Magic Eye Gallery: A Showing Of 88 Images
by N.E. Thing Enterprises

I am pleasantly surprised that this treasury of eighty-eight colourful random-dot stereograms is still around. The publisher is apparently the leading pioneer in this field. I thought the 'craze' had faded towards the end of the nineties.

Personally, I am also fascinated by random-dot stereograms. My first exposure to them happened when I attended the PhotoReading workshop in 1992 & then reading Andrew Kinsman's wonderful book, 'Random Dot Stereograms', about the same time. Besides books, I have also amassed a large collection of posters & post-cards in the same genre.

My personal stance towards random-dot stereograms is that they help to demonstrate the two specific phenomena of human perception i.e. binocular disparity & stereoscopic vision.

Although they are great fun to play with, I find them very educational in understanding - & appreciating - how the brain really works! In actuality, each of your two eye balls take in sensory data independently from each other. To see a random dot stereogram, your two eye balls must work together as a coordinated team to sustain a soft focus (or unfocused gaze). In other words, it takes two eye balls to tango!

For some people, random dot stereograms may be difficult to see (especially during the first attempt) when compared to conventional visual illusions found in 'Can You Believe Your Eyes' & 'Seeing Double' by J Richard Block respectively.

I often notice that many people can see the colourful random dot stereograms more readily than the black & white ones!

For your further visual entertainment, I would like to suggest the following collections, also published by N E Thing Enterprises:

- Magic Eye: A New Way of Looking at the World;
- Magic Eye Vol 2;
- Magic Eye Vol 3;
- Magic Eye: A New Bag of Tricks;

To conclude this review, I can only say that when you can readily see random dot stereograms, irrespective whether they are in colour or black & white, you will be able to understand & appreciate the power of 'splatter vision' practised by secret service agents, army snipers, fighter pilots, martial artists, fast readers, animal hunters & nature observers.

This book it TOTTALLY amazing. it has a hidden 3-d image inside a 3-d backaround. I do not even no how they do it without 3-d glasses. It is so easy to use to when you get used to it. later on you will just start starring into random pictures. You may think that is stupid but even though it sounds boring it, you will be sitting down starring at one picture for so long. You will love the stunning 3-d effects. I started getting into this by buying a 3-d spongebob book. It didn't include 3-d glasses so I borroed them. Then I tyhought myswell have some fun wlile I have the 3-d glasses so I searched the internet for pictures that need 3-d glasses. I found so much. Then I learned the cross eyed one. I get that one. Then i learned the parrelell trick. That was o.k. Then I found a wierd site in my search results. It said "magic eye". I looked at it. Then the next day I hatdto give the glasses back. I was sad. I looked at that site again [...] I noticed it did not need 3-d glasses and there was only one image of it instead of 2. I looked into it. I did not believe it at first. I thought it was fake. To see if i was right I printed one out. I looked at the directions. I got fustratted because I couldn't see it(it was saturn). right befor I was about to put it down I saw a big 3-d circle made of stars. Then a ring sorrounded it. I was amazed

The images in the book are cool and there are a lot of them, but sadly the book cannot take much handling-my copy of M.E.G. has about 3 pages that have detattached. I have other 3-d image books and they are hard cover with durable binding, which is very necessary since the book gets a lot of handling when people are trying to see the images especially for the 2 page spreads.

This is kind of a "best of" compilation of their previous "magic eye" books -- but some of the 3-D images are really obscure. Even when I can see the image clearly, I can't figure out what it is. And even when I look at the back for the "key" to all the figures, I still don't know why they bothered! But it makes an interesting conversation piece. And it's pretty habit-forming. This is a really good book to have on hand for a party or anywhere you want to break the ice.