Remarks on pattern recognition

Sami Serola

Patterns as repetition within space 

Patterns can be understood as a repetition within the space, which then becomes recorded or constructed for example on an image. Probably most creative masters on this sort of patterns are Arabic architects and artists who have decorated Mosques and other Arabic buildings with incredibly detailed mosaics. I have read somewhere the Arabic art went to this path of illustration because in Islamic religion and culture iconolatry (or idolatry) is strongly forbidden. Therefore artists could not decorate the buildings (or any other items) with anything that could be recognized as an any sort of a symbol. As a consequence they invented actually very imaginative form of abstract art: almost painstakingly detailed patterns and ornaments.

Arabs of course were not the only ones making mosaics for decoration. But they certainly took it to the totally new level. Then later on these master pieces of art have inspired many modern and contemporary artists. Good examples on this are relatively modern western artists M.C. Esher and Antoni Gaudi.

Patterns as repetition within time

Another way to see patterns is what could be called as pattern recognition. It is a learned ability to recognize familiar symbols, sounds, melodies, smells, tastes and textures. Through everyday repetition of stimuli, we learn to recognize familiar things and then call them as patterns. One example is pareidolia, where we recognize some pattern formed from dots and lines, which then looks like a face of some creature.

Pattern recognition can be also programmed into a software, and then used on number of applications. For example on camera software it can be used to recognize faces as well, and then help camera automatically focus on those subjects.

Using patterns as subjects in photographic art

Mr Nobody making a statement

In my example I use patterns in number of ways. First of all I have taken shot of a brick wall to show the repetitive pattern of that colorful and beautiful wall. Then I  have chosen someone else's work of art to illustrate how those bricks could be used to create a mosaic, or as pixel art, as we would also say today. Except in this case the mosaic is used to create some icons that we can recognize, thanks to continuous cultural repetition.

Then, finally I have made this work as mine by adding there my shadow. But not just any shadow. The idea is to show there Mr Nobody, which I have intentionally taken to represent myself as an imaginary amateur photographer. The shadow holding hand and camera up is supposed to bring several possible "patterns" into one's mind.

First of all, one can see there a person just rising the hand in order to salute the viewer. Second purpose is to directly show the new way to use modern cameras. We no longer need to hold the camera in front of the face, and that way we are able to extent our reach much further. Thirdly the idea is to show how the shadow actually looks more complete than a torso. If the hand would be held in front of the body or head, it could be much more difficult to recognize it as a pattern of human figure. Then the fourth reason is to add there so called inter-textual references.

The inter-textual references can be of course many; depending on what of them are familiar to the viewer. But what I have intentionally "hidden" there are Michelangelo's famous sculpture David, and Ignatz the cartoon mouse from Krazy Kat by George Herriman. So, there is a character holding either a sling or a brick, in order to hit somebody with it. Depending on the point of view, it is either David or Ignatz, but they both are more or less trying to make a statement.

What the statement then is, it fully depends on the person who views the image. The final message can be either obvious or complex. One possible message could be hidden on those icons or symbols. The picture can for example say: "Look at those symbols! Do you accept them as icons of human kind? Do you see there a woman wearing a skirt and a man with a hat, or what do you see? A symbol for unisex perhaps?"

Low angle

On this shot I  could not see where the camera was pointing.

Sami Serola

While planning what to shoot for the weekly challenges, I have also tried to get my head around on the photo assignment #2 by Ted Forbes, which is low angle photography. Long time ago I optimistically thought a good photographer can use any camera to take good shots. And indeed that is true, but even a damn good photographer can't take super macro pictures without super macro lens.

During this year I have planned to focus on using my new mobile phone camera. It provides a pretty good quality, but for example for someone like me, who has previously used to use full rotating camera display, and remote control display, it really sucks when trying to shoot close to the ground. Especially it is difficult when I also would like to point the camera upwards, and not able to see the display.

My recommendation is to find a pocket mirror to use it for aiming. Couldn't find a handy one yet, but certainly will as soon as possible.

Here I was lucky to get those people just on right places.

Anyway, when taking pictures for the low angle shooting assignment, I kind of recalled my favourite ways to compose pictures taken from low angle (close to the ground). First of all I think wide angle lens is the best, because it much helps to really make it clear the view point is close to the ground. By following the classic recommendation to have something close to fill the foreground, and showing the context tiny on the background, it makes the view point sort of obvious.

I also absolutely love using portrait (vertical) composition on this kind of shots because the verticality kind of increases the distance between what is seen on the foreground, and the tiny things on background. This idea works especially well on the "trash season" series of mine. All kind of garbage people toss away and drop on the ground, looks enormous when seen from the low angle point of view and taken with the wide angle lens.

Patterns in Art

Sami Serola

I decided to make a comeback here at Shoot & Tell blog for numerous reasons. First of all, I need to start keeping some sort of a journal on my photography. That is what I discovered after accidentally finding Ted Forbes's Youtube channel and his photography assignments:

 The idea is to record the creative thinking and flow in some way, in order to reflect one's own work. However, I think I like to utilize modern digital format for it. Although, I much like handwritten journals and diaries, they does not allow such useful features as ability to search afterwards, with words in text and keywords. Moreover, digital text is superior because it makes it easy to copy (for example copying pieces of my own text from here to elsewhere), edit, and share.

I was first going to start yet another private blog, but then I realized there is really no good reason for that. Here "we" already have one perfectly good publishing platform and area to use. If this becomes noticed and "used" also by others, it is only a good thing. Having a shared journal still is something I have tried to achieve for a long time. And this is because of the reasons I said above, to make things to become searched, found and shared more easily. But if this attempt of mine stays unnoticed, it doesn't matter either. I still have a place where at least I have an easy to use digital journal.

And to get things started, I grasp on ideas that has been going around my mind today, after reading two challenge assignments where I am personally involved to. First one is Saturday Self-Challenge at Ipernity and Flickr, where this weeks challenge is to shoot patterns. And the other one is The Sunday Challenge (at Ipernity), where this week's topic is no more and less but Art, and yes, definitely with capital A! So, the idea is to start my journal with these two concepts, and how they are related.

My very first approach was focused only on patterns, and especially patterns that appears in nature. On Sunday morning I went out to local cemetery to shoot barks of trees. I indeed got some rather interesting shots. But when reflecting what I got during that day, and after reading the photo assignment for The Sunday Challenge, I really started to wonder what we take as art, and what art is about. Definitely not the first time for me or anyone to think this, but the very crystallized idea I came out this morning was that art is like balancing between repetition and being unique.

 What somewhat every artist likes to be is unique. In other words, we all want to come up with something truly original, something that is never seen before. But there lies also a great risk of being way too alien to audience, to critics (including ourselves) and to the whole society. Our whole education actually aims to this. We try to learn how to copy patterns (phrases, images, techniques) that makes our input for the society similar enough to become recognized as a pattern within the larger cultural fabric. And yet we also need to get that piece of pattern look unique enough, to make it look like something new becomes discovered, and avoid for example risk of just copying others too much.

And when reflecting my Sunday catch, I noticed one shot, where I first noticed the "eyes" that I saw on side of old spruce trees, trees where the lowest branches were cut some time ago. As a living creature we are learned (partly by repetition and copy, partly maybe because of DNA) to recognize such patterns as faces and eyes. In computer science this is called as pattern recognition, where the attempt is make computers to do the same for us: recognize common patterns for example in the image. For modern people this can be useful for example in photography, to automatize the camera focusing based on face patterns. For the primitive animal inside of us the face recognition is important to help us recognize the both, the potentially dangerous creatures, and those that belongs to our own kind and especially the close ones (those that belong in to our pack/family).

Altogether this is somewhat also the reason why we especially get drawn to images where we recognize anything that looks familiar. It is very much based on this concept of pattern recognition. We become exited when we see a human figure in the picture. And this is probably because it tricker multiple things in our mind. We start trying to find out whether the figure is something (someone) we know, belongs to our pack, or is danger to us, or looks attractive. Then it also may provide us such values as possibility to identify with some of our own experiences in that image, and to reflect our own feelings and believes.

Then the opposite is probably a very non-figurative art where we find absolutely nothing familiar, except maybe some colors, or in a long run, similar works of abstract art. And there we approach the risk of becoming too original and alien. The majority of audience then just "don't get it".

Photography then is a very much as an art form of ultimate copying and attempt to still do that in some original way. Which then leads me back to this weeks challenges. How to illustrate patterns and kind of repetition creatively?

But I will return to this topic later on during this week because the idea of a journal is not to say everything at once, but to record one idea at the time, like making a quilt (a pattern) out of small pieces.