Akiyoshi Kitaoka's powerful illusions

i'm really impressed by Akiyoshi Kitaoka's rotational illusions. click on the image above to make it full size, and i bet it will look animated... it sure does for me. he uses a principle called "peripheral drift illusion" which he details in the explanation pdfs under the images on his website.

i use a similar technique in my paintings, called "negative afterimages", to produce illusions of spacial distortion. wikipedia has a nice entry on afterimages with a great test to demonstrate this principle. it mentions a disease called palinopsia, where people see after images all the time. seems like a good name for a news blog.

UPDATE: some hipster artist totally put this very illusion prominently into one of their "artworks" in the most recent whitney biennial. i'ved loved the biennial a lot before, but i found this one to be stale. and i was pissed there was no credit for akiyoshi kitaoka considering how high-profile his work was in this one piece. it definitely implied the artist had made it.