With the birth of the op art movement in the 1960s, illusions became a recognized art form. The most striking examples of op art are kinetic illusions in which stationary patterns create the perception of motion. In this reinterpretation of French op artist Isia Léviant’s famous Enigma by neuroscientist and engineer Jorge Otero-Millan of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, the concentric green rings appear to fill with rapid illusory motion, as if millions of tiny and barely visible cars were driving hell-bent for leather around a track. Small, involuntary eye movements, called microsaccades, are responsible for this illusion.
