Pareidolia
Roy Brand
Did you know that we can see a face in a tree trunk? Did you know that on dark nights we can see animal shapes in the constellations of stars? Do these things exist? And when we hallucinate or daydream, once again we see faces, animals, and apparitions of the dead. In days gone by, when consciousness moved freely on the spectrum between wakefulness and dreaming and hallucination, the realm of the visible also contained imaginary sights whose significance was unquestioned. But even today, there is always something that is visible, but not clearly perceived – becoming, the moment of birth or death, life itself. The Greeks had a name for it: pareidolia – “beyond form” or “beside the form” – the human tendency to see a shape, or read a meaning, in amorphous phenomena.
The term is from the Greek παραειδωλια – παρά (pará) meaning “beyond” or “beside,” and εἴδωλον (eídōlon), meaning “image, form, shape.” Like paranoia (seeing intent in everything), pareidolia is a state of seeing a form of some kind in everything, and is part of our miraculous abilities as human beings to see things in things. This cave wall, with this patch on it, and the special shape of its curvature, together produce a living image. I see it, and if I were only to point it out to you – perhaps with the help of a small line or a dot here – it would be here for you too, and for anyone who comes after us. The creative work extends from the world and how it appears to us in our mind’s eye to one’s consciousness, body, hand, or to language. Thus, things are not merely matter – rock, light, or earth – but rather movement and dialogue between us and the world. Thus, this painting is not merely lines and patches of color, but a beauty full of meaning that is difficult to grasp outside the experience itself. Similarly, these marks that you now read, here on the page, are carriers of thoughts and feelings that pass from one person to another, in a very intimate way.
In the past, pareidolia was perceived as a sign of psychosis, but today it is commonly seen as a normal and universal human phenomenon. It is particularly evident in how children think, or in the worldview of primitive tribes, who attribute a will and consciousness to everything. Gods, humans, animals, the dead, plants, the weather, and often inanimate objects, are all seen as having an appetite or will, a viewpoint, and cognitive abilities – all have a soul. But the pareidolia is not about a childish or animistic worldview; it is a fundamental disposition of the human imagination. Even before we know something, we begin to see things: dots form an image, situations look like patterns, and we can take them apart and reassemble them until we have a theory (from the Greek ‘theorien’ – to look at, or by extrapolation, a way of seeing, a worldview). The world comes into view and becomes comprehensible – it is one of the characteristics of this world that it can become visible and comprehensible. So the visual image is but an extension, a capturing of the ways in which the world opens up to human experience. How wonderful it is that the world lends itself to us in this way? And perhaps that is precisely the basic, native, or classic experience of all things beautiful – the experience of being at home in the world.
Anyone who tries their hand at drawing knows that the closer you get to things, the more their contours fall apart and become fluid. There is really no clear boundary line between one thing and another; rather, there is an aura, light and shadow, and a movement of metamorphosis and metabolism in everything. It is a miraculous experience wherein things seem to dissolve of their own accord at the same time that they are captured or rather marked by art. Art shows them as distinct and as part of the world. The works in this exhibition follow this double movement– the shifting nature of the world, its appearance as form and meaning, and dissolution back into material, surface, and color. In other words, the works simultaneously conjure up an image and dissolve it. In so doing, they reveal the process that requires our imagination to work: the underlying work that brings things together and creates a world. This is an ongoing effort that we get accustomed to. But in particular moments of shifting consciousness – when we wake up, for example, or open our eyes after a long meditation – we notice the coming together of the world once again. If we fail to imagine, facing the work of art, the image breaks down and the painting and drawing once again revert to mere patches of color, the sculpture exposes its rough and meaningless material skin, and the canvases look like sheets of cloth and empty shells, rather than ghosts. Pareidolia – the emergence of a form – is something that goes both ways. In this space between the visible (the world as it appears) and the visual (the image), there is a fertile field of occurrence that is invisible to us. We often do not see how the world is made visible, or how we see it as things, forms, and states. It comes to us naturally, yet is unnatural. It is a mark of human consciousness that can be traced back to prehistoric cave drawings (throughout the Mediterranean) through Plato’s famous allegory of the cave.
The caves have a record of the longest human history – evidence of life, spiritual life, imagination, and human creation, dating back over 30,000 years. What they saw, and felt, and thought, is so remote from us – but the art preserved in the dark speaks to us immediately. I understand them and feel them. I have no idea if they spoke, or what they believed, but I know I am like them, that we are one species. They, too, saw shapes in things, and animals potentially sketched on the walls of the cave as the light of the fire flickered and animated the images. All it took was for them to touch what they saw and fix it with a judicious line, etching, a mark or a bit of paint. And so generations of human beings realized that they see the same things; that they share the same dream or vision. That they live in a world that is real, made of matter and energy, just as they live in a virtual world of imaginary forms and meaning. And that they could move between these two worlds, the material and the spiritual, and feel that they are both – both body and mind -- even though an abyss separates the two. Pareidolia marks the human ability to be a creature of both worlds. It is a characteristic of human existence that it is both real and virtual – a capacity that the contemporary economy of images has intensified, exploited, and heightened, to the point where we have lost it. Today, it is technology that does the imagining for us by seeing forms in things, emotions in a face, or financial potential in how we wield a keyboard and mouse, or gestures and motions on social media.
But in art – and perhaps in philosophy, as well – there is still sensitivity, openness, and attentiveness to the ebb and flow of life. Artists preserve that childish, primitive way of looking at things and how they are formed. In particular, they notice the intermediate states that no longer exist, or not yet. Possibilities that have not yet been realized actually exist, and there is life even in those that have faded away. The world once contained many such shadowy creatures: ghosts, apparitions of the dead, phantoms, dreams, hallucinations, and daydreams. We are fixed on either/or – either awake or asleep, existing or not – but what nonsense is this? The Greeks called all shadow creatures eidola, a term denoting movement and change in a world eternally coming into being. Pareidolia literally means a world that is all eidola – eidola in everything – in contrast to eikon (icon, likeness) which belongs to a binary world of original and imitation. Thus, the eikon/icon is quickly rendered a fake. But in the ancient world there was no single concept for a mimetic visual image, but rather, a multiplicity of such – eidolon – a spectrum of visual existence. In particular, there were no images that “look like something else,” imitations in the Platonic sense; rather, there was something that is visible but not perceived – like life itself, like consciousness – not the things in themselves, but the manner in which they appear.
It is in this realm that art is born. And still today, art harbors the human longing for transitions, for playfulness, for a spectrum of states of consciousness and emergence – but it may also shackle it. Within these boundaries of the frame, here in this painting in front of you, you can see a ghost. Here is spirit trapped in matter. Here, in this sculpture, you can see life arrested, fixed, dead. Here you are: look at them; they are yours; you control it. And here is the phenomenon that used to be a living entity, whose entire essence was becoming, namely life with no form or location. Here this thing is captured and concluded. Art always veers close, too close, to its dissolution.
Translated by Einat Adi
Pareidolia
Roy Brand
Did you know that we can see a face in a tree trunk? Did you know that on dark nights we can see animal shapes in the constellations of stars? Do these things exist? And when we hallucinate or daydream, once again we see faces, animals, and apparitions of the dead. In days gone by, when consciousness moved freely on the spectrum between wakefulness and dreaming and hallucination, the realm of the visible also contained imaginary sights whose significance was unquestioned. But even today, there is always something that is visible, but not clearly perceived – becoming, the moment of birth or death, life itself. The Greeks had a name for it: pareidolia – “beyond form” or “beside the form” – the human tendency to see a shape, or read a meaning, in amorphous phenomena.
The term is from the Greek παραειδωλια – παρά (pará) meaning “beyond” or “beside,” and εἴδωλον (eídōlon), meaning “image, form, shape.” Like paranoia (seeing intent in everything), pareidolia is a state of seeing a form of some kind in everything, and is part of our miraculous abilities as human beings to see things in things. This cave wall, with this patch on it, and the special shape of its curvature, together produce a living image. I see it, and if I were only to point it out to you – perhaps with the help of a small line or a dot here – it would be here for you too, and for anyone who comes after us. The creative work extends from the world and how it appears to us in our mind’s eye to one’s consciousness, body, hand, or to language. Thus, things are not merely matter – rock, light, or earth – but rather movement and dialogue between us and the world. Thus, this painting is not merely lines and patches of color, but a beauty full of meaning that is difficult to grasp outside the experience itself. Similarly, these marks that you now read, here on the page, are carriers of thoughts and feelings that pass from one person to another, in a very intimate way.
In the past, pareidolia was perceived as a sign of psychosis, but today it is commonly seen as a normal and universal human phenomenon. It is particularly evident in how children think, or in the worldview of primitive tribes, who attribute a will and consciousness to everything. Gods, humans, animals, the dead, plants, the weather, and often inanimate objects, are all seen as having an appetite or will, a viewpoint, and cognitive abilities – all have a soul. But the pareidolia is not about a childish or animistic worldview; it is a fundamental disposition of the human imagination. Even before we know something, we begin to see things: dots form an image, situations look like patterns, and we can take them apart and reassemble them until we have a theory (from the Greek ‘theorien’ – to look at, or by extrapolation, a way of seeing, a worldview). The world comes into view and becomes comprehensible – it is one of the characteristics of this world that it can become visible and comprehensible. So the visual image is but an extension, a capturing of the ways in which the world opens up to human experience. How wonderful it is that the world lends itself to us in this way? And perhaps that is precisely the basic, native, or classic experience of all things beautiful – the experience of being at home in the world.
Anyone who tries their hand at drawing knows that the closer you get to things, the more their contours fall apart and become fluid. There is really no clear boundary line between one thing and another; rather, there is an aura, light and shadow, and a movement of metamorphosis and metabolism in everything. It is a miraculous experience wherein things seem to dissolve of their own accord at the same time that they are captured or rather marked by art. Art shows them as distinct and as part of the world. The works in this exhibition follow this double movement– the shifting nature of the world, its appearance as form and meaning, and dissolution back into material, surface, and color. In other words, the works simultaneously conjure up an image and dissolve it. In so doing, they reveal the process that requires our imagination to work: the underlying work that brings things together and creates a world. This is an ongoing effort that we get accustomed to. But in particular moments of shifting consciousness – when we wake up, for example, or open our eyes after a long meditation – we notice the coming together of the world once again. If we fail to imagine, facing the work of art, the image breaks down and the painting and drawing once again revert to mere patches of color, the sculpture exposes its rough and meaningless material skin, and the canvases look like sheets of cloth and empty shells, rather than ghosts. Pareidolia – the emergence of a form – is something that goes both ways. In this space between the visible (the world as it appears) and the visual (the image), there is a fertile field of occurrence that is invisible to us. We often do not see how the world is made visible, or how we see it as things, forms, and states. It comes to us naturally, yet is unnatural. It is a mark of human consciousness that can be traced back to prehistoric cave drawings (throughout the Mediterranean) through Plato’s famous allegory of the cave.
The caves have a record of the longest human history – evidence of life, spiritual life, imagination, and human creation, dating back over 30,000 years. What they saw, and felt, and thought, is so remote from us – but the art preserved in the dark speaks to us immediately. I understand them and feel them. I have no idea if they spoke, or what they believed, but I know I am like them, that we are one species. They, too, saw shapes in things, and animals potentially sketched on the walls of the cave as the light of the fire flickered and animated the images. All it took was for them to touch what they saw and fix it with a judicious line, etching, a mark or a bit of paint. And so generations of human beings realized that they see the same things; that they share the same dream or vision. That they live in a world that is real, made of matter and energy, just as they live in a virtual world of imaginary forms and meaning. And that they could move between these two worlds, the material and the spiritual, and feel that they are both – both body and mind -- even though an abyss separates the two. Pareidolia marks the human ability to be a creature of both worlds. It is a characteristic of human existence that it is both real and virtual – a capacity that the contemporary economy of images has intensified, exploited, and heightened, to the point where we have lost it. Today, it is technology that does the imagining for us by seeing forms in things, emotions in a face, or financial potential in how we wield a keyboard and mouse, or gestures and motions on social media.
But in art – and perhaps in philosophy, as well – there is still sensitivity, openness, and attentiveness to the ebb and flow of life. Artists preserve that childish, primitive way of looking at things and how they are formed. In particular, they notice the intermediate states that no longer exist, or not yet. Possibilities that have not yet been realized actually exist, and there is life even in those that have faded away. The world once contained many such shadowy creatures: ghosts, apparitions of the dead, phantoms, dreams, hallucinations, and daydreams. We are fixed on either/or – either awake or asleep, existing or not – but what nonsense is this? The Greeks called all shadow creatures eidola, a term denoting movement and change in a world eternally coming into being. Pareidolia literally means a world that is all eidola – eidola in everything – in contrast to eikon (icon, likeness) which belongs to a binary world of original and imitation. Thus, the eikon/icon is quickly rendered a fake. But in the ancient world there was no single concept for a mimetic visual image, but rather, a multiplicity of such – eidolon – a spectrum of visual existence. In particular, there were no images that “look like something else,” imitations in the Platonic sense; rather, there was something that is visible but not perceived – like life itself, like consciousness – not the things in themselves, but the manner in which they appear.
It is in this realm that art is born. And still today, art harbors the human longing for transitions, for playfulness, for a spectrum of states of consciousness and emergence – but it may also shackle it. Within these boundaries of the frame, here in this painting in front of you, you can see a ghost. Here is spirit trapped in matter. Here, in this sculpture, you can see life arrested, fixed, dead. Here you are: look at them; they are yours; you control it. And here is the phenomenon that used to be a living entity, whose entire essence was becoming, namely life with no form or location. Here this thing is captured and concluded. Art always veers close, too close, to its dissolution.
Translated by Einat Adi
Roy Brand is a philosopher and curator working at the intersection of contemporary philosophy and art. He is a senior lecturer in the Master’s programs of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and Tel Aviv University. He founded and directed Yaffo 23, a center for contemporary art, and he is editor and curator of numerous art exhibits, among them, The Urburb: Patterns of Contemporary Living (Israeli Pavilion of The Venice Biennial, 2014) and Bare Life (Museum on the Seam, 2007). His book LoveKnowledge: The Life of Philosophy from Socrates to Derrida was published in 2013 by Columbia University Press. His book Art and the Form of Life was published in 2021 by Palgrave Macmillan. He is the founder and director of Parterre Projects for Art and Philosophy in Tel Aviv.
ד"ר רועי ברנד הוא פילוסוף ואוצר. הוא מרצה בכיר לפילוסופיה בתכניות לתואר שני של בצלאל ושל אוניברסיטת תל אביב. הוא הקים וניהל את יפו 23, מרכז לאמנות עכשווית בירושלים ואצר תערוכות רבות, ביניהן- The Urburb- שייצגה את ישראל בביאנלה הבינלאומית לארכיטקטורה בוונציה ב-2014. ספרו ״לאהוב לדעת—על חיי הפילוסופיה מסוקרטס ועד דרידה", יצא בהוצאת אוניברסיטת קולומביה, ניו-יורק בשנת 2013, ובעברית בהוצאת רסלינג בשנת 2016. ספרו החדש ״אמנות וצורת החיים״ יצא ב-2021 בהוצאת פאלגרב מקמילן. מנהל את חלל הפרויקטים פרטר לאמנות ופילוסופיה בתל אביב.
Roy Brand is a philosopher and curator working at the intersection of contemporary philosophy and art. He is a senior lecturer in the Master’s programs of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and Tel Aviv University. He founded and directed Yaffo 23, a center for contemporary art, and he is editor and curator of numerous art exhibits, among them, The Urburb: Patterns of Contemporary Living (Israeli Pavilion of The Venice Biennial, 2014) and Bare Life (Museum on the Seam, 2007). His book LoveKnowledge: The Life of Philosophy from Socrates to Derrida was published in 2013 by Columbia University Press. His book Art and the Form of Life was published in 2021 by Palgrave Macmillan. He is the founder and director of Parterre Projects for Art and Philosophy in Tel Aviv.
ד"ר רועי ברנד הוא פילוסוף ואוצר. הוא מרצה בכיר לפילוסופיה בתכניות לתואר שני של בצלאל ושל אוניברסיטת תל אביב. הוא הקים וניהל את יפו 23, מרכז לאמנות עכשווית בירושלים ואצר תערוכות רבות, ביניהן- The Urburb- שייצגה את ישראל בביאנלה הבינלאומית לארכיטקטורה בוונציה ב-2014. ספרו ״לאהוב לדעת—על חיי הפילוסופיה מסוקרטס ועד דרידה", יצא בהוצאת אוניברסיטת קולומביה, ניו-יורק בשנת 2013, ובעברית בהוצאת רסלינג בשנת 2016. ספרו החדש ״אמנות וצורת החיים״ יצא ב-2021 בהוצאת פאלגרב מקמילן. מנהל את חלל הפרויקטים פרטר לאמנות ופילוסופיה בתל אביב.
Roy Brand is a philosopher and curator working at the intersection of contemporary philosophy and art. He is a senior lecturer in the Master’s programs of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and Tel Aviv University. He founded and directed Yaffo 23, a center for contemporary art, and he is editor and curator of numerous art exhibits, among them, The Urburb: Patterns of Contemporary Living (Israeli Pavilion of The Venice Biennial, 2014) and Bare Life (Museum on the Seam, 2007). His book LoveKnowledge: The Life of Philosophy from Socrates to Derrida was published in 2013 by Columbia University Press. His book Art and the Form of Life was published in 2021 by Palgrave Macmillan. He is the founder and director of Parterre Projects for Art and Philosophy in Tel Aviv.
ד"ר רועי ברנד הוא פילוסוף ואוצר. הוא מרצה בכיר לפילוסופיה בתכניות לתואר שני של בצלאל ושל אוניברסיטת תל אביב. הוא הקים וניהל את יפו 23, מרכז לאמנות עכשווית בירושלים ואצר תערוכות רבות, ביניהן- The Urburb- שייצגה את ישראל בביאנלה הבינלאומית לארכיטקטורה בוונציה ב-2014. ספרו ״לאהוב לדעת—על חיי הפילוסופיה מסוקרטס ועד דרידה", יצא בהוצאת אוניברסיטת קולומביה, ניו-יורק בשנת 2013, ובעברית בהוצאת רסלינג בשנת 2016. ספרו החדש ״אמנות וצורת החיים״ יצא ב-2021 בהוצאת פאלגרב מקמילן. מנהל את חלל הפרויקטים פרטר לאמנות ופילוסופיה בתל אביב.
Roy Brand is a philosopher and curator working at the intersection of contemporary philosophy and art. He is a senior lecturer in the Master’s programs of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and Tel Aviv University. He founded and directed Yaffo 23, a center for contemporary art, and he is editor and curator of numerous art exhibits, among them, The Urburb: Patterns of Contemporary Living (Israeli Pavilion of The Venice Biennial, 2014) and Bare Life (Museum on the Seam, 2007). His book LoveKnowledge: The Life of Philosophy from Socrates to Derrida was published in 2013 by Columbia University Press. His book Art and the Form of Life was published in 2021 by Palgrave Macmillan. He is the founder and director of Parterre Projects for Art and Philosophy in Tel Aviv.
ד"ר רועי ברנד הוא פילוסוף ואוצר. הוא מרצה בכיר לפילוסופיה בתכניות לתואר שני של בצלאל ושל אוניברסיטת תל אביב. הוא הקים וניהל את יפו 23, מרכז לאמנות עכשווית בירושלים ואצר תערוכות רבות, ביניהן- The Urburb- שייצגה את ישראל בביאנלה הבינלאומית לארכיטקטורה בוונציה ב-2014. ספרו ״לאהוב לדעת—על חיי הפילוסופיה מסוקרטס ועד דרידה", יצא בהוצאת אוניברסיטת קולומביה, ניו-יורק בשנת 2013, ובעברית בהוצאת רסלינג בשנת 2016. ספרו החדש ״אמנות וצורת החיים״ יצא ב-2021 בהוצאת פאלגרב מקמילן. מנהל את חלל הפרויקטים פרטר לאמנות ופילוסופיה בתל אביב.
שם העבודה, מידות, מדיום, שנה
Potsdam
This charcoal drawing uses light and shadow technique (Chiaroscuro( to portray the stairs at Einstein tower, built by Erich Mendelsohn at Potsdam, near Berlin, between 1919-1921. The tower is an observatory with six telescopes whose purpose is to prove or disprove Einstein's theory of relativity. The tower, one of Mendelsohn’s most important structures, combines functionality and expressivity, and is still active today.
The drawing focuses on the stairways that transport the light from top to bottom. They symbolize a gateway or a middle way- between reality and imagination, matter and spirit - this world and the world beyond. Rembrandt has a wonderful painting of a philosopher positioned at a staircase called Méditation du Philosophe, from 1632. It offers an obvious point of reference for Roman’s drawing. The painting is at the Louvre collection in Paris and can be used as an example for light and shadow technique (Chiaroscuro). The spreading of light and shadow gives the painting a dramatic character. It expresses the philosopher’s interior flame and the ideal of thought that leads upwards towards the heavenly light.
Rudolf Steiner, the father of Anthroposophy, described Rembrandt’s philosopher as: “purest expression of light and dark... All that you see here—the architecture and all the other features—merely provided the occasion for the real work of art, which lies in the distribution of light and dark."
Planet
This cinematic charcoal drawing is based on a study book on perspective from the time of Galileo. It is one of the first examples of the transition from linear perspective to three-dimensional perspective. Galilei used these exercises in perspective to imagine the moon as a pierced surface, unlike the perfected image of the moon that was prevalent during his times. He used light and shadow to understand the relation of the sun, the moon, and the earth, which helped him prove that Copernicus was right–our planet is not the center of the universe.
Shaatnez
This exceptional charcoal drawing, which can still shock us, is based on a sculpture of the Roman god Pan, of the city of Herculaneum (near Pompeii) from 79 CE. Sculptures of sex and violence were common in the Roman world. In this case, Pan, the god of nature and fertility, is having sex with a goat. When the sculpture was exhibited at the British museum it was joined with a viewing warning. This did not change the long line of people at the entrance. The name of the work - Sha’atnez - relates to Satan-Ez (devil-god) and more generally to cloth made from a mixture of two kinds of material, which is prohibited in the bible. Such mixing might be related to Pegan rituals wherein the mixing of divine and animal was widespread.
Nonrandom Form
This small drawing is based on Ernst Haeckel’s synthetic shapes. Haeckel was a German zoologist active in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who tried to fuse all organic shapes into one non-random, that is necessary form. This troubling connection between nature and science is motivated by the desire to find the perfect, absolute, or superior form. Haeckel promoted racial science and social Darwinism. But his idea that all natural forms can be integrated to create one perfect form still enchants artists and scientists today.
Stanford Bunny
In 1994, a garden bunny made of ceramics was scanned from thousands of angles at the Stanford laboratories. The data can serve as a model to test various graphics algorithms. Hillel Roman’s charcoal drawing examines the constructed image making it beautiful and somewhat natural again. As in the rest of the works presented in this exhibition, the artist follows technology and science while reversing the trajectory of a heightened simulation of the world. The usual history that leads from linear perspective, to cubism, to the digital image is infused with hand-made crafted work in the remnants of burnt wood on paper.
Center
This mid-size charcoal drawing is based on the control center as it appears in the British TV series The Prisoner. This avantgarde tv production from 1967 tells the story of a British Intelligence agent who resigned without explanation from service. He is then abducted and placed in an idyllic village wherein all his actions are monitored. The control center is a sort of technological panopticon and the village a predecessor of today's hyper controlled environments. The Prisoner developed a cult following for its striking visual imagery and critical-surreal ideas.
