The glissando illusion was first reported and demonstrated by Diana Deutsch in Musical Illusions and Paradoxes, 1995. An auditory illusion, it is created when a sound with a fixed pitch, such as a synthesized oboe tone, is played together with a sine wave gliding up and down in pitch, and they are both switched back and forth between stereo loudspeakers. The effect is that the oboe is heard as switching between loudspeakers while the sine wave is heard as joined together seamlessly, and as moving around in space in accordance with its pitch motion. Right-handers often hear the glissando as traveling from left to right as its pitch glides from low to high, and then back from right to left as its pitch glides from high to low. Left-handers often obtain different illusions.
Famous quotes containing the word illusion:
“Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred from one perception to another. This painting here. I bought it 10 years ago for 60 thousand dollars. I could sell it today for 600. The illusion has become real and the more real it becomes, the more desperately they want it.”
—Oliver Stone (b. 1946)