I am so rarely in on the joke that it makes me sad. I'm almost always on the periphery, wondering at the secret whisperings of others. "What happened to Bill? Oh, he put on weight; his wife is cute though." No metaphor illustrates this unfortunate social marginalization better than that of the accursed Magic Eye Painting. I hate you, Magic Eye Paintings; I am smarter, more complex and special than you'll ever be. Still, I don't have an ethereal image of a schooner or a terrier "hidden" inside of me.
For example, in the pattern of roses to the right, one supposedly can see a ghostlike image of "Your Mother After I Fucked Her" – just not working for me. In the "trippy" pattern below left, if one takes great care not to look too hard, supposedly the image of "Bums on a Chow Line" will eventually reveal itself. In the third image down on the right, if one presses one's nose to it and then slowly backs away while "unfocusing" one's eyes, the magical image of "Michael Moynihan Fan Base" will show up. NO IT WON'T! It just won't. Ever.
People will tell you, "Don't focus your eyes!" – "Don't look directly at it!" – "OK, do you want me to tell you? It's a clown—don't you see it?" Nope. No clowny for William. What I do see are the manufacturer's deliberately obfuscating "instructions" for "3D viewing" here. The truth, however, and by this I mean an objective, The-Beatles-were-pretty-darn-good kind of truth, is that there's NOTHING THERE! Excuse the caps, I forget myself...but really, come on: there simply are no hidden images within Magic Eye Paintings. There are, however, two kinds of people.
Good writing 101 tells us to never use clichés. In fact, Paul R. Hensel, a damn funny guy from the Department of Political Science at Florida State University says, "Avoid clichés like the plague." But in this case I couldn't resist saying that there are really only two kinds of people (I also couldn't resist starting this sentence with a conjunction—See! Anyone can write advertising copy!): (1) Those who pretend to see the hidden images in Magic Eye Paintings, and with a wink and a nod conspire to continually mock and subjugate person type two; (2) those, like myself, who are honest people, freely admitting that there's simply nothing there and getting treated the fool for it.
Magic Eye Paintings are also a fine metaphor for all conspiratorial shams that pit one sector of the public (the "seers," if you will) against the other ("non-seers"), similar to the classic Emperor's New Clothes, but a move executed not out of courtly propriety, but rather a subtly malicious need to forge an elite subgroup (which is usually in fact the socially dominant majority.)
Take this sentence: "Wilco are the Magic Eye Paintings of Rock." This simply says that some are "in on" the less obvious, deeper meaning of the subject, and some are not—the perfection of my metaphor suggesting of course that there may indeed be no inner meaning to glean. Philip K. Dick once said when asked for "a short, simple definition of reality": "Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away."* You all have my permission, in fact I encourage you, to stop believing and then see what's still there.
With respect to the fact that Magic Eye Paintings as a phenomenon are somewhat passé (and the perception of them as frustrating unquestionably the fodder of 90s sitcoms), this has been brewing within me for several years; I choose not when the information is ready to be released. Let us not forget the multi-million-dollar industry in books, prints and other Magic Eye ephemera; the allusion to some sort of postmodern, sci-fi, Sharper Image-style psychedelia (whose blasphemy simply cannot be tolerated); and most importantly the cabal that unites those irritating ball-busters in a movement against us honest, truth-seeing and truth-telling people.
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*from VALIS, copyright © 1981 by Philip K. Dick.
though i'm sure your blog goes for deeper metaphor than the obvious discussion of the magic eye paintings, let me say that it helps if you have sucky vision to begin with. If your eyes tend to blur or cross naturally, or you kinda look at the world like you don't give a shit,(stare at things slack jawed and vacantly) then the pictures are easy to see. truely, a zen process if there ever was one.
you can cross your eyes just a bit until the repeated pattern overlaps and then lock in. the tricky part is holding into that locked gaze. crossing your eyes will give you the inverse of the image though,(instead of protruding, the image will be recessed) but should be good enough to get you by when your friend asks what it is.
the rose picture has a heart in it. the boxes one has no image that i can tell, but does become very three dimensional. the last one i can't tell. either a bunch of balloons or a bunch of flowers.. because i see it recessed.
seeing as how these computer generated 'paintings' haven't been in daily life since they were last in a mall calendar kiosk in 1998, i don't think you have much to worry about.
but i think your same metaphor for 'two kinds of people' when it comes to musicphiles. those that strive to namedrop the most obscure bands ever and know all of the sub-sub-sub genres, and those that just enjoy unique sound and may even stumble upon creating what will later be coined by some hipster as a new subgenre.(ex: progressive innuit bluegrass hip hop, aka proginbluhop)
there are those that look too hard and pretend to know what's going on, and those that just DO and don't think twice about it.
Posted by: zom | June 17, 2008 at 09:25 AM
A long long time ago I intended to call my ASCAP publishing identity "Let's Kill The Guy Who Invented Magic Eye"
Posted by: John D. | June 17, 2008 at 09:43 AM
I agree that this is a pulling of the wool over our collective eyes. As someone with astigmatism and wildly divergant visual acuity between my orbs, I never saw the Magic Eye paintings. Thickipedia sez, "Many people cannot see Magic Eye images due to one eye being significantly dominant over the other." And mood rings never really worked either.
Posted by: Krys_O. | June 17, 2008 at 09:54 AM
You ever see that episode of Star Trek: Next Gen, where everyone is hooked on a weird, simplistic, Tetris-like video game, and it turns out its actually a mind-control device in disguise? THATS how I feel about those magic eye thingys.
Posted by: illlich | June 17, 2008 at 11:28 AM
GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!
Posted by: Vicki | June 17, 2008 at 01:01 PM
These things just look like bad abstract art from the '80s to me. I understand that if you stare long enough you see bad still life from the 70s, but I've never been so fortunate. I did though finish re-reading Valis about a week ago, it still holds up but I am not too keen on the Jungian parts, something I did not pick up on first time around. I guess it's just my acquired bias against people who wrote fan letters to the Nazi party showing through.
Posted by: bartleby | June 17, 2008 at 01:14 PM
I keep staring at Wilco too - just not seeing the supersonic rocketship. :(
Posted by: schlep | June 17, 2008 at 03:29 PM
y'allz just jealous. seriously, if you need a lesson, i'll bring in my dinosaur landscape and we'll do a tutotial. free with donation of one bud light to me
Posted by: Trent | June 17, 2008 at 05:49 PM
Ooo-ooo-ooo!
Another opportunity to gloat and brag about my super human ability to see Magic Eye images almost instantly!
Its kind of disturbing... what's wrong with my eyes!?
Posted by: Jake | June 17, 2008 at 07:28 PM
There are essentially two kinds of people in this world; people who constantly divide the world into two kinds of people, and people who don't.
Posted by: Parq | June 17, 2008 at 08:14 PM
i can't believe trent undersold me.
Posted by: bryce | June 18, 2008 at 03:00 PM
i never can see anything in magic eye paintings, and the wonder of Wilco is lost on me as well.
Posted by: robin | June 18, 2008 at 04:14 PM
All the irony in the post confused me.
Posted by: Will Grizzly | June 19, 2008 at 11:27 AM
The Magic Eye pictures/books were, to me, like the FIELD DAYs of Elementary School. I'd fake my way through them by pretending to get hit with a ball and going to the nurse.
First of all, I'm near sighted in one eye and far sighted in the other (and no optometrist pointed this out to me until I was 23, even though I've worn glasses since I was five). I've never seen THE MAGIC (I'm also an under achiever, so that might be part of it).
Often, I'd outright LIE! "Oh yeah, I see it!" Then I'd change the subject to something more pertinent, like what was going on with Melrose Place (see, THAT was ANOTHER LIE. I NEVER watched Melrose Place).
My whole LIFE is a fuzzy sham!!!
Posted by: Petrina | June 21, 2008 at 09:53 PM
I have seen pictures in the magic eye books. It is possible. Don't give up hope.
But appreciate Wilco? Sorry, thats impossible. Every song sounds the same.
Posted by: Norm | June 22, 2008 at 01:36 PM
My parents had a magic eye book with a skull in it.
I loved that skull.
Posted by: Alex | June 28, 2008 at 01:59 PM
Wow...you're wayyyyyy into this "magic eye conspiracy" crap. You're right... there are no bums or phrases about your mother... whoever told you that was a lie. The picture with the roses has just has a 3-d heart. The picture with the cubes just becomes 3-d...no hidden picture. The last picture has some kind of flower, it kind of looks like two balloons and a long branch, but it's meant to be a flower because the picture was made with the flower pots you see in the normal photo.
Posted by: | July 10, 2008 at 02:16 AM
Wow, anonymous, you're wayyyyyy not into sarcasm or "subtle" satire. But since you can actually "see" those hidden images, you're one of THEM anyway.
Posted by: WmMBerger | November 17, 2008 at 02:10 PM
For those that don’t know, they work by taking advantage of the nuances of stereoscopic vision. To see the three dimensional image, you must force one eye to focus on one part of the picture while the other focuses on a very similar but slightly different adjacent section. The slight differences in what the eyes are seeing are interpreted by the brain as a three dimensional image.
Posted by: iZon lenses | July 31, 2012 at 11:21 AM