My pareidolia knows no bounds.

Richard,

Re: the Checkershadow Illusion. This (type of) illusion has always struck me as less of an illusion and more of a trick question. As the terms are commonly used when talking about a checkerboard pattern, "A" actually is one of the dark squares and "B" actually is one of the light squares. This is the trick, and it is intended to lead the reader astray.

But if one asks "is A darker than, lighter than, or the same shade as B?", then the trick is removed and we are left with a true illusion. A true illusion that does in fact demonstrate that we do not always correctly interpret what we see.

LB

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Larry Burford</i>
<br /> As the terms are commonly used when talking about a checkerboard pattern, "A" actually is one of the dark squares and "B" actually is one of the light squares. This is the trick, and it is intended to lead the reader astray.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote"> Yes, that's true, but I don't remember thinking about that part of it, the first time I saw it. I believe the first time I saw it, it said something like "A and B are the same shade of grey". And then the viewer had to convince himself of that with the animation.

rd

Astronomers are quite familiar with contrast illusions. Sunspots look black on the Sun's photosphere, but are actually white, bright, and hot (just not as bright as the surroundings). Comets are actually blacker than coal dust, but look white relative to the almost totally black background sky. The checkerboard and other illusions are interesting, but the connection to pareidolia is obscure. However, let's think about it.

All images on our visual screens are reconstructions by the subconscious, and are faithful to the incoming photons only to the extent that our subconscious allows them to be. The subconscious learns in infancy what to place on the visual screen and how to present it, and continues to refine its programming as we age.

So when it comes to the Cydonia Face, what one sees is literally a function of what each person's subconscious programming allows to be seen. In schizophrenia, or when normal persons use LSD, we see things indistinguishable from reality that are not there. More commonly for everyone, things we don't want to see are not presented to us unless someone isolates them so plainly that they can no longer be programmed away by the subconscious.

So when trying to distinguish pareidolia from artificiality, could it be that all of us are slaves to the programs in our respective subconscious minds? If so, is there a technique we can adopt to overcome these limitations and internal illusions?

If there is, I'll bet it requires getting rid of pre-programmed subconscious biases as its first step. -|Tom|-

We are hard-wired at birth to see faces, mostly faces that are actually there, such as ones mother's face (not pareidolia). By adulthood, we have been to a great extent, soft wired by society, to not see pareidolic images, unless we look for them. If one spends many hours looking for them as i have, they start to pop up even when not intentionally looked for, as when driving down the road they will appear out of leaf patterns in passing trees. This is an unintentional and automatic re-wiring of the visual process, but one could intentionally re-wire ones system if one choose to do so, by spending many hours searching for pareidolia.

pareidoliac,

I think you are over playing the skeptics talking points here. I believe you have placed too much confidence in the theory that as humans we are “hard wired” at birth to recognize faces and therefore see faces everywhere - in clouds, trees, sand and potato chips –
including Mars.


If this were true – we would be consumed by our innate subconscious yearning to seek out faces everywhere, much like you have. The truth is we are “hard wired” to recognize movement and patterns.



Because there seems to be a great misunderstanding in the validity of many of these geoglyphic structures that are found on Mars and the many fals images that are being found, at this point in the discussion - as an artist- I’d like to address the anthropomorphic effect of topographic images suggesting the construction of an artistically formed feature.


First of all because the brain wishes to make sense of the chaos of a visual field it will focus on familiar aspects in the image that can be recognized and “create order.” Certain aerial photography (satellite images) of land forms may produced disproportionate or distorted views of formations in some manner that may create shapes that at best only subjectively correspond to something recognizable. Strange mask-like faces and animal shapes can sometimes be found in
these images. This phenomenon is called simulacrum and pareidolia or false image. These types of illusions are normally just web-like contours without any substance or real depth. These types of images tend to be distorted and grotesque and are for the most part simply impressionistic.

Overall these types of images are considered “projections”and cannot form a complete proportional face or create a full-bodied representation of a face or animal. No matter how you look at them or enhance them, these formations are just abstractions and will never conform to the right shape, size, and orientation of a real figurative work of art.



In order for our eye to be able to recognize an object we have to understand the process of “image formation.” We perceive images as a whole instead of as isolated elements because of the principles of depth perception and the limits of image fusion.

For our eye to be able to fuse the pixels of a Mars Global Surveyor image (or on this computer screen) into a cohesive image, we must have graduated values of black, white and gray as well as an understanding of the proper viewing distance.

An image that may be perceived quite clearly from 12 feet away will become indistinguishable if the image is enlarged several times and viewed too closely. The image’s formation would become abstracted and we would only be able to perceive its separate pieces. This would result in the image being reduced to an indecipherable field of
geometric patterns.


The perception of the total image is formed by our eye’s desire to organize objects in our field of vision in an effort to form a complete image. In a black-and-white image, the eye searches for the visual characteristics, which are darker or lighter in contrast. The eye identifies similar shapes that are grouped closer to those in the rest of the viewing field, such as black shapes found within white areas giving form to the overall image. This type of image completion, through the separation of contrasting groups, is called “relative density.”

To produce the proper “fusion” of any given image, it is important to designate the distance at which the image or structure was intended to be viewed.

If you were viewing the Mona Lisa in a Gallery and you were standing up-close and were looking at her lips all you would see is meaningless brush stokes. However if you stood back to the proper viewing distance you would soon recognize her smiling face.

As with the problematic landforms found on Mars(most notably at Cydonia), this distance remains ambiguous and varies depending upon which structure and which portion of the structure is being viewed. Scale is also a major problem when trying to form a cohesive image.

Considering that the Face on Mars is an intentionally designed work of art that is a mile wide and a mile and a half long, we have to determine a proper viewing distance.

When the 1976 Viking Orbiter snapped the first image of the Face it was 1000 miles above the surface of Mars and as a result the camera captured a provocative portrayal of a human-likle face. As the viewing distance is shortened with the 1998 MOC image (approximately 275 miles) this incredibly designed structure reveals a different visage.

I suggest that that data set of MOC images and the new ESA data supports a more bifurcated two-faced model.

In Dr. Tom Van Flandern’s preliminary analysis of the origins of the Face on Mars, he put forth the hypothesis that the proposed architects who built it may have intended the structure to be viewed from a nearby planet which has since exploded. Dr. Van Flandern contends that Mars was once a moon of a now missing planet and the structure known
as the Face was meant to be viewed from this home planet at a precise distance. He believes that its facial configurations could have been designed on such a scale that it would only be recognized as being a face at the proper optimal viewing distance.

Once the distance is established for any given image and the object comes into view, it’s then our cultural influences that take over. These cultural influences can include such unique iconographic motifs as design, style, and graphic symbolism. As a viewer, how are we to
understand the structural configurations of any object when we may not know what we are seeing?

If an artist etches an image of a rabbit in stone and the viewer has never seen a rabbit – is it still a rabbit?

Like “hidden” zebras within a thicket of reeds, there are sometimes ambiguous elements that can be concealed within an unfamiliar image that appear to be hidden from the “casual onlooker.”


A classic example of a double image titled “The Rabbit/Duck,” is presented as an optical illusion of two different portraits within one face.

Depending on your point of view and personal perception of the drawing, the face may look like a rabbit (facing to the left) or a duck (facing to the right). This perceptual effect is known as “contour rivalry.” As readily adherent in this example, the technique of contour rivalry allows one image to “intentionally” have two different readings.


Other such ambiguous elements also include the complex asymmetrical arrangements of bifurcated and composite images such as totems and compound faces.


Take a look at this Santana album cover – featuring a lion’s head. Can you see the hidden faces within the lion’s face. Note, this is not pareidolia. This is an intentional work of composite art.

If this composite lion was found on Mars - would it just be considered another example of pareidolia?





Now, with regard to our capacity to identify blobs and dabs on a piece of paper as shapes of faces and animals we realize that the eye also has the tendency to find faces in clouds and piles of laundry. We also have the propensity to see profiles of old men on mountain boulders and deformed potato chips. However, these types of projections are only seen in contoured representations of grotesque profiles and
have no real substance. These naturally formed images have no detail and are generally seen from only a “single vantage point” and will disappear as the viewer physically moves around it.

None of these types of pareidolia effects are compliant with the Cydonia Face.

You have crossed the line here by assuming that if we perceive that projections of faces exist – then that negates any hope that we are actually seeing artificially produced geoglyphic faces on Mars.

The problem is - your attempting to use the existence of simulacrum (or pareidolia) in nature to disprove the existence of artificial formations on Mars. In following you line of thinking – an alien race viewing Mount Rushmore from space would conclude that it was just an illusion.

Can we afford to make that same mistake?

Zip Monster states- "I think you are over playing the skeptics talking points here. I believe you have placed too much confidence in the theory that as humans we are “hard wired” at birth to recognize faces and therefore see faces everywhere - in clouds, trees, sand and potato chips –
including Mars."
This is a gross distortion from my quote that
"We are hard-wired at birth to see faces, mostly faces that are actually there, such as ones mother's face (not pareidolia).
That human infants are hard wired to see faces and to respond to them is the accepted view of any scientist. Also anyone who has spent time around children.

Anyone who has spent thousands of hours searching for pareidolic faces and figures such as i have, has to give serious thought to the fact that 98% of them are human looking. Not other animals. This has more than convinced me that we project these images and they are projected to us. There is no separation, and the whole unity reinforces the solipsistic paradigm, but this is getting off topic and i don't want to be deleted again despite my knowing an investigation of this sacred phenomenon is what we are all looking for, and everything else to me is a distraction.

You also erroneously state that i said- "The problem is - your attempting to use the existence of simulacrum (or pareidolia) in nature to disprove the existence of artificial formations on Mars." This is pure projection on your part (also have a B.A. in psychology) and i know you can't find a quote or inference where i stated anything like that. i am skeptical that it is made by "martians," but as i have stated here "nothing can ever be proved or disproved." (i know Tom disagrees).
You can also skip the lectures on vision as i have been awarded a Doctor of Optometry degree, and licensed in two states.