A static image that appears to move is exactly the sort of thing the web was made to pass around. Akiyoshi Kitaoka went much further and built a research library around why that happens.
Visit Akiyoshi Kitaoka’s illusion pages
Kitaoka is a perception researcher at Ritsumeikan University whose site has been online since 2002 and was still receiving updates in 2026.
The page includes motion illusions, color and lightness illusions, shape effects, outdoor examples, catalogs, papers, books, programs, teaching material, and years of experimental visual designs.
One of the best-known works is “Rotating snakes,” a 2003 image in which circular patterns appear to rotate even though the picture itself is static.
The site does not stop at the visual trick.
It links to explanations and research behind the effect.
Half gallery, half laboratory notebook
That combination makes the site unusual.
A visitor can arrive because an image looks impossible, then move directly into perception science. The artwork becomes the doorway to questions about luminance, motion, color, contrast, peripheral vision, and how the visual system constructs what we think we see.
Kitaoka also keeps older pieces visible alongside newer work.
That makes the site a chronology of research and visual experimentation rather than a portfolio that erases yesterday every time something new is published.
It also preserves the web culture around scientific demonstration.
These images were designed to be experienced directly in a browser. The page itself functions as exhibition, teaching aid, bibliography, archive, and experiment index.
The site warns that some anomalous-motion illusions may make sensitive viewers dizzy and also states clear restrictions around commercial reuse of the images. The archive is for looking and learning, not strip-mining artwork.
CacheRat’s 1,967 Ancient Web Domains research list contains many specialist pages, but few blur research and visual culture this cleanly.
Kitaoka’s site demonstrates an old-web strength at its best: a professor can publish the lab, the gallery, and the explanation in the same place.