By our senses we perceive the world. They define our living. The experience stations in the exhibition „spirit stations“ for example, invite you to discover and undergo your senses.
The “Ames Room” is known for its noticeable deception of the dimension’s constancy. Out of a specified perspective, two persons with the same height seem different sized. The reason for this optical illusion is in the construction of the rear wall and the window, which let the room appears normal and rectangular. But in real the left edge is almost twice as far off from the eye of the viewer as the right. This great exhibit can be more attractive with furniture, camera and a monitor or a designed exterior wall.
On the screen you can assemble given pictures with the mouse to an image sequence. You can play it by selectable speed. By sufficient speed our vision system connects the single images to a flowing move- exactly like in a flip book, TV, video, in the cinema or in computer games and computer animations.
When we see a sequence of graphics, we can not see each picture, when the speed is to high. We see a flowing movement. For this purpose, it is important to have a clear separation of the images. This principle is used in cinemas and TV. There are various different mechanisms, to reach an apparent movement of proper static images- beginning with a simple flip book.
We scarcely can watch the rotation of a one coloured circle disk around its centre, because it looks the same in each position. In a square we recognize such a rotation by the motions of the rand and assume, because of our experiences, that the inner moves with it. When you hide the rand partially, the visible fragments are not enough for our vision system to get the rotation of a square. Though it seems to throb, since depending on the orientation of the square there is more or less visible.
Here you can learn an old encryption method- easy and effective. The name dates back to the roman commander Gaius Julius Caesar, who used this secret communication for military purpose. It states, that Caesar used a shift about three letters in the alphabet, but the number is variable as long as the recipient knows it!
A number of experiments inside the cabin make the visitor impressive aware of how easily our sense of balance can be fooled by our vision system: balls are seeming to roll upward, a free movable rod apparently hangs lopsided down, a chair with a complete horizontal seating surface seems to be strongly inclined.
Sometimes it is hard to estimate distances right, because neighboured distances are noticed to. The elastic strap over the blue trapezoid has to be pulled to the lower edge, so the strap sections left and right from the finger are equal. The skewness of the trapezoid irritates enormous, so you guess most times totally wrong. As astounding as this is the other experiment, where you have to slide the angle directly in the middle of the metal rod. Its ends are namely far off from the ends of the left angle as of the right angle. The up-laying measure serves for the review of the own assessment.
Can a straight rod rotate around his axis and pass a curved slit? It looks like it cannot, but it actually passes easy and with drive! Thus, it is fixed oblique, the rod ends are further from the axis of rotation, than from the middle of the bar. That means, that the slit ends have to be further from the rotation axis, than the middle of the slit- therefore the curved form!
Our vision system is exercised to gather three-dimensional information out of two dimensional images. The “Impossible E” exists out of two partial pictures: the reflection of the three dimensional “E” and the reflection of the four horizontally boards. Although they fit together by colour, they reveal no consistent overall picture, because the same black colour stands for a gap in the one picture and for a black area in the other.
Everything has two sides, right? Not at all. The Möbius strip proves the opposite. Here a magnetic car drives on the strip from the inside to the outside and vice versa, without withdrawing. You can form easily a model, by twisting a piece of paper and connecting the paper ends, so it occurs a ribbon. The Möbius strip is founded by the mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johan Benedict Listing.
On the screen are two red disks contributed, which are moving with an adjustable speed from the upper screen edges to the edges towards them. When they meet in the middle, they seem to move one above the other. But rungs out a “Pling” in this moment the situation is interpreted as a clash with rebound. In percipience our senses work together. When the ear hears a crash, our eye sees one too.
Why not looking each other deep in the eye? The pupil determines the amount of lightning, which falls in our eye. It sets itself automatically in dependence to the brightness, like an automatically aperture from a camera. The brightness of a lamp can be set with the controller and the changes in the eye can be observed in a magnifying mirror.
On a ground glass you can see the shadow of a rotating cube grid. Although our vision system interprets this flat image as three dimensional, it is not able to recognize the rotating direction- by the projection this information is lost, so sometimes you recognize the one, then the other rotation direction. A view through the rear transparent glass plate reveals the real conditions.
Depending on where you place the second magnetic figure in the image, the figure seems bigger or smaller as the one in the foreground. Firstly, our eye has the comparison because of the perspectival drawing, on the other hand we have experienced, that things are getting smaller with distance. The ‘logical’ conclusion seems to be: The rear figure is bigger…
One person listens with both ears on the ends of a hose, which hands down from the exhibit. One additional person knocks with a wooden stick somewhere on the hose. The initiated sound needs more time to the one ear (except you tap exactly in the middle of the hose), than to the other, so you get the impression, that the sound comes from a particular direction.
A rotation on the board actuates a mixture of two different coloured sands, thus it ripples, pulsating like the blood in the veins and heart, through fine hopper openings. Mountains and valleys infused with periodic, two coloured stratifications on the one side and ever- increasing erosions on the other side. A stimulating experience by permanent new formations.
When you first take a small and after a bigger bottle in your hand, the smaller one seems a lot heavier. But the scale shows, that both bottles are the same weight. Here it gets clear, that our perception connects our purpose sensation with our previous experiences. We are expecting a certain weight, when we see the small bottle. The unexpected high weight is overinterpreted.
You try to stand on one leg with the distance of a half metre before the wobbling wall! To hold the balance without the support of the other leg is a real challenge! For our orientation in a room is from a big meaning as well as our sense of sight. In front of the wobbling wall our eyes and our balance senses supply different signals.