Gaze at your own face in low light, and the face begins to change.
This is the strange-face illusion (Caputo, 2010), a robust perceptual effect: most people who gaze steadily at their own reflection in dim light see it begin to distort within a minute. Old traditions knew it as scrying; the laboratory measures it by how soon and how strongly it arrives, and both track how deeply your attention absorbs. Here it is both things at once: a genuine sitting, and a behavioral measure with no self-report in the moment, no noise source, nothing but your own response.
How to sit:
1 · Dim the lights in
your room.
2 · Prop the device about an arm’s length away, so your
face fills the circle.
3 · Rest your gaze on your own eyes and keep it there. Soft
gaze, normal blinking, no staring hard. That is the whole task.
4 · After a while your reflection may begin to look strange:
features shifting or melting, the face aging, becoming unfamiliar or
someone else’s, or fading toward grey.
5 · Tap the screen the instant you first notice your face
looking different in any way. That first tap is the measurement.
Then keep gazing, and tap again at each new change.
6 · If nothing changes, do not force it; sit the time and tap
nothing. That is a clean result too. Ten minutes; you can end
early.
Your camera is the mirror and nothing more. The feed is drawn on your screen and never recorded, stored, or sent anywhere. Only your tap times are kept.
The mirror needs the camera, and it was not given.
Nothing is recorded or sent; the feed only lights your own screen. If you prefer, sit with a physical mirror in dim light and the same soft gaze; the practice is identical, it simply is not measured.
Back to your recordHow strong did it become?
And what appeared? Choose any that fit.
First change at
Faster and stronger onsets track the absorption trait; a sitting with no change at all is also a clean result. Recorded to your profile, and the record never resets.
To your record