Pseudoscience, Pareidolia and Art

I’ve posted these videos (which are supposedly physical evidence of ghosts) as I feel that they touch upon several different psychological and perceptual phenomena that are relevant to viewing art, things that are difficult to discuss without sounding vague because, as the films demonstrate, they are inherently subjective.






These internal, pre-cognitive processes of pattern recognition are innate and instinctive and as such specific to us as individuals and impossible to communicate with any degree of tangibility. It is these ancient facets of perception and imagination which enable us to recognize familiar forms such as faces or voices when they are apparent, and also occasionally lead us to believe such forms are present when in fact they are not.

Joe Banks is a sound artist who works with these forms in his project Rorsasch Audio



“The greatest value of illusions in fine art practice and scientific psychology lies not in their novelty value but in their power to reveal facets of these normal mental processes that generate illusions in the first place.
The habit of reading meaning into artworks is an extension of reflexes which are hard-wired into everybody’s perceptual mechanism, excercising this faculty is the essence of artistic appreciation.”

This quote is taken from a talk by Joe Banks which can be viewed in full here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fLxs9H0-t4&feature=related

DaVinci also saw value in using his imagination to project meaning and pattern onto random forms,

“How highly Leonardo valued a free play of the imagination is shown in the most famous passage in his Treatise on Painting, where he says he will not refrain ‘from including among these precepts a new and speculative idea, which although it may seem trivial and almost laughable, is none the less of great value in quickening the spirit of the invention. It is this: that you should look at certain walls stained with damp or at stones of uneven colour. If you have to invent some setting you will be able to see in these the likeness of divine landscapes, adorned with mountains, ruins, rocks, woods, great plains, hills and valleys in great variety; and then again you will see there battles and strange figures in violent action, expressions of faces and clothes and an infinity of things which you will be able to reduce to their complete and proper forms. In such walls the same thing happens as in the sound of bells, in whose strokes you may find every word which you can imagine.’
Later he repeats this suggestion in slightly different form, advising the painter to study not only marks on walls, but also ‘the embers of the fire, or clouds or mud, or other similar objects from which you will find most admirable ideas… because from a confusion of shapes the spirit is quickened to new inventions.’

Although these are common subliminal experiences that we all share, these facets of the imagination evade empirical analysis and standardization and exist out of reach of a firm collective understanding. I’m drawn to the idea of working within these pseudo scientific boundaries, trying and failing to establish and impose rules and rigour upon the imagination, or conversely forcing products of the imagination into the standardized modes of scientific representation.