I See Faces : popular pareidolia and the proliferation of meaning

LEE, Joanne (2016). I See Faces : popular pareidolia and the proliferation of meaning. In: MALINOWSKA, Ania and LEBEK, Karolina, (eds.) Materiality and popular culture : the popular life of things. Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies . Abingdon, Oxon, Routledge.

[img]
Preview
PDF
JLee - ISeeFaces (AM) book section.pdf - Accepted Version
All rights reserved.

Download (225kB) | Preview
Official URL: https://www.routledge.com/Materiality-and-Popular-...

Abstract

This chapter discusses the curious facial recognition performed upon everyday things and places - currently so popular on the internet – when faces are read into cheese graters, parking meters, coat hooks and the like. The phenomenon of pareidolia occurs because the human visual system has a tendency to extract patterns from noise, thus perceiving ‘meaning’ in random source material. The chapter uses this current fascination as the occasion to think about our desire to read meaning and significance into things. As an artist/scholar working with the everyday, rather than attempting to pin down definitive interpretations, I am interested in enlarging what can be generated from the ordinary objects and materials that surround us. Keywords: pareidolia; the everyday; artistic research; pattern; constellation

Item Type: Book Section
Research Institute, Centre or Group - Does NOT include content added after October 2018: Cultural Communication and Computing Research Institute > Art and Design Research Centre
Depositing User: Joanne Lee
Date Deposited: 25 Jul 2016 10:51
Last Modified: 18 Mar 2021 06:46
URI: https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/12619

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics