Face in the clouds

Our friends at Fortean Times have posted a bunch of new reader-submitted "simulacra photos." In Fortean terms, simulacra photos depict "spontaneous or natural figures or images. These can occur in nature as well as in the chance conjunction of artefacts." This cloudy face was snapped last winter with a phonecam in Sittingbourne, Kent, England. Link

[#1 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 6:55 AM]

There's a face in that?

[#2 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 7:16 AM]

Someone took too much.

[#3 posted by Andrew Katz , September 7, 2007 7:24 AM]

The human brain is an incredible pattern recognition machine - and had been honed by evolution to recognise faces. But sometimes it's a little too eager and produces false positives (hence the man/men in the moon, for example). I can see at least three distinct, humanlike faces in this cloud formation. (One in profile, looking to the right, one chubby childlike face with small eyes looking down and to the left, and another mournful face looking down/right). This is just an artefact of over-powerful pattern recognition algorithms running on insufficient data...and not really newsworthy

- Andrew

[#4 posted by lars_ , September 7, 2007 7:28 AM]

The human brain is wired to recognize faces everywhere. There's nothing spookier about this than the face that will spontaneously appear below:

:)

[#5 posted by adm , September 7, 2007 7:44 AM]

relatedly, here is picture i took of a (fallen) angel of harlem:

http://tinyurl.com/273fkv

[#6 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 8:09 AM]

I must agree with Andrew and Lars, for I would call this a case of Apophenia, not simulacra.

aloha
psilo

[#7 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 8:30 AM]

Pareidolia.

[#8 posted by Artnoize , September 7, 2007 8:36 AM]

Re: Cloud Face

I did a short videoclip called "Faces"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev0y7DMe0ug

[#9 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 8:42 AM]

Keep trying. This is nonsense.

[#10 posted by ifelipsis , September 7, 2007 9:17 AM]

one word: pareidolia

check these out for more info:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/lenin.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
http://www.answers.com/topic/pareidolia

it's interesting that different groups refer to this phenomenon differently: many in the ghosthunting realm refer to it as "matrixing."

[#11 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 9:54 AM]

I don't even see a face. Are the holes supposed to be the eyes?

[#12 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 9:55 AM]

Oh my god, it's Jesus!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[#13 posted by David Pescovitz , September 7, 2007 10:12 AM]

Whoa! These links are a trip. I love that BB now has comments. Thank you.

[#14 posted by jitrobug , September 7, 2007 12:27 PM]

clearly that cloud was intelligently designed.

[#15 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 2:03 PM]

Kind of looks like Andrei Sakharov...

[#16 posted by A New Challenger , September 7, 2007 2:27 PM]

If someone could bottle that cloud, goldenpalace would be all over that auction.