Dec 17 2008
The EnvisageChange.com team today released an artistic optical illusion featuring President-Elect Barack Obama. Aiming to spark lively discussion about the nature and necessity of change in many aspects of our lives, the optical illusion is an allegory about the importance of taking action.
Samuel Berger, MD, founder of http://www.EnvisageChange.com, commissioned an original image designed to stimulate interest in both science and the arts. Viewers stare at the white dot in the center of the image for around 30 seconds, close their eyes and wait for the fleeting afterimage of President-Elect Obama to appear.
An afterimage is simply a visual image that persists even though the original image is no longer there. In this case, the afterimage is known as a negative afterimage since it reverses the colors in the original image and allows viewers to see something that they did not realize was there.
According to Dr Berger, MD (who based the project on his own award-winning science fair project from over 40 years ago), afterimages represent metaphorically the idea that we can all change things depending on our perspective.
"I thought that this was a beautiful metaphor, literally 'a picture of change.' And it seemed to me that the best person to marry the art and science of this visual change was Barack Obama, whose very image and message embody change. Yet what I created is about more than Obama. It's about the hopes my generation had in the Sixties; the hope that we could change the world, rearrange the world - and through change make our planet a better place. As we enter a new era, I hope that everyone can envisage change." said Dr. Berger.
True to the desire to close the distance between science and art, the Optical Obama optical illusion is also available for viewing as a video clip, complete with rhyming couplet instructions and an original musical score.