Watch Angelina and her celebrity friends become hideously ugly as strange 'flashed face' optical illusion video effect works its horrible magic



Liv Tyler's face warps into the image of hideous old crone, and Tom Cruise's chin distorts beyond all recognition.



No, it isn't a vision of the future - it's a strange effect achieved by looking at a space 'between' flashing pictures of human faces.

'We aligned a set of faces at the eyes and started to skim through them. After a few seconds, we noticed that some of the faces began to appear highly deformed and grotesque,' say the University of Queensland researchers who uncovered the effect.

The viewer looks at a cross hair in the centre of the screen as the video cycles through two sets faces - which are all aligned at eye height.

To start with their seems to be no discernible effect.

But after a short time the faces rapidly become distorted and look grossly deformed.

Researchers Jason M Tangen, Sean C Murphy and Matthew B Thompson published their results in the on-line journal Perceptions.

An extract of the paper said: 'The degree of distortion is greatest for faces that deviate from the others in the set on a particular dimension (eg if a person has a large forehead, it looks particularly large).'

The strange effect is 'summoned' by watching a cross in between two panels of 'flashing' human faces

The viewer looks at a cross hair in the centre of the screen as the video cycles through two sets faces - which are all aligned at eye height

The researchers are yet to explain what causes the effect after it was accidentally discovered by Mr Murphy.

In a blog his colleague Mr Thompson said the effect may 'have something to do with relative encoding.

He wrote: 'That is, forcing people to encode each face in light of the others.



'By eye-aligning the faces, it becomes much easier to compare their shape and the relative location of their features, so the differences between them become more evident.'



