How image orientation influences perception Im a painter for many years. When I paint, I usually walk around and look at my painting for many hours. When painting session is long, it harder and harder to maintain a "fresh look".

By fresh look; I mean state of mind (perception) when I am as objective about my work as possible. The longer the session continues and painting is changed; its harder for me to be objective about it.

To be objective and fresh, artists would take many 5-min breaks in one painting session. I used to do that too, until I learned a "strange trick" from my friend.

Whole trick is to take your painting and just rotate it about 90 or 180 degrees for a moment and look at it. Surprisingly, this gives a fresh (somehow new) perspective at painting.

I would like to ask; why is that?

It seems to me, that somehow brain filters out many informations about images that it knows. When I rotate my image; it is recognized as different (not "known").

Any research on described phenomenon?
No life can emerge in chaos - for life to emerge the environment has to be orderly. Organisms have to adapt to their environment, meaning optimise (or satisfice) output in light of input. In a patternless environment, there is no chance doing so.

Our brain evolved in light of this - we constantly learn and update what the "norm" is - let it be there's light if it's day or the hair colour of your partner. Equally, the brain constantly compares stimuli to the norm - if it's all good, no action needed, but a deviation from the norm shall raise an alarm bell.

Thus, we are 'programmed' to ignore what's normal, and be alert to the abnormal. Perhaps the most famous example of it is the sound of mechanical clock, which is simply not perceived once we spend enough time in the room it is in.

In your specific case, seeing the same image for a prolong time results in it becoming a norm in our brain, resulting in reduced brain activity.