The Droste Effect
Thursday, March 01, 2007
The Droste Effect
The following definition of The Droste Effect is quoted from John Mayer's Honeyee blog you can find in the links on the right. Scroll down and you should fine it. But anyway, I've always known about the Droste Effect, but never knew it actually has a technical name for it. Reading the definition got me thinking about a lot of things, about myself. So check it out.
"...The Droste Effect is a Dutch term for a specific kind of recursive picture. A picture exhibiting the Droste effect depicts a smaller version of itself in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. This smaller version then depicts an even smaller version of itself in the same place, and so on. Technically this can go on forever, but practically it continues as long as the resolution of the picture allows, which is relatively short since each iteration exponentially reduces the picture's size..."
The Droste Effect is pretty much everywhere really, and a lot of different medias have tried to use this technique in their advertisements, music videos, movie posters etc. You can find it in the music video for Norah Jones' "Thinking About You" video and on Memento's theatrical poster, for examples. But anyway, a more common example of the Droste Effect in our everyday lives would be stepping into a lift with mirrors on all three sides.
My grandmother's old house had a lift like that, and she lived all the way up on the eight floor. That old lift is one of the creepiest lift ever because of the way it rumbles to a stop every time it hits the destination, and then you start to wonder if the cables above are ever going to snap under my father's weight(He was already a big man at that time).
If you ever happen to be inside all by yourself, you are going to find the silence rather piercing to your ears, because that is what happens as you stare at the mirrors all around you. You see recurring images of yourself stretching on into imaginary lifts on either side, going on endlessly until the light from above seizes to reach. That is the perfect everyday example of a Droste Effect, staring at yourself into the mirrors inside a lift.
Urban myths tell of the thirteen reflection, and I am not sure if any of you ever heard of it. They say that at a certain time of a certain day, chanting a specific spell under your breath while looking into a mirror with another behind you, you will be able to see the way you look in the thirteenth reflection after you die. That was the urban legend, and I heard of it when I was in Primary School. It sure freaked me out better than slicing apples at twelve midnight in front of a mirror because I immediately thought about the lift at grandmother's place, and swore never to open my eyes until we reach the eighth floor every time. Yes, I was that stupid and childish.
Thinking about it, one gets a little worked up about it. The Droste Effect doesn't just work in our everyday lives like advertisements or entertainments. You see a certain aspects of ourselves in it as well. I was just thinking about myself in terms of the Droste Effect, wondering how it would be like staring at myself as my own reflection goes on endlessly into the dark.
You see, there are times in any one's lives when we sit down and reflect upon ourselves. And when that happens, it sort of works like the Droste Effect doesn't it? Look deep enough, and all you get are distortions to your face, and you start to wonder if it is the true reflection of yourself at all. You cannot deny that it is, but I guess the deeper we go, the dirtier it gets. I think at the very core of anybody, there always seems to be something that we have denied ourselves from, ignored an aspect of ourselves because we chose not to be shallow, not to be superficial, not to be all the supposedly negative characteristics that might be condemned by people.
The truth is, I think, is that thinking too much upon yourself sometimes gets you nowhere. Instead of looking to the root of a problem when you are involved, take a step back and move on. Stop pondering over the same mistakes and see what you can do about it. The more you think, the deeper you go into those endless layers of self-reflection, and as far as your vision allows you to go, all you get is only going to be a distorted, disfigured and ugly self. Why subject yourself to this endless and vicious cycle when you could have moved on from where you are so long ago?
That's perhaps why I pride myself to be a guy, because we are simple creatures and I love that. We never look too far into ourselves. And when we do, I guess most of us have that touch-and-go attitude to it. We do not dwell on our failures for too long, and thus our eyes never brought us far enough to the disfigured, ugly self. Looking too deep into our reflection of self gets you nowhere, only in circles that never seem to end. Because really, we should all live by the line. What good is a circle?
The following definition of The Droste Effect is quoted from John Mayer's Honeyee blog you can find in the links on the right. Scroll down and you should fine it. But anyway, I've always known about the Droste Effect, but never knew it actually has a technical name for it. Reading the definition got me thinking about a lot of things, about myself. So check it out.
"...The Droste Effect is a Dutch term for a specific kind of recursive picture. A picture exhibiting the Droste effect depicts a smaller version of itself in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. This smaller version then depicts an even smaller version of itself in the same place, and so on. Technically this can go on forever, but practically it continues as long as the resolution of the picture allows, which is relatively short since each iteration exponentially reduces the picture's size..."
The Droste Effect is pretty much everywhere really, and a lot of different medias have tried to use this technique in their advertisements, music videos, movie posters etc. You can find it in the music video for Norah Jones' "Thinking About You" video and on Memento's theatrical poster, for examples. But anyway, a more common example of the Droste Effect in our everyday lives would be stepping into a lift with mirrors on all three sides.
My grandmother's old house had a lift like that, and she lived all the way up on the eight floor. That old lift is one of the creepiest lift ever because of the way it rumbles to a stop every time it hits the destination, and then you start to wonder if the cables above are ever going to snap under my father's weight(He was already a big man at that time).
If you ever happen to be inside all by yourself, you are going to find the silence rather piercing to your ears, because that is what happens as you stare at the mirrors all around you. You see recurring images of yourself stretching on into imaginary lifts on either side, going on endlessly until the light from above seizes to reach. That is the perfect everyday example of a Droste Effect, staring at yourself into the mirrors inside a lift.
Urban myths tell of the thirteen reflection, and I am not sure if any of you ever heard of it. They say that at a certain time of a certain day, chanting a specific spell under your breath while looking into a mirror with another behind you, you will be able to see the way you look in the thirteenth reflection after you die. That was the urban legend, and I heard of it when I was in Primary School. It sure freaked me out better than slicing apples at twelve midnight in front of a mirror because I immediately thought about the lift at grandmother's place, and swore never to open my eyes until we reach the eighth floor every time. Yes, I was that stupid and childish.
Thinking about it, one gets a little worked up about it. The Droste Effect doesn't just work in our everyday lives like advertisements or entertainments. You see a certain aspects of ourselves in it as well. I was just thinking about myself in terms of the Droste Effect, wondering how it would be like staring at myself as my own reflection goes on endlessly into the dark.
You see, there are times in any one's lives when we sit down and reflect upon ourselves. And when that happens, it sort of works like the Droste Effect doesn't it? Look deep enough, and all you get are distortions to your face, and you start to wonder if it is the true reflection of yourself at all. You cannot deny that it is, but I guess the deeper we go, the dirtier it gets. I think at the very core of anybody, there always seems to be something that we have denied ourselves from, ignored an aspect of ourselves because we chose not to be shallow, not to be superficial, not to be all the supposedly negative characteristics that might be condemned by people.
The truth is, I think, is that thinking too much upon yourself sometimes gets you nowhere. Instead of looking to the root of a problem when you are involved, take a step back and move on. Stop pondering over the same mistakes and see what you can do about it. The more you think, the deeper you go into those endless layers of self-reflection, and as far as your vision allows you to go, all you get is only going to be a distorted, disfigured and ugly self. Why subject yourself to this endless and vicious cycle when you could have moved on from where you are so long ago?
That's perhaps why I pride myself to be a guy, because we are simple creatures and I love that. We never look too far into ourselves. And when we do, I guess most of us have that touch-and-go attitude to it. We do not dwell on our failures for too long, and thus our eyes never brought us far enough to the disfigured, ugly self. Looking too deep into our reflection of self gets you nowhere, only in circles that never seem to end. Because really, we should all live by the line. What good is a circle?
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on Thursday, March 01, 2007 at 12:33 AM.
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