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.