Reprinted from The Mystery Science Theater Amazing Colossal Episode Guide with permission from Best Brains, Inc.

Which way is Crow facing when he's in the theater, toward us or toward the screen?

row faces toward the screen, and away from the viewer. This is a common illusion referred to as a visual ambiguity. You see, Crow's head, although three-dimensional, is blackened by the shadow effect, and as an object it tends to reverse depth depending on its orientation and that of the viewer. The motion parallax is misread, as the apparent distances of the near and far surfaces fluctuate. This phenomenon is demonstrated scientifically by the Necker Cube (see Fig. a), although the Crow head (see Fig. b) is not ruled out as a clinical tool. It is theorized that this sort of ambiguity is cognitive, depending on how data are being interpreted as objects; when perception becomes ambiguous, each visual possibility is entertained in turn. We hope there are no further questions on this matter.*

*R. L. Gregory, The Oxford Companion to the Mind (New York: Oxford University press, 1987), pp.339-40.

ack to Interview.

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