Discovery in Everyday Life
"It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or mud or like places, in which...you may find really marvelous ideas." ~ Leonardo da Vinci
In the beginning of this thesis investigation, I started to look at trivial illusions I had unintentionally discovered in our spontaneous everyday lives. For example, every Thursday, on the way to school, I see the army of lined up trash cans. The shape and the form of the garbage bins have a resemblance of a big face belonging to a muscular man. The bins remind me that it is Thursday, when I recognize them as meaningful objects, I see similar illusions more often. In 1994, Steven Goldstein described this phenomenon as 'pareidolia.' This psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as a significant one. Common examples include images of animals or faces in clouds, the man on the moon, and hidden messages on records when played in reverse.* As a starting point, my research began with these little discoveries which illustrates the quote by Leonardo da Vinci. Apparently, the illusion opened a stream of imagination and made an ordinary day of my life, extraordinary. |
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