pareidolia in art (quote from Leonardo da Vinci)

17 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by is this anything in quotation, random thought

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accident, apophenia, art, both, coincidence, freedom, illusion, James Lawley, Leonardo da Vinci, metaphor, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, pareidolia, quotation, randomness, serendipity, transience, wabi sabi, writing, zen

[Pareidolia is ‘a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant, a form of apophenia.’]

From wikipedia: In his notebooks, Leonardo da Vinci wrote of pareidolia as a device for painters:

“If you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills. You will also be able to see divers combats and figures in quick movement, and strange expressions of faces, and outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well conceived forms.”

serendipity (quotations from Nassim Taleb and James Lawley)

15 Friday Aug 2014

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accident, apophenia, balance, black swan, coincidence, grace, James Lawley, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, patternicity, quotation, randomness, serendipity, synchronicity, transience, wabi sabi, zen

“Half the time I hate Black Swans, the other half I love them. I like the randomness that produces the texture of life, the positive accidents, the success of Apelles the painter, the potential gifts you do not have to pay for. Few understand the beauty in the story of Apelles; in fact, most people exercise their error avoidance by repressing the Apelles in them.”

–Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan

“Maximize serendipity: “A strategy of seeking gains by collecting positive accidents from maximising exposure to ‘good Black Swans’.” (p. 307, Taleb) Taleb calls this an “Apelles-style strategy”. Apelles the Painter was a Greek who, try as he might, could not depict the foam from a horse’s mouth. In irritation he gave up and threw the sponge he used to clean his brush at the picture. Where the sponge hit, it left a beautiful representation of foam. –James Lawley (source: http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/218/2/Black-Swan-Logic/Page2.html)