This example illustrates well the psychological phenomenon of pareidolia. It is he who makes us see a variety of images in random objects. In this article, we tried to understand the phenomenon of pareidolia, and also learned how it can play into the hands of artists and designers.
The word pareidolia comes from the Greek words para (para - near, about, deviation from something) and eidolon - image. The phenomenon is manifested in how in some visual images we see something distinct and definite - for example, the figures of people and animals in the clouds.
Let's find out more about this.
THERE ARE SEVERAL THEORIES REGARDING THE REASON FOR THE APPEARANCE OF THIS FEATURE IN HUMAN. Carl Sagan, American cosmologist and popularizer of science, argued that pareidolia was one of the survival tools of ancient humans. In his 1995 book, The Demon-Phantom World: Science Like a Candle in the Dark, he writes that the ability to recognize faces at a distance or in conditions of poor visibility was extremely important. In the course of evolution, a person developed a mechanism that made it possible to read a person's sex, emotions and other characteristics by just a glance.
The instinct made it possible for a person to instantly judge who was going to meet him - friend or foe. Homo sapiens learned this so well that we began to distinguish between people even where they are not. When we look at mechanisms, interior items, cars and other random objects, completely unconsciously we begin to see faces in them. Many blogs are devoted to this curiosity, where random items are published in which the features of living beings are clearly distinguishable.
EXPERTS ALSO STATEMENT THAT PAREIDOLIA GIVES MANY DELUSIONS, FOR EXAMPLE, ASSOCIATED WITH OBSERVATIONS OF UFOs, THE RESIDUAL ELVIS OR THE LOCHNESS MONSTER. As with the aforementioned burnt toast, pareidolia often has religious overtones. A study in Finland found that people who believe in God and other supernatural phenomena are more likely to see faces in inanimate objects and landscapes.
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Pareidolia is actively used by artists. Leonardo da Vinci also wrote about this phenomenon as an artistic technique. "If you look at any wall, dotted with different spots or lined with different types of stones, you can imagine entire scenes and see in it similarities with different landscapes, mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys and hills," one of his notebooks. One of the most famous artists who uses such illusions in his work is Hungarian Istvan Oros, who created a series of prints with harmless scenes, the compositions of which clearly depict a mystical skull.
ILLUSTRATOR SCOTT MCCLAUD MADE HIS FAVORITE ASSUMPTION ABOUT PAREIDOLIA. He noted that we can see the faces of people not only in electrical outlets, grates, chairs and other inanimate objects, but also in absolutely any curved geometric figure, if we add one point to its area. Exactly the same as an abstract smiley (which is two dots and a line), we regard it as a human face.
THE PHENOMENON OF PAREIDOLIA HAVE LEARNED TO IMITATE COMPUTER SYSTEMS. The face recognition system on Facebook and digital cameras works on the same principle. A curious example about a year ago was presented by an art group from Seoul Shinseungback Kimyonghun. The artists took photographs of the clouds, which for a brief moment merge into the likeness of a human face. They developed a script that used the OpenCV face detection library and connected a digital camera to the computer, pointing up at the sky. This way the system automatically detected and photographed human faces in the sky.
Pareidolia was also adopted by industrial designers. Aarron Walter, in his book Designing for Emotion, compares design to the hierarchy of needs of Maslow's pyramid. To be relevant and useful, product design must meet specific user needs. At the top of the pyramid, according to Maslow, is self-realization; in the case of design, it is emotion and personality that the product design should carry. In order to emphasize them, there are many ways - one of them can be a technique with anthropomorphization.
In 1915, the Coca Cola Company created the iconic Contour Bottle. This bottle quickly became associated with Mae West (an American actress and sex symbol of the early 20th century) because it resembled the shape of a woman's body. At the time, bottle designs rarely differed in shape from a regular cylinder. It is clear that the bottle with anthropomorphic characteristics has become more attractive, and many companies have tried to adopt this concept over the next decades. Until now, bottles of shampoos and other beauty products have curves that resemble a waist.
Cars are one of the clearest examples of anthropomorphism in design. Long before the Pixar studio introduced the cartoon Cars, people noticed the similarity of the front of the car with the face. Pulitzer Prize-winning automotive critic Dan Neil told Wired magazine: “Automakers know a lot about the human way of seeing faces in inanimate objects. Sometimes it plays into their hands, and sometimes it plays against them."
“AUTOMOTIVE DESIGNERS DO NOT SIMPLY THINK ABOUT THIS, BUT COMPLETELY CONSCIOUSLY GIVE THE“FACE”OF THE CAR ONE OR ANOTHER CHARACTER DEPENDING DIRECTLY ON THE AUDIENCE FOR WHICH THE AUTOMOTOR IS WORKING. Much depends on how and how successfully the designers managed to get into the heart of the buyer, displaying certain traits of the character of the car, but also on the popularity of the brand and the relevance of a particular model in the general range of the brand; there are many different unknown equations, but undoubtedly the underlying nature plays a very important role in the success of the model. For a young buyer, these are more often the aggressive features of a daring bully, family cars are neutral, like a typical family man with a little overweight, for big business tycoons - a confident, calm, with a share of elegance, presentable character - a copy of the owner.
By the way, one of the famous examples of pareidolia is the region in the northern hemisphere of Mars - Cydonia Mensae or the "Face of Mars". One of the weathered hills, which was captured in the photo from the Viking-1 station, looked like a huge stone statue of a humanoid face. And there are plenty of similar examples in space.
The German design studio Onformative is probably the largest and most systematic search for such images in the world. Their program, Google Face, will search for faces on Google maps for several months.
Google Face will scan the Earth multiple times at different angles. Now the program has already found a mysterious profile in the Magadan region, a man with hairy nostrils near Ashford in Kent, and some creature in the Alaskan mountains.
Berliners, of course, are not the first to look for faces where there are none.
Last year, a chicken nugget (cutlet) with a portrait of George Washington was sold on eBay - it went under the hammer for $ 8,100.
And 10 years ago, 20,000 Christians visited Bangalore to worship a chapati (lavash) depicting Jesus Christ. Some even prayed before this face.
In 2011, a blogger who collects photographs of objects similar to Hitler posted a photo of a modest house in Swansey, Wales on Tumblr. The sloping roof of the structure resembles the famous bangs of the dictator, and the doors with a small canopy are his characteristic mustache.
American department store chain JC Penney hit a big bunch this week after someone noticed on Reddit that one of its dummies looked like Hitler. The kettles were immediately sold out.
In 2009, the Allen family from Ystrad, Wales, opened a jar of Marmite (a paste made from yeast extract) and saw the face of Jesus on the lid instead of the usual brown spots.
And the American Diana Dyser in 1994, after taking a bite of toast with cheese, saw the Virgin Mary on it. The woman stored the half-eaten sandwich for over 10 years, and eventually put it up on eBay. The lot received 17 million views and was sold for $ 28,000.
Google Face developers Cedric Kiefer and Julia Lab were also inspired by Pareidolia.
While most of the faces are distorted enough to resemble avant-garde characters, some are "so realistic that it's hard to believe they were random," he adds.
But why do people see faces in spots or folds in relief?
First, thanks to evolution, says Dr. Nushin Gadzhihani of Harvard University. People are “programmed” to recognize faces from birth, she says.
“Even a newborn reacts to a schematic representation of a face and does not respond to drawings where the eyes, nose and mouth are in the wrong order,” says the scientist.
Even primitive people knew how to isolate familiar objects from the background, says Christopher French of the British Psychological Society.
“We have developed a brain that thinks quickly but inaccurately. Therefore, sometimes it misleads us, - he explains. - A classic example: a Cro-Magnon is standing, scratching his head and thinking: what is rustling in the bushes - a tribesman or a saber-toothed tiger? In this situation, those who believe in a saber-toothed tiger and run away in time have a better chance of survival. Others run the risk of falling into the maw of prey."
Other experts believe that Pareidolia is an effect of our brain. He is constantly processing information from the outside, analyzing lines, shapes, surfaces and colors, says Joel Voss, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University.
The brain assigns meaning to these images - usually by comparing them with information stored in long-term memory. But sometimes he comes across "ambiguous" things that he mistakenly correlates with familiar objects. This is Pareidolia.
It can also be triggered by our desire to see certain things, according to neuroscientist Sophie Scott at University College London.
“When you discern the face of Jesus on the toast, it’s not talking to us about the toast, but about your expectations and how you interpret the world based on your expectations,” she says.
If the crust on the sandwich has already formed for you in the profile of the Virgin Mary, this picture will be firmly fixed in your mind, says Bruce Goode, author of Self-Deception.
“This is one of the properties of illusions: it is very difficult to return to its original state and again see a spot on the spot, and not something else,” he says.
But the ability to discern a silhouette on a toast or a fence does not explain why people are willing to buy these artifacts for a lot of money or worship them.
For some, pareidolia evokes strong emotions - especially if the person is inclined to believe in miracles, says Scott.
“This demonstrates how powerful such illusions are. We really want to see these faces, we really want to hear these voices, and therefore our perception system will make sure that we see and hear them,”he adds.
For some, pareidolia is evidence of the supernatural, says Good. “People are specifically looking for such things around them,” he says.
The object itself can also take on special significance, says French. People believe that he is divine, that he bears the "seal of God" and that he is "happy," he says.
But you don't have to be religious to be positive about pareidolia.
“I don't believe these silhouettes have any religious meaning,” says French. - But they are so cute and neat, you must agree!