mad cow
Posted June 2, 2008
The dark green paint base was used to paint out previous graffiti. The chalk was added later by someone who saw an angry cow head in the paint.*
So painting out previous graffiti, directly results in new graffiti!
*pareidolia: “a psychological phenomenon involving involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant.”, such as the Face on Mars, or the Virgin in the Tortilla. Or this recent example, discovered in San Francisco. (definition of “pareidolia” from Wikipedia).
Here are some more “pareidolia” links:
The Pareidolia photostream, on Flickr.
Here’s an interesting feature on Pareidolia from Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy Blog, which includes visions of Lenin in a window shade and actor Abe Vigoda, seen in a Hubble telescope photo of a distant star formation!
And lastly, here’s a site devoted specifically to Religious Pareidolia.
Occasionally we have to remember that Pareidolia can be exploited to advantage: Salvador Dali is said to have encouraged visual inspiration by daubing two flies with phosphor, then imprisoning them individually within separate lenses of specially constructed one-way sunglasses. Then he put on the sunglasses and drew what he saw in the illuminated movements of imprisoned insects…
