Have you ever seen faces in the clouds or the outlines of animals on rocks? Of course. This is perfectly normal, says Rolf Dobelli in The Art of Thinking Clearly. The human brain, he explains, seeks patterns and rules, and, if it finds no patterns, it invents some.
At the Mind Tripping team, we’re very familiar with the power of the human brain to make connections – including wrong connections, because that’s exactly what happens at each one of our shows – audience members invariably make wrong connections – and love it! Popular Mechanics talks about why, when reality tricks our brains—we actually like it.
“By definition, in an optical illusion, what we are seeing disagrees with physical reality,” Popular Mechanics explains, “and it astonishes us when we realize that what we thought we saw is completely different from what was real. Most of the time, we humans walk through the world without giving the outside world our complete attention (anyone who has zoned out while driving knows this feeling.) But when something new and unexpected happens, we perk up and pay attention.”
Aude Oliva, a cognitive scientist from MIT, says that the human brain is really tuned to learning new things, and “anything that is new and surprising is something we naturally like because it means that we may learn something from it.”
That must be what accounts for the fact that the Mind Tripping Show is the longest running live theatre show in Indianapolis. Intimate and interactive, it brings together mind reading, influence, psychological illusions and comedy to challenge perceptions and turn expectations upside down. As one young woman who attended Christian & Katalina’s show described it to her friends: Think Candid Camera meets the Twilight Zone!
– by Opti of the Mind Tripping Show blog team