The human experience is made up of perceptual illusions that we don’t even notice half the time.
For example, did you know that you have a blind spot in your vision that your brain just fills in with whatever your eyes pick up around it?
The best thing to do is embrace this perceptual fun and visit a few places where getting fooled is all the rage. Here’s a list of some of the best places to get fooled.
Trick Art Museums – South Korea
Invented in Korea, Trick Art Museums are wondrous places of hi-jinks and tomfoolery, all based around you and your camera. One museum is in Paju, just north west of Seoul and amusingly close to the border with North Korea. Another museum is on the island of Jeju, the large island that marks the most southern part of Korea and is one of the country’s most popular holiday destinations. The Jeju branch has its own sculpture park full of weird things you wouldn’t normally see out and about. Another, the Trick Eye Museum can be found in Hongdae, one of the cooler districts of the already rather cool capital city Seoul.
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Ticino, Switzerland
In 1957, the BBC’s flagship documentary programme Panorama broadcast a segment about Ticino, claiming the Swiss town was the centre of the spaghetti farming trade. The bizarre stunt fooled a lot of people since the show had always been a po-faced factual documentary series, although some people failed to see the funny side. If you go to Ticino in person, of course, you’ll realise that it was all a lie and they actually grow vermicelli on trees.
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Your local cinema
Even though you’re fully aware it’s a film – a bunch of flat images, some sound projections – more often than not, you still end up getting emotionally involved in the illusion. Particularly those gory slasher films – if you jumped at any point, you just got fooled by lights and noises. But then that’s what cinema is all about – it’s much harder to get fooled when you’re watching on a tablet sitting on the sofa.
Takao Trick Art Museum – Hachioji, Japan
An hour west of Tokyo is Japan’s own Trick Art Museum. The popularity of the Korean invention spread quickly to Japan where people also love messing about with visuals.
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The Robert-Houdin House of Magic – Blois, France
Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin was a pioneering magician during the 19th century, the man who inspired Harry Houdini to the extent that he based his stage name on him. Robert-Houdin left this impressive building to his hometown of Blois in the Loire Valley, featuring hundreds of his original tricks and inventions. Tours of the place are given by illusionists who incorporate magic into your visit. The building itself has been renovated to feature moving dragon heads poking their heads out of the window as in our image above, by David Hart.
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Camera Obscura – Edinburgh, Scotland
Camera Obscura in Edinburgh is a multi-layered venue which has optical illusions amongst all sorts of delights such as light shows, a hologram gallery and a so-called “infinity corridor”. To top it all off, the roof offers fantastic views of the city skyline.
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Trick Art Museum – Thailand
Thailand too has its very own Trick Art Museum, officially endorsed by the original Korean creators. Thailand’s is in Cha-Am, down on the coast south west of Bangkok. The building is grandly neo-classical with its columns and portico, but don’t let that fool you – it’s the same standard silliness and larks once you get inside. It’s housed within Santorini Park, the popular amusement park for families.
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Dali Museum – Figueres, Spain
Moustachioed genius Salvador Dali was a pioneer of incorporating optical illusions into his art. Walking around the Dali Museum in his hometown of Figueres, where the roof is covered in giant eggs, you’re constantly confronted with things that make you scratch your head in wonder what on Earth is going on.
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Museum of Optical Illusions – Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Russia
Trick eye museums in Russia may just be our favourite – apparently, their idiosyncratic take on the experience includes giving you the chance to have a photo where President Vladimir Putin beats you at wrestling.
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The Sistine Chapel – Rome, Italy
What? That’s a real place! Yes, yes, it’s a real place, but the Sistine Chapel in Rome was repainted in 1994 – technically today’s visitors aren’t actually seeing Michelangelo’s handiwork anymore but fresh paints that trace what was left of his work. But then, maybe that still counts? You’ll have to decide for yourself…
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The Puzzling Place – Keswick, England
Associated with famous poets like Coleridge, Keswick is at the heart of the Lake District, commonly regarded as the most beautiful part of England. So, The Puzzling Place’s name is an accurate description in both content and context – a place with comical optical illusions seems completely unexpected in an area like this. But then, that’s all part of the fun.
El Rey de la Magia – Barcelona, Spain
This historic shop and theatre in Barcelona has been an important destination in the art of illusion since 1881. Otherwise known as The King of Magic, the place is full of professional magicians trying out various tricks and full performances are held during the evenings too.
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Trick Eye Museum – Singapore
Yet another entire building full of odd visual trickery to confuse your visual cortex into questioning the very fabric of three-dimensional space.
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Any art gallery in the world
While you’re gazing at the work of some blockbuster painter, it may well in fact be the work of a master art forger. Elmyr de Hory was a struggling artist who found he had a knack for copying the styles of other painters. He spent decades creating thousands of artworks that people mistakenly thought were Renoirs, Matisses and the like. They were sold around the world, and a lot of them were never identified as fakes. So whether you’re in the Louvre in Paris, the National Gallery in London, or MOMA in New York, you can never actually be sure if you’re being fooled or not.
Some galleries would prefer not to think about this fact but others realise that it’s another opportunity to think about art and our perceptions. In London, for example, Dulwich Picture Gallery’s exhibition Made in China invites visitors to try and spot the forgery they’ve planted amongst their collection. In Vienna in Austria, meanwhile, there’s a whole building dedicated to getting fooled in art: The Museum of Art Fakes.
(Feature image: Jirka Matousek; Maison de la Magie, Blois, France image by David Hart)
