Optical Illusions, Pareidolia And Paintings.

Post Reply New Topic

I love optical illusions. When I was in school, I used to doodle in my organisation planner (a journal for keeping track of homework) a lot. I liked drawing patterns the most, particularly the kind that used negative space so that depending on if you were looking at the white space or the black object you'd see something different. That concept fascinated me. (You can probably tell that by looking at my avatar).

Some people who looked at my doodles just saw random patterns, but others could work out the objects I'd hidden. I tend to find that to be the case with my abstract work, usually people either just see shapes or they see the outlines of hidden animals and objects that I've put in there. One piece in particular I'd made to look like a bird in plants made out of geometric shapes, whenever I looked at the piece it was obvious. That was the first thing my eye was drawn to, but I showed it to a friend and he wasn't drawn to the bird. In fact, he didn't know that they were plants or that there was a bird there. To him it was just shapes. Which is interesting, because I've tried this with different art pieces, and even with the ones that are not subtle at all (to me, at least) it's always been the same response. "It's just shapes, no objects or faces".

I think that there seems to be a difference between how my friend and I perceive things. Personally, my brain sees faces where there aren't any all the time. This is fairly common phenomenon, in fact there's even a name for it.

For some reason, mine seems to be in overdrive. I think it's due to my over-active hyperphantasic imagination rushing about. For example, whenever I would sit down in a particular room I used to look at the door handle. It was a bit dirty, and I could see a pattern due to this. Every time I looked at the handle, I saw a ranch worker. One who looked like a man who had played the part of George from Of Mice And Men in a film I had previously seen. Which is oddly specific, I know. My mind sometimes conjures detailed images of random people for seemingly no reason. I hadn't watched the film in years, but his face was still clear in my mind. Faces are often that way for me, but not always.

I tried to see something else in the grimy handle, but each time I looked I couldn't help but see that. Sometimes I found myself slipping into a daydream when I looked at it, I imagined walking around the ranch behind the man. This isn't too uncommon for me. I often find myself looking at paintings and imagining myself walking around the landscape or scene that the piece portrays. Either intentionally summoning the imagery, or spontaneously imagining it without meaning to.

Last edited by Lost_dragon on 06 Aug 2019, 5:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I wish I had that sort of visual ability.....

On the plus side, at least you've probably never been delayed because you spaced out due to getting distracted by a door handle.

Do you get synesthesia?

No. My senses are fairly sharp, so is my recall of them, but I've never experienced the mixing/combining of senses that those with different kinds of synesthesia talk about. Fascinating condition to learn about though, in my opinion.