A while ago, my dorm room was in desperate need of some decoration. The cinder block walls were not doing much for the atmosphere of the room. So I started looking through some old WIRED magazines I had lying around. In there I found an ad for some product (I forget which) that had an interesting picture so I cut it out and put it on my desk. I thought the picture was cool because it had two little faces staring at each other. A little bit later, Elena and Josh were hanging out in my room. Elena looked at the picture and said,"Hey, neat, I like your picture of the clown." By this point I had plastered my room with all sorts of acquired art and didn't know which one she was talking about. I certainly didn't remember putting up a picture of a clown, though. But then she pointed at picture of the two faces and said again how cool the clown looked. Josh agreed and said it was a grat picture of a clown.	(Click on image to see a larger view.)
We asked a bunch of other people about this picture and pretty much all of them saw the clown right away. Josh tried many times to explain this to me. Unfortunately, his explanations have pretty much been "okay.. these are his eyes, and this is his mouth . . and . . it's all RIGHT THERE." When I looked at the picture, I just saw the two faces. Try as I might, that's ALL that appeared to me.	What I tend to see.
Fortunately, my friend Matt sent me an altered image which clearly shows the clown's face. Albeit a horribly distorted one. Almost like looking at your reflection in an amusement park mirror.  To clear up any confusion there might be (and you'd be surprised at how angry some of the e-mail I've gotten about my lack of "understanding" has been), I completely understand where the clown is. Matt's altered imaged cleared that up and there's no reason to keep bringing that up. Now, my issue, if you can call it that, is that this image tends to revert back to two faces for me, no matter what. It's what I saw in the first place and what it always shifts back to. I can't help it and, to be honest, I'm not all that concerned either.	The complete clown face.

From: [r.m.c.i. / .blue.]
To: elewis@cs.oberlin.edu
Subject: clowns

perhaps the following would be of interest to your clown page..:

fear of clowns - coulrophobic

kill a clown - http://www.zooass.com/playzone/killtheclown/main.shtml

an anti-clown page - http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/2430/clown.html

yes, i have too much time on my hands.

You certainly do, Roland. At least you found a good way to use it.

have you tried looking at it as a clown behind a candle, 'cause that's one of the ways that I saw it. The clown is right behind a black candle with the candle ritght between his eyes. I have seen it every way possible, and it keeps switching between them, but that was probably the easiest way for me to see the clown. Maybe it helps you.

Yeah, you're not the only one seeing the candle. Greg here saw it too.

Can you also see the black candle between the two faces?
I'm a computer science major so I'm just asking this to further tweak your brain...

--Gregory

Consider me tweaked

i am a visual artist. There is a book called Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain. You are talking about making a cognitive shift from the Left side of your Brain (the analytical symbolic side) to the Right side of your Brain (the creative side). Your child is not as educated in the symbolism of a human head as you are. It is easier for the child to shift into a consideration of the image AS IT IS, without the need identify the symbol of the face in profile. (You must note that this is a symbol of a profile, and all things being equal the realism of the profiles is less visually apparent than the singularity and wholeness of the whole head interpretation) As an artist it is necessary to make this lateral shift in thinking each time we draw from nature. To draw a human hand when you are a child will often result in stick fingers, the simple symbol for a hand. We must relearn to set aside these symbols and draw what we truly see, which often requires a shift from the symbol side (left) to the creative side (right).

Interesting. As it turns out, I'm a senior math major who does a bunch of shit on the web in addition to taking photos and doing video work. Go figure.

I see the face, but I don't think it's a clown. It looks more like a Peter Maxx painting of Joe Pesci on acid.

Just trying to help,
Bryan

Thanks, Bryan.

atfirst all i saw in that dumb clown picture was the 1 clwn but now all i see is the 2 faces. weird

Well, at least I'm not the only one

Clowns scare me, man. They are freaky.

Damn straight. If you want to find out about the fear of clowns, check out where Gavin came from in this next message.

Ended up on your clown page following a link from http://www.sonic.net/~fredd/notes.html

Just a thought:

Look at the following few lines using a fixed-width font (like Courier):

B     B
 B   B
  B B
   B
   B
   B
   B

You see a Y composed of B's. If you have damage to the left hemisphere of your brain, you will tend to see the large letter Y but not the little Bs that make it up. If your right hemisphere is damaged, then the opposite happens.

Could it be that you are an extremely left-brained person?

Hmmm... Like I said, I'm a math major.

You may not be able to see the clown because you are extremely right brained. Sometimes your brain cannot see certain shapes.

There seems to be a difference of opinion on my brain here.

Gestalt psychologists talked of several principles which influence how we perceive visual patterns. The clown/two faces picture demonstrates the principle of figure-ground. We perceive pictures in terms of figure (the main object in the picture which we tend to process and attend to more) and ground (everything that is the background). You may have seen a picture of a vase which illustrates this principle (you might want to even draw one yourself or check out an introductory psychology textbook). If you make the vase the ground, then the figure becomes two faces staring at each other (much like your clown picture). The theory of field independence suggests that being able to switch back and forth between what's figure and what's ground might indicate greater mental flexibility. In order to better be able to do the switching (or to keep one picture vs. the other), identify what the main characteristics are for each image and process (study) those with greater attention. I find that I tend to look at the eyes and hair to "see" the clown and the nose and mouth area to "see" the faces. Hopes this helps.

Debra Valencia-Laver
Assistant Professor of Psychology
(more specifically, cognitive psychology is my area of interest)
Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo

Whoa. A pro enters the discussion. Maybe I should just put ALL my problems on the web and see what kinds of responses I get. . . . . and maybe not : )