In college a friend told me about an artist who lived for several days wearing glasses that turned his vision upside down. Apparently after a day or so his brain adjusted to his new perspective so remarkably that he saw the world as being upside down when he finally took the glasses off.  The story stuck in my mind and when I got an invite to create an optical illusion for some Berkeley neuroscience friends it all came back to me.

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I wanted a design that was simple, elegant, and finished. I’d been doing a lot of experiments with flat pack assembly and had access to a laser cutter so everything fell into place.

The final product works pretty well, although the field of vision is fairly narrow. It probably doesn’t allow a large enough range of vision to be worn for several days at a time, but is very fun as an experiment.

You can download the pattern on Thingiverse.