Pareidolia

Artist Daniel Canogar (Spanish-American, born 1964)

Date2023

MediumFour 55' 4K screens, generative custom software, computer

DimensionsFramed: 99 3/4 x 58 1/2 in. (253.4 x 148.6 cm)

ClassificationsTime Based Media

Credit LinePurchased with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and individual donors

Object number2023.1.1

Label TextPareidolia: the human tendency to see a pattern or image of something that does not exist, for example a face in a cloud.

The Chapman University Survey of American Fears, conducted annually through Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, unmasks what makes American society fearful. The survey underscores how anxieties are filtered and amplified by media platforms that create feedback loops to reinforce our cultural and political fears. Pareidolia, an art installation comprised of four large display screens, engages with this survey and the nature of fear in the digital age through displays of constantly-changing digital collage of colors, images and text. This work is not a video loop that continuously repeats, but a self-generating artwork that continuously updates and reinvents itself. Every day, a computer housed in a back room of the Becket Building downloads about 600 videos from over a dozen cable news channels from a range of political affinities. Those videos are matched with data from the Chapman University Survey of American Fears to create a work that takes on a life of its own. Images of faces, words, and other miscellaneous motifs sporadically emerge through a misty animation that captures the evasive nature of fear. These nebulous presences suggest our tendency to misperceive events and phenomena, revealing how so many of our contemporary fears are projections of our inner ghosts.

Status

On view

Location