Taro Mochi Snacktime...

In case some of you imagine that all I do is complain, find fault, cause injuries and then pour acid into the wounds, here is a hot 'n' fuzzy experience I'd like to share gleaned from a trip to the local Asian grocery store.  That's Asian, not Oriental, to you other acid-pourers out there.

No matter how attractive the packaging, don't eat it.

The sheer visual noise of aisle upon aisle of crass labeling and a million words of barely comprehensible Engrish was suddenly stilled by the serene beauty of the image above; a box of desert snacks.

As a collector of Color Palettes, when I spot an unusual or unique arrangement of hues I make a note, or scan, and catalog it.  When I began doing this, I learned a lot about I could apply to using color in Painting. I found, for example, that different eras seem to have their own peculiar color schemes.  The 1970s naturally springs to mind, deep browns, oranges and creams on Supergraphics, or the 1960's Leroy Neiman and Peter Max.  Who are our colorists today?

Getting back the package above, make no mistake, it was designed by someone with an artist's eye.  Probably, they will go on to become a painter, after they complete their time at the corporate grindstone.  I hope so. This package was only one of a series of "flavors", but this one stood out.

A digital Palette spawned by the exquisite Taro Mochi packaging currently on trial.

A Google image search's contribution to a "visually similar" picture; colors, yes, shapes, no.

When using an image search, I found that an uncommon amount of material from foreign websites appeared.  In this case, it's an example of our language limiting us from a more global experience.  I had no idea just how deeply the Japanese are into the "online" experience.

Below is one of my recent "channeled" Symbolist paintings called Vibrational Portal, which I also launched an image search with.  I typically create these types of pieces without much forethought, then wind up decoding them afterwards.  The shapes and patterns follow a symbolic logic much like Australian aboriginal art, and the have "flows" in directional axes in linear time and multi-dimensionality.  This one, for example, has a clear X/Y axis.

A recent 20"x24" acrylic painting with metallic gold. 

So when searching for visually similar images to this, I found far less "people" examples, like the Taro image that yielded almost nothing but, and much more artworks and interiors.

Search result with more of a shape/color balance.

Next I inverted the colors, basically created a negative image in Photoshop, and repeated the search.  I do all this to save you the time and trouble, and to discover whether technology really has any sincere intuition so that its random chaos actually jigsaws into our experience in a helpful way, but of course it doesn't. It's like getting your palm read by Robbie the Robot.

At your marks, get set...

Again, the results were largely foreign, and probably due to the stricter geometry involved, shape and color were equally represented.

Sometimes there are fruitful surprises "looking" at things through a computer's "senses", but for the most part I think it tells more about the infrastructure of the technology than really relevant similarities.

I suppose the most charm the process could exhibit is the initial sensation of surprise upon seeing relationships hovering outside the sphere of our own personal/emotional makeups, but that gets old pretty fast.  Rather than a smooth, continuous effect of directional motion like a roller coaster,  it's more like 45-degree angle turns in a UFO.

But if you try it too, then you can be the judge.

ADDENDUM...

Here's a couple more relevant images:

Warm & earthy Supergraphic from the 1970s.

From the color dictatorship at the Pantone Company.

Flycatcher Filmstrips...

Continuing the theme of the last entry, I'll be commenting on the 2009 film Mr. Nobody, which we watched last night with the whole family.  I know I'm old-fashioned, but I will probably never get used to the new trend in acting of keeping your mouth hanging open.  Maybe it's supposed to be "emotive".  When I see it, I can only imagine a director saying "No, no, no!  We've got to shoot it again, your mouth wasn't open."

 Good eyeballs can take you a long way in Hollywood.

A friend recommended this film, and looking it up I noticed it's described as "Science Fiction", though I thought I'd understood it was about parallel lives.  So, we'd find out for ourselves.

I thought Mr. Nobody had some things to recommend it; visually, parts were quite amazing, but that's apparently typical now. The dinosaur yawns before being put down.  Characters seemed to be cast more for their appearance than acting ability.  And considering it was a joint French/Belgian/German venture, it was as Hollywood-looking as all get-out. That must be Creeping Globalism.

A Hoffman abstraction showing whole worlds isolated from each other.

If I hadn't invested all that time in the 2.5 hour "Director's Cut" I might not be writing this now.  But, I feel I have to say it--basically scream it at the stars like some baying wolfhound of prehistory who's lost its mate-- that even though this thing portrays a high-tech future, parallel lives have nothing to do with Science Fiction, any more than Edgar freakin' Cayce is interchangeable with Richard "Grumpy" Dawkins.

Not to say that in some distant future our head-up-the-ass Science won't enlarge itself to include things like parallel timelines, past lives, PSI energies and so on, but as of right now that doesn't seem likely.  People could lose their jobs.

More proof of something.

So, we have to be a little vigilant, because just as a giant corporation like Monsanto can do the Science-stomp all over small farmers with GMO contamination and then throw around words like "Coexistence", we certainly don't need them Scientisters co-opting and "co-existing" with the New Agey stuff.

They just ain't earned it.