THE OPPOSITE OF GESTALT

In History of Psych class I was introduced to the idea of gestalt. I immediately loved that word. Now I’m thinking that we need a word for the opposite of Gestalt. Instead of our brains putting a pattern together (even one that isn’t there), maybe sometimes our brains disregard patterns (even when one IS there).

According to Wikipedia, the Gestalt effect refers to “the form-forming capability of our senses, particularly with respect to the visual recognition of figures and whole forms instead of just a collection of simple lines and curves.”. The best example of this is our propensity to see faces where there are no faces, on the grill of a car for example (the VW bug for instance). If there is a face to be picked out somewhere, our minds will find it. I forget where I read that “humans are incredible pattern recognition machines”, but I agree with them.

TANGENT: Read an interesting book recently by my pal William Gibson (at least he feels like an old friend) Pattern Recognition. The hilarious thing about this novel is that Gibson has conceived of a character who has a phobia—of brand names!!! Could he have written the whole novel tongue in cheek? Unfortunately this is not a great novel, but it definitely is a great outline of a novel.

TANGENT: Speaking of Gibson, probably best known as the father of the “cyberpunk” genre. Gibson created this genre in his novel “Neuromancer” over twenty years ago. This novel starts with one of my favorite sentences “the sky…was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel”. Kind of makes me think he was living in Los Angeles when he wrote that.

TANGENT: A friend of mine, fond of reading James Joyce’s Ulysses, thought someone was saying “New Romancer” when he heard them talking about “Neuromancer”. Which leads me to my last tangent for tonight:

TANGENT: Mondegreens –There are so many websites that cover Mondegreens because after sex and gambling, music is right up there on internet users hot lists (darn it, that reminds me of one more tangent, but it will have to wait!). A favorite mondegreen of my generation was thinking that the line in Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze was “’scuse me while I kiss this guy” instead of the actual lyric “’scuse me while I kiss the sky”. This example was considered so representative of the mondegreen phenomena that when someone set out to create an archive of misheard lyrics that named it: http://kissthisguy.com/

Apparently, the term "mondegreen" was coined by Sylvia Wright in a 1954 Harper’s article. As a child, young Sylvia had listened to a folk song that included the lines "They had slain the Earl of Moray/And Lady Mondegreen." As is customary with misheard lyrics, she didn't realize her mistake for years. The song was not about the tragic fate of Lady Mondegreen, but rather, the continuing plight of the good earl: "They had slain the Earl of Moray/And laid him on the green."” (quote from dozens of web anecdotes).