Ideas I want to write about
Art lies in the moment of encounter: we meet our truth and we meet ourselves; we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression.
Julia Cameron • The Artist's Way: 25th Anniversary Edition
Research has shown that our brains are wired to respond to faces and human-like movements, a phenomenon known as pareidolia. It’s a peculiar trait found in most primates and is believed to be linked with increased creativity.
Brand Marketing and the Psychology of Character Animation
Faces may be the best example. How many times have you seen faces in wood grain, in the patterns in plaster walls, or in the smudges on the sidewalk? A surprisingly large part of the human brain is devoted to seeing faces — when we look at a person’s face, a huge amount of brainpower is expended in interpreting it. When we’re not looking at someone
... See moreRaph Koster • Theory of Fun for Game Design
In my opinion, this noticing/embellishing “trick” is not only learnable but innate. Pareidolia is pre-installed in every human brain, most likely as an evolutionary advantage – without it, we wouldn’t have constellations, the Man in the Moon, or see clouds that look like elephants. If you indulge a habit of noticing these things, you will see them... See more
Rob Walker • Pareidolia Prompts
The evolution of our strange, extremely other-obsessed brains has brought with it weird side-effects. Human obsession with faces is so fierce we see them almost anywhere: in fire; in clouds; down spooky corridors; in toast. We sense minds everywhere too. Just as the brain models the outside world it also builds models of minds. This skill, which is
... See moreWill Storr • The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human, and How to Tell Them Better
“We’re all remarkably adept,” Bogost noted, “at ascribing human intention to nonhuman things.” We do it all the time. Consider the related tendency to see human faces in non-human things, a specific subset of the phenomenon known as pareidolia, which is the tendency to assign meaning to seemingly random patterns.
there are two simple but powerful... See more
there are two simple but powerful... See more