

By Phase II on Oct 13, 2007

I saw it as spinning clockwise. Then watching the shadow, I could convince myself it was spinning counter-clockwise. So, not satisfied with what my eyes were telling me, I opened up the image in the Gimp and saw from the base frame it is spinning clockwise.

By JustMe on Oct 13, 2007

I can’t believe you fell for that pseduscience crap. Left-brained this right-brained that, well I got both brains and they both work! What do I get for that?

By the way: I noticed that the rotation depends on where your eyes look first and the initial rotation when you first look at it, so it’s not about braininess if such word exists.

Those people who “innocently” categorize people should be shot and hanged. Because they put a cap on people’s abilities. For example when a child thinks that he is “left-brained” that will lead him to believe that he is “imagination deprived”, such bullshit is… bullshit. According to this crap I’m left-brained, but my imagination is super OK; I’m a first class daydreamer for god’s sake.

PS: I was up all night so the chance of incomprehensible post approaches 1.

By 7UP on Oct 13, 2007

I saw it spinning clockwise at first, then with some practice I could make it change direction by closing my eyes briefly, and after a few minutes I could make it change direction at will. Does that mean I’m ambi-brained, like I’m ambidextrous?

By Irina on Oct 13, 2007

Irina: nope, I think _most_ people can change it at will. You’re right-brained, just like me =) but then again my parents both saw it clockwise and couldn’t believe the opposite was possible.

7UP: both of your brain halves work, obviously, but one of them is supposed to dominate the other, i.e. be more active than the other

By logixoul on Oct 13, 2007

Am I getting crazy or does she change her head around from left to right (and back) when she changes direction?

By Patrick on Oct 13, 2007

The reflection/shadow suggests clockwise, which is what I saw. However I think of myself as a left-brained person. The only way to get good data out of this image is to write back to every mushy right-brained person who sends this image in a FWFWFW: email saying how cool it and and that you should forward 5 to people or your brain will die; ask that person which way they say the girl spinning and add that to your dataset.

By agrippa_cash on Oct 13, 2007

I had a few people send this to me today. It took about five minutes to figure out how to get the image to rotate clockwise and counterclockwise on will. After a while my head started to hurt, but maybe that was from me staring at my computer screen so intently

By seele on Oct 13, 2007

If you concentrate hard enough, you can make the shadow and the body appear to spin in opposite directions. Very cool.

By Sish on Oct 13, 2007

I saw this on someone else’s site, and around a third of the commentators were convinced that the animation actually randomly changes direction and that it’s not an optical illusion at all!

I find that if I look away from the picture so it’s just in the corner of my eye, I can get it to change direction, and it keeps spinning in the changed direction when I look back at it. So long as I ignore the shadow on the ground though, since as soon as I look at that she starts spinning anticlockwise again.

By James on Oct 13, 2007

@James: this is cool, I really couldn’t see the image spinning anti-clockwise so I tried your trick of looking at it from the corner of my eye. It still wouldn’t work so I tried closing my eyes and imagined the image turning the other way around and opened my eyes, still looking at it from the corner of my eye and yes it would be turning in the opposite direction! The strange thing is that the moment I look at it directly it immediately jumps back to turning clockwise.

By Quintesse on Oct 13, 2007

It appeared to be spinning clockwise to me. It’s easy enough to get it spinning in the other direction by looking at the shadow on the floor and picturing it going the other direction.

By baxnick on Oct 13, 2007

So it is Javascript that plays that Gif file forward and backward on random.

You have to see the source code:

‘);
document.write(”);

// End Hide –>

Well so It changes the direction randomly.

Beside that I have absolute the same observation like Phase II. Firefox play it fast, Konqueror play it slowly and Akregator did need time till it begin to play and then choppy too.

So after years of software and browser development we have still issues where all these browsers perform different.

The people from W3C consortium missed here a lot.

By Ivan on Oct 13, 2007

Ok the browsers hiedes some part of the script above so here we have it again:

“SCRIPT TYPE=”text/javascript” language=”JavaScript”>
‘);
document.write(”);

// End Hide –>

By Ivan on Oct 13, 2007

When I will be able to edit or to preview my post here?
I give it up to post the full source code.

By Ivan on Oct 13, 2007

Ivan, if you play the image in an editor (i used adobe image ready on my pc) you can still get the eye trick to work. I really do not think the browser is ever playing it in reverse (though I did think that once)

By Sish on Oct 14, 2007

I find it impossible to switch until I cover up her hips, at which point becomes very easy. As soon as I uncover her hips, though, she gets stuck in whatever direction she is turning. It seems once my brain has decided the leg attachment at the hips (i.e., the outer leg is attached on the left or right side) it is all over.

By anonymous on Oct 14, 2007

It depends on which eyes you are using. I have partial vision in my right eye. Using my left eye (which have normal vision) I see the figure spin clockwise and there my right hand side of brain is active. If I cover my left eye, I can just see the figure spinning anti-clockwise through my right eye. Basically it an optical illusions that depend more on which which eye is the best.

By Michael on Oct 14, 2007

logixoul: “7UP: both of your brain halves work, obviously, but one of them is supposed to dominate the other, i.e. be more active than the other”

Supposed to dominate? who supposed that? The only reason I’m right-handed is that I never bother to use my left, not because I can’t use my left. But my brains are always used, both of them. None dominates the other. Heck, is there any proof other than correlation that these attributes related to each brain?

Sorry for my attitude, but “labels” like that piss me off.

By 7UP on Oct 14, 2007

no, if you look at the very bottom at the shadows, and you think “oh baby, turn the other way ’round”, then it turns around and it becomes very easy to make it spin in the other direction.

By litb on Oct 14, 2007

This is amazing, after a few minutes of practice I can change the spin direction at will

By aysen on Oct 14, 2007

No no it is not your brain! It is your modern browser!

I realized that the javascript code is only for the old browsers. The Gif itself is randomly changing.
When I start with internet long time ago this was not possible to do with a gif file.
But the specification of Gif has changed during the time and now you can have such stunning things with gif.

If you don’t believe me look at this:
http://bp0.blogger.com/_dbRGkqE_8Zg/RxKT1-wRhwI/AAAAAAAAABk/ylbkdhlI5Tg/s200/rightbrained.gif

It is nearly the same gif I only changed the loop so it is not randomly any more.
Try now to turn my gif image with your brain in another direction.

heh! lol

Btw. you always use booth brain half. It depend on the task how strong you would use one or another half.

Years ago the brain experts said that there are parts in our brain that are for specific tasks. Like brain part for mathematics and a brain part for music. They was wrong our brain is definitely to complex.

By Ivan on Oct 15, 2007

The link above is not going to work.

** EDIT: remove blogspam **

just click on image to see it rotate clockwise.

By Ivan on Oct 15, 2007

If you see it clockwise close your eyes and try to calculate something like 246 x 43.
When you know the result open your eyes and look again, you’ll se the image spinning in the opposite direction.

By Marco on Oct 15, 2007

I usually end up with messed up results with these things (I write left handed when the surface is horizontal, and right handed when it is at an angle, I do most sports with my right hand, I use a shovel left handed - even though my left arm is weak etc).

I saw it going clockwise, but I believe I’m also reverse wired (the right side of my brain controls the right side of my body) (I believe this is fairly common in left handed people).

By Andy on Oct 15, 2007

The figure is neither spinning clock-wise nor counter-clockwise. It is a 3D figure, where clockwise is a description of a 2D rotation. If you imagine you look at her from above and down, she is spinning clockwise. If you imagine looking at her from below and up, she is spinning counter-clockwise.

So it is just a matter of how you decide to solve the meaningless “which way is she spinning?” question that matters.

Btw. If have ever taken dancing lessons you know that it is technically called spinning right, the opposite is spinning left.

By Allan Sandfeld on Oct 15, 2007

It is definitely the brain. I proved it! lol
First I thought It must be my PC. So I thought I search for some code.
Looking at Javascript and the gif file itself. Well first I was not able to see any direction change of the gif image that I created. So I thought to post it here that is the gif file itself that plays randomly. Well yesterday after I read your post I see the first time on my created gif file the rotation change. Sorry I was wrong.

Now I am sure it is an optical illusion.

Well I could prove that simple having two of my colleagues seen this at the screen during the same time. Each of us have seen it turning at different time and different direction.

I also observe on firefox browser when I open the gif file that I created in a new sub-window there will be on each sub-window a small image. This small image will rotate too. Well it makes really easy to change the rotating direction of that small image by the brain. It is really a lot easier to change the direction of the small rotating image then the big one. Now guess what happens with the big image when you change the direction of that small image. I love that image! lol

By Ivan on Oct 16, 2007