Mixed Signals Gallery

How do you process your visual world?

Reopening on September 26th

Mixed Signals was developed by MNS design team in 2007 with faculty and students from the University of Texas at Dallas. Our special gratitude to Russell Hulse, Vice President of Science at UTD and Nobel Laureate, for consulting with us to develop this exhibition.

Mixed Signals is an experience about how you process your visual world. Vision is much more than a camera-like eye taking in images of the world. It is a complex neurobiological process that starts with chemical responses in the rods and cones of our retinas to the electromagnetic energy of light reflecting off objects and entering the eyeball and ending with visual perception after it has been processed by many areas of our brain. How we can visually perceive the world arises from physiological contexts impressed on our visual processing system by millions of years of neurological adaptation.

The story of Mixed Signals unfolds with a series of delightful interactive elements for you to enjoy, mostly optical illusions that play with those physiological contexts and stimulate cognitive confusion.