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There’s always more than one way to see something. Are the two standing figures safe inside a building, or teetering on the outside? And is the hanging figure holding onto one of the two sides closest to us, or furthest from us?

The image itself is a macro photo of a harshly-backlit cube prism. I flipped the image upside-down and added some stick-figures. Oh, and there’s a bit more optical trickery going on here. The cube prism’s 6 faces are completely smooth–it’s not split up into additional squares. Given the right angle though, it appears sort of like a 4×4 Rubik’s Cube, which it simply is not. All the additional squares are really not “there.”

One thing I’m a little curious about, is if some of you perceive this image 2-D more readily than 3-D; that is, a simple, flat design, vs a cube with depth. Without enough cues, it’s tough for the brain to decipher between 2-D and 3-D. In this case, the shading isn’t very strong, and the foreground-background changes in size aren’t very noticeable. Just curious; I’d like to know.

More info: flickr.com

Inside Outside