Sandro Del-Prete is an artist who draws some unusual things.
Generally he draws optical illusions. I am a big fan of those. I am particularly entranced by his work Message of Love from the Dolphins (there are some better images of this out there, but this is his official page, so I thought it would be nice to go there first.)
I am not so entranced by the art, as by the psychology behind it. (Don’t get me wrong, I like the art too.)
When I first encountered this, I read a caption talking about how it was viewed differently based on whether you were pre- or post-pubescent. (You should go look at the image now).
I’ll wait.
Prepubescents generally see the dolphins. The rest of us can be hard pressed to find the dolphins as we are already distracted by what we saw first.
On the official website, it states: “This image was also shown at an exhibition at the Museum of Science on illusions, Boston. When they asked the trustees if there had been no controversy about the image, this meant that once a group of nuns would have complained, but they were immediately silenced, as they were told that one’s perception is based on experience gained so far .”
I find this to be a superlative example of our experience coloring our perceptions.