A Trippy Trip: Twist Museum Review

Ever wondered what it would be like to see your family shrink before your eyes? How about inviting five replicas of yourself to a tea party? Maybe you’d simply like to go on a hallucinatory journey without resorting to illegal substances?

Welcome to Twist Museum.

Located in the heart of London, this is a world away from what you’d expect to find on Oxford Street. Just a few doors down from John Lewis, you can lose yourself in a mind-altering immersive experience which will leave you questioning how your brain interprets reality.

Sense of play

Twist Museum has been dubbed a ‘a playground of the perceptions’ and it’s not hard to see why. In the first room, you’re met by a wall of brightly coloured umbrellas, which you gradually realise are actually beige. From there, you can explore several more zones which stimulate the senses by combining art and science.

Visitors are encouraged to gets hands-on with many of the installations. One space allows you to move around and cast neon shadows on the wall. There are mirrored rooms to explore and tunnels to look through, immersing you in a kaleidoscopic wonderland. You can even create a 3D holographic image of your head!

Just like magic

Some exhibits are pretty simple, but their strengths lie in experiencing them with other people and understanding (or not understanding!) how a particular visual effect happens. A great detail is the accompanying information signage which explains why a particular optical illusion happens, such as a picture of grey strawberries which the brain will still process in a way that makes you believe the fruit is red.

Other zones focus on perspective. Black and white lines trick the eye into thinking a person in one corner of a room is a giant while the person in another corner is teeny-tiny. A chair that is broken into several sections which are placed at different points on the floor suddenly becomes complete when viewed from exactly the right angle. Another room is painted in a way that makes it seem like the floor is undulating, even though it’s perfectly flat.

The weird and wonderful illusions aren’t just limited to the optical either. In the sound lab area, you hear water being poured – and realise you can identify whether it’s hot or cold simply from the noise it makes. (I thought this was down to me being obsessed with cups of tea, but apparently not.)

Say what you see

‘TWIST’ is an acronym for ‘The Way I See Things’, and as well as the exhibition offering a whole load of fun, it can also encourage really interesting conversations about unique perspectives, the ambiguity of reality and how we interpret the world around us.

You can book tickets online, which is a better deal than buying them at the venue.

It’s not the cheapest, especially as you won’t need a whole afternoon there, but the experience will certainly inspire wonder, stimulate minds of all ages and be completely unforgettable.