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Pseudoscope Kit

The Pseudoscope creates one of the most remarkable of all optical illusions, and was first described by Sir Charles Wheatstone in the 1830s. The Pseudoscope swaps the incoming images, so that the right eye sees what the left eye would have seen, and vice versa. The pseudoscope therefore does to front and back what a mirror does to left and right. This means that foreground becomes background and visible background becomes foreground, or more simply, background advances, foreground recedes.

When you view objects with this scope, the convex becomes concave. A tree turns inside out as it were - it's front branches appear at the back, whilst the back branches come out in front, hanging or suspended in mid-air as their support is eclipsed by branches in front.

The scope will suggest to the viewer that a person's face is hollow or concave but your brain refuses to accept such nonsence and so peoples' heads merely appear odd or uncomfortable to look at. It is best then to choose to look at a landscape or tree or anything which may suggest ambiguous perspective. In a real sense pseudoscopic vision fights `normal vision'. It is, after all, a major alteration to the way information is being presented to the brain for processing, and some people, not all, find there is initially at least, a tendency to suppress the extraordinary interpretation of space it reveals. Because of this unfamiliarity, the full pseudoscopic experience might take a little time to assert itself. Some people find that they can never see a pseudoscopic image.

These pseudoscopes come as a kit form, and require assembly. This is a fairly complex kit, and it will take a number of hours to complete. We have construcred one ourselves, and it took between 4 and 5 hours to make.

There are a total of four mirrors. There are two front silvered glass mirrors (the two small mirrors) and two acrylic mirrors (the large ones) included in the kit. You will need to provide glue. The kit comes from Germany, but we provide an English translation of the instructions.

Experience space on the ‘Flipside’!

Suggested Age 16+

Made in EU


Price: £22.99 [$36.32] (Including VAT at 20%)

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