Thursday, October 9

Class notes from a student on another planet.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Are you sure they´re not just alien lecture doodles?

Metamatician said...

They might well be, if it's a poor student, or a bored one. I would need some sort of Rosetta stone to translate, and alas, I'm not in posession of one.

Unknown said...

I reckon they're just doodles: I can see a sleepy wolf cub in there, a pig, a monkey and a puppy too. Ooh, and a parrot, and a sort of penguin.

Metamatician said...

Lol, you do the same thing as me (as probably most people do when confronted with random patterns like clouds, scribbles, rorschach blots), see faces everywhere. Isn't it interesting how we're biased toward seeing animals more than, say, geological features or vehicles or something? I'm sure it's got to be hardwired in us as a survival mechanism against predation (or for predation). I can see dozens of critters in there too, I wonder if we ever see the same ones?

I used to love playing the cloud game as a kid, it was one of my favorite things to do. I think the more imagination you have, the more you enjoy such things. I know people that rarely ever do that kind of thing. I see the same creatures and faces on the ceiling above my bed every night! And no, I'm not on drugs. That's a totally different thing... the patterns and textures move and transform. Don't like to think about it though :-S

Lots of interesting possibilities for studies with this kind of thing. Like you and I tend to see lots of animals (I see some cats too, and the pig), but I'll bet people who aren't animal lovers and don't think much about them see mostly human faces. What do you think?

By the way I made this from scratch! On the computer, but starting from a blank canvas and not using anything existing. Harder than it looks.

Metamatician said...

Lol, just looked at it again and saw a panda, an old Dennis, and Captain Hook complete with long moustaches!

Unknown said...

:) I still play the cloud game, from my hammock usually. And at night, normally when I have friends here and some wine/beer has been consumed, we'll sit on the terrace and look at the lights on the other side of the valley and see what shapes we can see in them - an elephant with a skull cap, a skateboarding basset hound and a reindeer with baubles in its antlers have been my favourites so far.

I wouldn't know how to go about creating anything from scratch on the computer so am very impressed. I did wonder, when all the creatures started to show themselves, if you'd cleverly designed it like that on purpose.

I'm not sure about the seeing human faces/animal faces. I do think we'll see more animals because we like them, but also because animal faces have a whole range of structures and features so its easier to see different ones rather than lots of human faces which have, more or less, the same basic structure.

Right, I'm off to look for Dennis and Captain Hook now.

Anonymous said...

I see dog and fox puppies everywhere. And a rabbit, a squirrel... Nature is imagination itself, as Blake would have put it.
Hope you are now able to put all those transforming creatures at rest!
g

Metamatician said...

Hi Giusi!

They are put to rest. Well, most of them. Just like atoms can never truly be at rest (they must at least vibrate in place, precluding ever reaching a temperature of absolute zero), these creatures twitch and wriggle even in their sleep, like a cat's paws while he dreams.

Some stay wide awake, seeing humans on their ceiling, unable to nod off and thinking black existential thoughts...

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