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Samizdat
USA
99 Posts |
 Posted - 15 Feb 2007 : 02:29:23
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The Yafi (Y[et] a[nother] f[rivolous] i[mage])
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rderosa
USA
733 Posts |
Posted - 10 Mar 2007 : 13:17:06
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quote:
Here is S1402499 confirmation of Barbara. Note that you can only see part of the face because the 2km face is too large to fit inside of the 1.5 km wide hi-res swath. Note also that the first two images of Barbara (and crownface) were imaged from directly overhead. S14 has a somewhat oblique viewing angle, hence accounting for the foreshortening of the features. But the details are still evident. Neil DeRosa
Here’s a cropping from S1402499 covering all of the area in the swath of the so-called “evidence” of art and artists in the area surrounding the image known as "Barbara". This is a great example of how powerful pareidolia can be, depending upon the angle of the camera, lighting, etc. Logically, anyone looking at this angle with this resolution would conclude that we are looking at a rocky Martian landscape (aka “Pile of Rocks”), and leave it at that. But because a previous angle had a little different shading, it was possible in that view to delude oneself into thinking they were seeing a half hidden face. All it took was two dark patches for the eyes. The rest of the so-called face was totally hidden, and the mind got to fill in all the blanks, and voila “Babs” appears.
It is important to remember how pareidolia works. Because the mind is hard wired to see faces, it wants to complete the face if it thinks it sees part of one. So when there are features missing it fills in the blanks fairly easily. This makes partial face pareidolia less impressive as pareidolia goes. Real Pareidolists tend to avoid this type of example. One of the first quotes I posted in this thread was from Alexander Boes, a photographer in Kristiansand, Norway, who said that “Very detailed faces are rare. But crude faces and otherwise detailed faces missing one or more important parts are very easy to find.” In the case of Barbara, the whole face is missing. There is no chin, mouth, nose, cheeks, forehead, ears, head, eyebrows, neck, or just about anything but these two dark patches, so it’s quite easy to imagine the filled in face from very little to start with, especially if you key around it in Photoshop to give the impression that there’s a hairdo that goes along with it. As this image clearly shows, there is no such hairdo.
In short Barbara got Skullfaced by this image swath. So wags the world of Martian Art. That this should be held out as one of the best possibilities for Martian Art says all we need to know. Look this over real good, because I suspect there will be many more such non-confirmations to come in the near future, and that it will become increasingly difficult to continue to argue logically for the Artificial Origins Hypothesis as it pertains to Martian Art.
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rderosa
USA
733 Posts |
Posted - 10 Mar 2007 : 13:29:30
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There's a saying in the legal world that "you can indict a ham sandwich". It's intended to mean that you need virtually no evidence at all to get an indictment, all you need is a good imagination and the will to do it.
Well, you can "key" a ham sandwich also. Keys help to show what you think you're seeing, but they prove next to nothing, and they can be highly misleading in some cases by providing an illusion that the image features stop there. As I showed with Mephistopheles, they can easily be used on pareidolic images (see previous page).
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rderosa
USA
733 Posts |
Posted - 25 Aug 2007 : 21:25:40
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Now that the MRO images are coming in nicely, and they have resolved their software issues, it's not hard for us pareidolists to sit back and enjoy the show. I guess we figure if someone from the artificiality camp comes up with something concrete, they would plaster it all over the internet. As it stands all we've seen to support the AOH since the MRO started publishing was an image of Barbara Streisand.
Now call me skeptical, but I'm thinking if you polled all the readers of this forum, you'd be hard pressed to find 5 that believe that Martians once etched images of B.S. (as Rush likes to call her) into the surface of Mars.
But, like I said, we can sit back and wait because we don't believe the unambiguous proof is coming along anytime soon.
Sure, occasionably we'll see some hocus pocus mumbo jumbo about how this proves this to a certaintly of four trillion to one, but I'm thinking it just ain't there, no matter how many digits you put after it, until we can all look at it and say, "oh yeah it is there."
So, I think I'll leave it there and let history decide.
And anyway, I have a much more interesting pastime now.....online poker, Texas Hold'em. The explosion in the number of people playing is absolutely unbelievable. I'm not going post any links for obvious reasons, but man is it fun. I've been playing in at least five tournaments a week (3500 to 5000 participants).
So good-bye for now.
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Trinket
USA
387 Posts |
Posted - 26 Aug 2007 : 00:33:19
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"Now that the MRO images are coming in nicely, and they have resolved their software issues, it's not hard for us pareidolists to sit back and enjoy the show. I guess we figure if someone from the artificiality camp comes up with something concrete, they would plaster it all over the internet"
just like your assumptions of pare doo doo
You would be wrong...
Mars is a story.. It's not fortune cookie insert..
our entrance into the story started with mariner 4 not the Mro..
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rderosa
USA
733 Posts |
Posted - 29 Sep 2007 : 16:35:02
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Early in this thread I posted the following quote from Alexander Boes, a face hunter living in Norway:
quote:
"Very detailed faces are rare. But crude faces and otherwise detailed faces missing one or more important parts are very easy to find. It’s a bit of ‘The tip of the iceberg’ situation. Only the very best are worth taking pictures of, since there are endless of places to go. At least here." Alexander Boes
This is probably the single most important element in the process of constructing the pareidolic image both in ones own mind and in passing that information on to the next viewer.
As soon as we allow the inclusion of faces "missing one or more important parts", we open the floodgates. Also, aside from missing parts, the same thing applies to misplaced features. Things such as missing noses, invisible mouths, eyes in the wrong place, no chin, and the like, one can literally find hundreds of images that the mind can easily fuse into quite striking resemblences of human or animal faces and bodies.
One of the techniques I use to find faces in the trees is imagining the face is "behind" the tree, like a spy hiding in the trees looking out at whoever he's spying on. Once you get the hang of it, you find that a missing or misplaced feature is no problem, and does not detract from the final product. For instance, if there's a branch or branches right where the mouth should be, and even if it doesn't really look at all like a mouth (same is true for eyes, eyebrows, etc.) the end result is not weakened because we simply imagine that the branch or branches is covering the mouth. That way we can ignore the fact that the branch doesn't really look like an artist's rendition of a mouth. The mouth is obstructed in this case.
Using this technique I have found literally tens of face images in one tree on many occasions. Some of them are quite striking.
One time I sent Fred a couple of pictures and he pointed out about ten faces that I hadn't noticed until he mentioned them, demonstating once again to me the personal nature of the pareidolic image. I could see the ones he found quite easily once he pointed them out, but I had been looking at a somewhat more macro view of that scene and found larger faces "behind" the tree, whereas his were smaller and were openings in the tree more than mine were.
This can be done in just about any medium, provided the viewer has the right frame of mind, and believes they are "findable". The process is much like (if not exactly like) the "gestalt" discussed by JP Levasseur in one of his papers, where he uses the spotted dalmation to demonstrate this.
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pareidoliac
107 Posts |
Posted - 30 Sep 2007 : 02:00:34
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Perhaps scientists and artists have a different way of valuing pareidolic images. I believe we should see and value both ways. The overall gestalt should be the main determining factor. I have taken at least one of my best photographs ("Dancer" not on the web) which has virtually NO facial features, (just a hint of an eye, nose, mouth and hair) and only eight body features.) Despite this, virtually everyone readily sees this image. What modern and oriental art has always been about is how much can be depicted with how little physicality. Although I love the detail and number of features found in pareidolia, artistically I equally love the amount of art that can be shown with the minimal number of features. If one could find a pareidolic image with three countable features, that could be recognized by 99% of the general population, it would most likely be excellent artistically. Of course when one uses words to talk about art much is lost, and it helps to transcend argument and see afresh with open eyes. "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but
in having new eyes." -- Marcel Proust
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pareidoliac
107 Posts |
Posted - 30 Sep 2007 : 07:40:19
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| To contradict part of what I just wrote. Meditating a little longer and deeper, on images such as stone soup, I would have to say that each image must be judged individually. No simple formula or statement can be applied that is truly meaningful, although a high number of countable features on one figure is impressive. |
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rderosa
USA
733 Posts |
Posted - 30 Sep 2007 : 17:31:03
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Originally posted by pareidoliac
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." -- Marcel Proust
Yes, that's another way of saying the same thing I said:
quote:
This can be done in just about any medium, provided the viewer has the right frame of mind, and believes they are "findable". The process is much like (if not exactly like) the "gestalt" discussed by JP Levasseur in one of his papers, where he uses the spotted dalmation to demonstrate this.rd
But never underestimate the contortions some people will go through, to avoid anything that contradicts what "their eyes" tell them is there. It is apples and oranges to take a known Earthly image and photoshop half the face, and then try to relate that somehow with the process of the mind creating a Pareidolic image out of tree branches, or the local terrain on Mars or Earth. In one case, the mind already knows the image, and recognizes it as such. In the other case, there is nothing known up front, and the mind creates the image from the soup. We are talking about the latter case.
If you ever have an opportunity to visit Grand Coulee Damn in Washington, when you leave take highway 155 south to Coulee City. As you follow the highway along Banks Lake, you pass through a number of places where they had to blast through rock to let the highway go through. It's similar to what Alexander Boes talked about when he mentioned the frequency of high quality faces where the granite was blasted in Norway. There are so many faces that a true Pareidolist like myself found it difficult to drive without going off the road either into the lake or into oncoming traffic.
I kept telling my wife to snap the camera, but even though she thinks all of the Mars images are pareidolia, she's not quite as gung ho about snapping Earthly pareidolia as I might be, and is slow to react. Unfortunately, it was the kind of road where there's a gaurd rail and no stopping. Although a person could go back there in the summer on a little boat.
It is not that big a leap to think that there was "blasting" in Mars rocks from some type of natural causes in Mars' past history, that resulted in similar formations, some maybe on a much larger scale. There is an enormous similarity.
Note the similarity between Alexander Boe's photo (shown here) and "Wil" from the Faces topic. Is there any doubt that if a "Mars Anomoly Hunter" found this face in the Martian landscape, he or she would gleefully trot it out for all to see, as proof that Martians once decorated Mars with landscape artworks?:
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pareidoliac
107 Posts |
Posted - 30 Sep 2007 : 18:23:06
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| rd- Let's give credit where it is due and say YOU are saying the same thing Proust said, and not the other way around. After all he died before you were born. (1922). |
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rderosa
USA
733 Posts |
Posted - 30 Sep 2007 : 18:41:57
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Originally posted by pareidoliac
rd- Let's give credit where it is due and say YOU are saying the same thing Proust said, and not the other way around. After all he died before you were born. (1922).
Absolutely. That's a given. I was thinking more in terms of the fact that you were posting something that was in harmony with what I said, and was acknowledging that.
rd |
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rderosa
USA
733 Posts |
Posted - 01 Oct 2007 : 00:28:27
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For the new reader of these threads, I'd like to do a little demonstration. Usually on these threads, an image is posted, and then maybe a key has followed. I'm going to do it in reverse order this time. Why? Because I want the reader to be absolutely sure they know what feature I'm talking about BEFORE they see the context.. Why again? Because I've always contended that if you believe it's there, you'll see it.
Sit back in your chair and "gaze" (and I don't use that word lightly) at the image for a minute or two, and read the Keys. After you have a pretty good feel for the man, continue on to the two wider context images, and the rest of the post.
I call this guy "Young Founding Father" (with typical contrast/brightness/smoothing adjustments):
IMAGE A
Key:
A. Eye/Eyebrow
B. Jeffersonian hairdo
C. Beard on side of face
D. Chin
E. Mouth with upper/lower lip
F. Nose with convenient damage to nose bridge
G. Forehead with wrinkles
H. Forehead/hairline
I. Ear
J. Cheekbone
Note: I left the trees that are in the way of the bottom part of the sculpture to demonstrate that they don't pose a significant problem in reconizing the structure.
Ok, now here's the image that it came from (unprocessed).
Again, sit back and gaze for awhile, and you'll even start to see a variety of secondary partial images next to it. It all depends on how you choose to discriminate between realistic and semi-realistic. But be very discriminating for the primary one presented in the above key.
Ok, now here's a wider context off to the left of this scene. The above image is physically about 30-50 feet or so to the right of this famous sculpture seen below from up close on a path to the heads at Mt. Rushmore:
IMAGE B
Now the final step in this little demo is for the viewer/reader to decide for his or herself which of the two images A or B more closely resemble the images we are being exposed to here on this website? I think it's pretty obvious.
(Added Material): Image A is presented as an example of known Earthly Pareidolia. (just in case anyone didn't realize that)
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pareidoliac
107 Posts |
Posted - 02 Oct 2007 : 09:24:37
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| Samizdat calls the image at the top of page 23 "Yet another frivolous image." If one tilts ones head (upper part of head to the left) there is one of the better pareidolic images I've seen on this site. The image is near the upper right of the screen, in the large lightened inverted V shaped area. The eye is certainly one of the clearest. Even has a reflection on the pupil, eyebrow, nose with nostril, mouth, forehead, hair. Sort of looks cyclopian. Maybe some of these Martian artists were cyclops'. |
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rderosa
USA
733 Posts |
Posted - 02 Oct 2007 : 15:32:16
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Plus there's even a smaller animal face (with cat ears) in his turban. That's the trouble with this stuff. Once you start, there's no stoppin'.
"So many faces, so little time." (rd) |
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rderosa
USA
733 Posts |
Posted - 21 Oct 2007 : 18:06:11
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I know you favor impressionistic art and much of your latest effort is very impressive from that standpoint. [Neil] to Trinket
This brings up an interesting point, and a possible avenue for further study of the pareidolic image.
Since, as I've always stated, the pareidolic image is "personal" in nature, it stands to reason that different people will find different styles of art overall, although, there's certainly going to be crossover effect, because of the fact that we are pointing them out to others all the time.
But if we just consider "first finds" where an observer is looking through the data, looking for faces or structures, it seems reasonable that he will find the type of art that best conforms to his view of art per se.
Neil prefers realism in art (I've seen his art works), so naturally his selection of images will tend more towards realism, whereas Trinkets artworks do tend towards impressionism as Neil noticed. {By the way Trinket your image posted "Posted - 15 Oct 2007 : 15:43:40 " on Page 3 of your thread looks very much like one of Fred Ressler's photos, you didn't mix them up did you? }.
There's an interesting dynamic about this subject that I came across while reviewing Impressionism and the Impressionists. Edgar Degas, who is considered to be one of the founders of Impressionism, considered himself a realist and "despised the term Impressionism". However:
quote:
Technically, Degas differs from the Impressionists in that, as art historian Frederick Hartt says, he "never adopted the Impressionist color fleck",[19] and he continually belittled their practice of painting en plein air.[20] but is described more accurately as an Impressionist than as a member of any other movement. His scenes of Parisian life, his off-center compositions, his experiments with colour and form, and his friendship with several key Impressionist artists, most notably Mary Cassatt and Edouard Manet, all relate him intimately to the Impressionist movement.[21]-Wikipedia
Similarly, Edouard Manet also did not consider himself an Impressionist, but in fact others did, and history considers him one of the pivotal painters in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
It's interesting that early pioneers in Impressionism, didn't think they were "impressionists" but rather were capturing life as it really was.
How does any of this tie in to Pareidolia? I think the obvious answer would be that Pareidolia is in fact a type of art, in and of itself, so that the same types of dynamics are in play as they were with real art and artists. However, instead of the artist "painting" or "sculpting" or "carving" or "brushing" or "knifing"..........he's merely "finding" the face in the soup. But even though he's just finding, he's still using artistic techniques, knowledge, flair, originality, etc., to help him get there.
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gorme
Australia
52 Posts |
Posted - 26 Oct 2007 : 02:11:34
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Sorry if I am misinterpreting the discussion I assume this is about the MOC image. I looked at this when it came out, it may well be the one I requested for targetting. it is indeed easy to see things that are not there on Mars, but I find a few rules I developed over the years help.
1. Avoid any objects that are pixellated, compressed or close to the limit of resolution. If you think you have a good eye for these things try looking at details on a lower resolution image and then see if you are right on a higher resolution one. Many areas were reimaged by the MOC and one can test one's eye with these. In my experience people are not very good at this unless the features are very smooth. The Crowned Face is good for this because it is relatively large. Also the reimaging of part of it looked more face like rather than less, so indistinct features amount to a prediction. One believes it may be a face and predicts higher resolution will increase this impression. For example the nose on the right face (out of the 3 connected ones) under higher resolution had nostrils similar to the central face:
http://www.ultor.org/noses.htm
The Skullface looked much less artificial under reimaging:
http://www.ultor.org/atlantis5.htm
2. The more the feature is distinct from known geology nearby, the more likely it is artificial. So if an anomaly is partly composed of dune like shapes, and there are lots of dunes nearby, then perhaps random dune shapes produced this feature. Some areas of Mars are full of highly random shapes, and the odds are that one will look artificial to some degree. On the other hand if a feature is different from most of the surrounding geology then it is less likely to be random. The Crowned Faces have a defect in that they use part of the cliff for a crown. This may be because builders saved themselves some time with this, but it is consistent with a random impression. On the other hand the hat shape in itself is not a big part of the impression of artificiality. Other cliff faces in the area and in other places of Mars don't look much like the Crowned Face, so there doesn't seem to be a geological process forming face like shapes on slopes on old rivers. I made a study on geological landforms similar to possible artifacts here:
http://www.ultor.org/like%20cydonia/likecydonia.html
I don't think the Cydonia face is like other mesas, except 2 that might be weathered faces themselves:
http://www.ultor.org/like%20cydonia/m0903566.jpg.htm
http://www.ultor.org/eo301768.htm
more geological but who knows:
http://www.ultor.org/like%20cydonia/m1900860.jpg.htm
http://www.ultor.org/like%20cydonia/m2001802.jpg.htm
3. Don't forget to accumulate information against your own theory. George Haas is becoming very good at fair scientific analysis of formations, particularly Parrotopia. Ultimately there is not much to be gained by asserting something is artificial when it is not. You get lampooned by the skeptics/cynics which makes it harder to admit you were wrong later. Better to take some shots at your own work and take the wind out of their sails, it also stops you from becoming too attached to your own impressions. I must have removed over 90% of the images from my site over the years, and it is better for removing mistakes. I happen to think the case for artifacts is stronger than ever, and if there are artifacts on Mars it is highly likely there are some still in images no one has noticed yet. Until it is proven though, no one really knows.
4. Try to look for common patterns and themes. If there was a civilisation or visitation that produced artifacts then it is likely there will be some common theme, way of building, etc. the 3 Crowned Faces, the Cydonia Face and the KK Face are highly similar to each other in overlays:
http://www.ultor.org/3overlays.htm
http://www.ultor.org/kkface.htm
http://www.ultor.org/faces_files/
http://www.ultor.org/king/King.htm
The implication here is that the faces are either all of the same alien or of aliens that look similar to each other. This is stronger evidence than faces that are very different from each other, because this is like the different faces people see in clouds. It's better to try and find an anomaly that looks like one previously found, and if geological process can be ruled out then you have either coincidence or artificiality. Like seeing 2 people who look like each other but are not related, random faces are unlikely to be very similar. It literally took more 8 years or more before I started to see any common themes.
Other studies by myself and Horace Crater show some angles between mounds near candidate artifacts are more common than others and have some mathematical significance. So finding more mounds elsewhere with the same angles is highly unlikely, and the odds against chance can be measured as hard evidence.
5. Don't be afraid of criticism and don't be afraid to criticise. Most artists have difficulty in assessing their own work without a muse or unbiased audience. If you think you see a pattern which is hard to assess scientifically, ask other people and pay attention if they think it is not as good as you think. On the other hand look for evidence that is less a matter of opinion and more scientifically justifiable. A lot of people over the years have posted nonsense on artifacts and some still do. It is hard to criticise because there is a feeling of circling the wagons against the cynics. However if you cannot say things openly try to be skeptical in private, to them if you can. In the long run it only avoids them embaressment. If they respond by criticising your work welcome it as a fresh viewpoint. I used to put up with rapid skeptics for years simply because I had no interest in defending artifacts that were natural formations. Ultimately they only do you a favor by making you look at the stronger evidence.
6. Don't feel obligated to join the fringe. Just because you think there might be artifacts on Mars doesn't obligate you to believe in UFOs, conspiracy theories and the occult. The question of Martian artifacts is a purely scientific one, and should be decided on its own merits. In my opinion if there are any artifacts on Mars at all, they are likely to be at least hundreds of millions of years old from the erosion. So they would in that theory not be connected to anything we see today, even historically.
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rderosa
USA
733 Posts |
Posted - 27 Oct 2007 : 18:42:51
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quote:
Originally posted by gorme
3. Don't forget to accumulate information against your own theory. George Haas is becoming very good at fair scientific analysis of formations, particularly Parrotopia. Ultimately there is not much to be gained by asserting something is artificial when it is not. You get lampooned by the skeptics/cynics which makes it harder to admit you were wrong later. Better to take some shots at your own work and take the wind out of their sails,..................................... other studies by myself and Horace Crater show some angles between mounds near candidate artifacts are more common than others and have some mathematical significance.................. Don't be afraid of criticism and don't be afraid to criticise. Most artists have difficulty in assessing their own work without a muse or unbiased audience. If you think you see a pattern which is hard to assess scientifically, ask other people and pay attention if they think it is not as good as you think. On the other hand look for evidence that is less a matter of opinion and more scientifically justifiable. gorme
Greg, these are all very good points. But, I think you'll find that since the early work of TVF and Levasseur and Horace Crater and yourself, there's been very little if anything in the way of a scientific study to support artificiality here. Most of the stuff you see posted on these boards is posted on the theory that: I see it, therefore it is (artificial). As a matter of fact, I doubt very much if you could entice anyone to do actual science and/or measurements, no matter what kind of argument you made supportiing the need for it.
That's why I started this thread on Pareidolia, to show that there are images of a known pareidolic nature that are comparable to the so-called Martian Artificial ones. I don't claim to have proven anything either, but rather to demonstrate that such images could in fact be pareidolia.
We (the Pareidolists) have maintained from the beginning that the onus of proof is on the AOH proponents. They can't just post images that they say "pass muster" (whatever that means) and expect to be taken seriously. Although, as I have said all along, their collection of images are artistic, and do make a valuable collection, if not the one they are intending.
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My pareidolia knows no bounds.
