Museum of Illusions
We discovered how much vision affects how your brain interprets the world at the Museum of Illusions in Manchester
There are over 60 Museum of Illusions locations in the world, but currently there's only one in the UK - in Manchester. We decided to head to Manchester and check it out. Obviously, the name of the museum suggests that everything was going to be very visual, but we hoped that if everything was described well, John would also get something out of it.
We booked tickets online, as their website suggested. I bought an adult ticket for John and a student ticket for George. The website said you could collect a free carer ticket, with proof of being a carer, from the museum. It also said that proof of being a student would also need to be provided for that ticket.
The museum itself is on Market Street in Manchester City centre, and it's upstairs. There is an escalator going up, stairs and a lift, so the museum is accessible from that point of view. You enter the museum through the shop and they have lockers that are free to use, to store any items while you are in the museum. We had the tickets scanned and I asked about the carer ticket. I got the impression that this isn't something that many people ask for, as the girl behind the cash register wasn't sure how to do that, but fortunately there was someone there who did.
Some of the exhibits are hung on the walls and are optical illusions, where you need to move a shape around just to prove to yourself that two objects are exactly the same size.
It was hard to believe that these were all the same, until the magnetic object was placed on both items in the picture!
There was a long kaleidoscope exhibit, where one person stood at one end and another person stood at the other, and you looked into it. George and I tried this one out, so he could see lots of images of my face and I could see lots of images of his face.
There were several exhibits that were separate rooms - one of which made it appear that one person was very tall and one person was very small. John and George tried this one out. John looked like a giant in this room and George looked quite small, when in reality they are both around the same height.
Another room was where you could split yourself in half, with the help of a mirror. George had a go of this and had fun making a surprised face at us!
There was another exhibit that looked like cubes if you looked at it from one direction, but looked like pyramids if you looked at it from another. Another room was called the Room of Infinity, which we all went into and discovered that three is most definitely a crowd! After that John had a go at seemingly hanging from the roof of a house, like a bat! George didn't want to try this as he wouldn't have been able to get up again afterwards, plus there was a step up to get onto the exhibit.
Cubes or are they pyramids? Three's a crowd in the Room of Infinity. John's bat impression!
Next we went in a room, which made me realise just how much your brain interpreting what your eyes can see, can affect your perception of what is going on around you. This was a room that was reached by some steps. It had a bridge going from one side to the other and a cylindrical wall that was constantly turning anti-clockwise, and which also went under the bridge. The room itself was quite dimly lit. I was guiding John and, because he doesn't have vision, the bridge to him felt perfectly still. To me, with my eyes open, it felt like the bridge was moving, so I was staggering slightly, trying to keep my balance. It gave John an idea of the effect of the spinning wall when you can see it, as he was holding on to me as I was staggering.
The bridge is still and the walls are spinning.
The next room we saw showed how different colours can affect the images that your eyes can see. The room was lit with blue, red and green light, which showed all of the images, then it was lit with just blue light, then just red and finally just green. Each time the light colour changed, George and I could see different images.
The effect of different light colours on the images that your eyes can see.
Finally, George got the chance to play cards with himself, and we got to see what we look like when we're upside-down! John also ended up with his head on a platter! It's amazing what you can do with mirrors!
George playing cards. The three of us upside-down. John's head on a platter!
It took us just under an hour to go around the museum and look at all the exhibits, which for me personally I found a bit disappointing, as I thought that there would be more to see. Although John couldn't see any of the exhibits, he got a good understanding of how vision can affect how your brain interprets the world, which in turn affects how your body reacts. We enjoyed what we saw, but probably wouldn't return.
