Reversible figures
(ambiguous figures or bistable figures)
since February 15, 2005
<Duck-rabbit figure>
There seems to be a rabbit facing right and a duck facing left.
This image is copied from one of Professor John F. Kihlstrom's pages, where he points out that the creater of this image was the American psychologist Joseph Jastrow*.
*Jastrow, J. (1899). The mind's eye. Popular Science Monthly, 54, 299-312.
<My wife and mother-in-law>
Either of a young girl or an old woman ("wife" and "mother in law") appears.
This image is copied from mathworld.wolfram.com, which shows that this image was drawn by British cartoonist W. E. Hill in 1915 in Puck humor magazine, an American magazine inspired by the British magazine Punch. However, there had been such figures before him.
<Necker cube>
The image appears to be either of the two shown below.
by A.Kitaoka 2005 (February 15)
It is said that this image was developed in 1832 by the Swiss chrystallographer L. A. Necker.
<Rubin's goblet (Rubin's vase; Rubin's vase-face illusion)>
(This image is poorly reproduced by me, so the shapes are different from the original)
The white goblet appears to be in front of the background or the two black profiles appear to be in front of the white background. This is the most famous image among Figure-ground reversible images.
Moving reversible figure (lady's figure appears to rotate clockwise or counterclockwise) created by Nobuyuki Kayahara, Hiroshima, Japan
(c) Nobuyuki Kayahara 2003
My works of reversible figures