Wednesday 4 November 2015

Pareidolia

A friend has introduced me to the term pareidolia being a stimulus that the mind interprets as a familiar pattern, where none exists. 




Coincidently, I had took this picture this morning. I called it introspection, thinking of how i feel when reflecting deeply about actions.

This was taken along the old Yuin Trace - the path used by the first people to traverse the Yandyguinula over the ranges around Palerang towards the coast.

I wonder if there is a term to cover off a slightly different case of pareidolia, with the added condition that the pattern should exist. Maybe it is a simple mirror, or +Ann Pollak 's Heterotopia.

+Nina Anthonijsz thought in this she saw a tortured soul. 
I grew up with the idea that trees grow fairly uniformly, each branch growing more sturdy and becoming, in turn, a base for new growth. But trees do not really grow this way. Exposed to heat and cold and wind, they bend into the shape of the air around them. From a single tree, you can infer what other trees may have been around it, 50, 100, 200 years before. Trees loose branches and grow new ones, constantly changing shape.
Only when a tree finally dies does its shape take a final form, as the tree moves into a age of slowly being eaten inside out and losing lesser then larger elements.
So too the outer features of the tree giving rise to the face. When next I look, a different painting will be revealed.




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