A maze of staircases leads absolutely nowhere within a series of new hotel rooms at ‘The Other Place’ in China, nodding to artist MC Escher’s famous lithograph print entitled ‘Relativity.’ Shenzhen-based architecture firm Studio10 renovated the existing rooms at ‘The Other Place’ guesthouse in Guilin, giving half the rooms a ‘maze’ theme with deep forest green walls and the other half a ‘dream’ theme in soft pink and white.

The surreal staircases stretch up the walls, taking advantage of the impressive ceiling height. Occasionally, there really is something at the end of them – a door, or a loft – though even the doors aren’t quite what they seem. Others just contribute to the graphic nature of the design, their undersides stepped as well to add to the optical illusions. The architects envision the design as a seamless transition from 2D to 3D.

“All components from the reality world such as lighting fixtures and electronic appliances have been concealed behind a series of black-painted doors, maintaining the pristine, chimerical nature of the space,” they say of the pink “dream” rooms.

“In the other forest-green-themed room, anti-gravitational stairs lead to golden doors, behind which there could be a trail leading to a secret forest – or some other unexpected findings that surprises you.”

While no physical space can quite capture the strange, vertigo-inducing spatial confusion of Escher’s drawing, ‘The Other Place’ definitely honors the original in a way that’s instantly recognizable (and also evocative of La Muralla Roja by Ricardo Bofill.)

Step into one of Darel Carey’s art installations and you’ll quickly lose your sense of the room’s actual dimensions, your confused eyes tripping over illusions of ridges and voids that aren’t really there. Using nothing but roll after roll of black electrical tape, Carey transforms ordinary spaces into disorienting, graphic landscapes that seem to shift as you look at them.

Sure, there are easier ways to achieve similar effects – plastering the walls with printed wallpaper, for example, or projecting the images. But Carey prefers the meditative process of hand-taping his designs, and he says the spaces often take shape of their own accord.

Carey calls his method ‘dimensionalizing,’ and notes that it was originally meant to be highly temporary. He’d step in, work intuitively within the space and record himself creating the installation. The resulting images and time-lapse videos were sometimes the only evidence these alternate reality rooms ever existed, since they’d sometimes be taken down within mere hours. Now, he’s working toward installations that last a little longer, like his room at the Museum of Selfies in Los Angeles.

The time lapse videos are fascinating in their own right as Carey “bends space” simply by changing the direction of the tape as well as altering its width to produce the illusion of topography on smooth, flat surfaces.

The work may look mathematical in nature, but Carey tells New Element Art that his work is “mostly organic and freestyle. And the only mathematics involved is naturally applied.”

“I like it when people say they lose their orientation in the space. Because it lets me know that my dimensional lines are doing their job and giving the mind and eye something to ponder.

If there’s one thing all these illusions can show you, it’s that you can’t trust your own brain. It’ll blot out peripheral colors right before your eyes to help you focus on a fixed point, turn static images into animations and completely fool you about the colors and shapes you’re looking at.

Troxler’s Effect: Colors Disappear When You Stare

Stare at the image for about half a minute without moving your eyes and watch as it gradually disappears. This is a variation of #Troxler’s effect which essentially says that if you fixate your eyes on a certain point, stimuli near that point will gradually fade. pic.twitter.com/qjIrhKpO2V

— David McPhillips (@primaryeyecare1) March 12, 2018

Focus on the center of this image, and before long, the colors will start to disappear, revealing either a blank white space or a gray square. Blink, and the colors are back again.

Try it again with the second image: stare at the black cross in the center. Eventually, the pink dots will disappear altogether and only the green moving circle will remain. Troxler’s effect illustrates the efficient way in which our brains ignore peripheral information around a fixation point.

What Color Are These Hearts?

What color are these hearts? That probably sounds like a stupid question – obviously, some of them are orange and some are purple, right? But when the bars around them are removed, their true color will be revealed. Watch the video to see how it works.

None of These Lines are Actually Zig-Zags

This image appears to show alternating lines of curves and zig-zags. In reality, the lines are exactly the same, but the way the light and dark elements are placed accentuate either the curves of the angles to our brains, making them seem like different shapes altogether. The illusion was created by Kohske Takahashi of Chukyo University in Japan and published in the journal i-Perception.

“In the present study, the change of luminance contrast resulted in the percepts of segmentation, which would disrupt the curvature detection. We propose that the underlying mechanisms for the gentle curve perception and those of obtuse corner perception are competing with each other in an imbalanced way and the percepts of corner might be dominant in the visual system.”

White’s Illusion: There’s Only One Shade of Grey Here

The way our eyes adjust to brightness make the very same shade of gray appear either darker or lighter depending on whether it’s surrounded by black or white, as shown in this image. This is known as White’s Illusion, while the Munker-White Illusion is a similar phenomenon that occurs with alternating bars in different colors.

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Its All In Your Head 17 Optical Illusions Prove You Cant Trust Your Brain

Throughout the last year, dozens of terrifying monstrous butterflies as big as pterodactyls have begun landing on the facades of buildings throughout France, Austria and other European countries. Many of them appeared in Spain during September 2017 during the Festival Asalto, an international urban art festival showcasing mural artists. But, don’t worry, Mothra isn’t on the loose, after all, despite the incredible troupe l’oeil effect.

France-based street artist Mantra, who typically paints human subjects, has spent much of the last two years on a more entomological bent. His multi-story butterfly murals are framed and shaded like shadowboxes, making the giant Lepidopteras in the fourth stages of their lives look like preserved specimens under glass.

These ‘specimens’ are sometimes stacked as high as five stories, all the intricate details of their colorfully patterned wings magnified for our viewing pleasure. The shadow effects, which often still work at night as streetlights illuminate the facades of the buildings, really make the murals pop.

Here are a few examples of Mantra’s beautiful non-butterfly-related murals. Check out more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram.

Subway cars in Taipei have become swimming pools, basketball courts, baseball fields and track lanes to get residents amped for the upcoming 2017 Summer Universiade, an international multi-sport event for university athletes. While the installations mostly consist of photorealistic photographic murals stuck onto the floors, the illusion comes together pretty nicely, especially in the case of the swimming pool, which matches the existing subway car chairs and poles.

These ‘moving sporting venues’ will transport lots of tourists attending the events, and the city hopes to add to their excitement. The Universiade is the second-largest international sporting event after the Olympics, set to begin on August 19th and end on August 30th, and will include competitions in 22 different sports across 70 venues.

Images by: Taipei City Government Department of Information and Tourism, @skywu0326, @chi._.851229, @nikoleko1007