Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest — 2006

Due to popular demand: We are happy to announce the world’s 2nd annual Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest — 2006!!

The 1st annual contest, held at ECVP 2005 in A Coruña, Spain, was a huge success, which drew numerous accolades from attendees as well as

international media coverage. The First, Second and Third Prize winners were Arthur Shapiro and Justin Charles (Bucknell University, USA), George Mather (Sussex University, UK), and Dejan Todorovic (University of Belgrade, Serbia).

In order to make the contest more easily accessible to a larger proportion of the world’s vision science community, and to increase the public impact of this celebration of vision research, the 2006 contest will be held in parallel to the VSS meeting in May 2006, in Sarasota, Florida. Exact time and date to be announced.

Visual Illusion Contestants are invited to submit novel visual or multimodal illusions (unpublished, or published no earlier than 2005) in standard image, movie or html formats. An international panel of impartial judges (TBA) will rate the submissions and narrow them to the top ten (only one entry per author is eligible to make the TOP TEN). Then, at the Contest Gala in Sarasota, the top ten illusionists will present their contributions and the attendees of the event (that means you!) will vote to pick the TOP THREE WINNERS!

Illusions submitted to the 2005 contest can be re-submitted to the 2006

contest edition, as long as they meet the above requirements and were not among the top ten 2005 finalists.

Submissions will be held in strict confidence by the panel of judges and the authors/creators will retain full copyright. By submitting an entry authors/creators are committing to allow the Neural Correlate Society (organizers of the event) to display the illusions for advertising purposes and for science museum exhibits and handouts worldwide. In the event that the press may wish to publish submitted illusions in books or other formats, permission will be sought individually from the author.

Submissions can be made to Dr. Susana Martinez-Conde (Illusion Contest

Coordinator, Neural Correlate Society) via Email until February 15, 2006. Illusion submissions should come with a (no more than) one-page description of the illusion and its theoretical underpinnings (if known). Illusions will be rated according to:

• Significance to our understanding of the visual system
• Simplicity of the description
• Sheer beauty
• Counterintuitive quality
• Spectacularity

The Illusion Contest website is currently under construction and will be up very soon with further information.

Submit your ideas now and take home this prestigious award!

On behalf of the Neural Correlate Society: Susana Martinez-Conde (Illusion Contest Coordinator)