Psychedelic water

When I clicked on your image, Roel, I thought I ming find a link to order some "psychedilic water". But now I can see it's just a picture, not something one would drink.

But seriously, after having looked at it now for a few minutes, Our minds, our perceptual - cognitive systems, are predisposed to perceive patterns, faces, animals. And even when there are none "in reality" (whatever that might be), the mind tries anyway, and often succeeds to some extent. Having read about psychedelics in the past, it seems that a similar phenomenon may be involved there, though accelerated by substances that energize various brain synapses. So I think your characterization is quite appropriate; a quantitative rather than a qualitative difference.

What first presents in my perception is two opposing sets of diagonals; one arising from the luminance in the upper left corner and the other from the various elongated forms in the lower right; some more luminous, others darker. So it would be very easy here to conceive of some context of transition in which things are moving from the lower right corner out of darkness toward the light in the upper left. The mind takes off from there, providing various potential narratives....

A couple of things in the way of experiments I would suggest; first, perhaps try flipping this horizontally. I find often times that things seem to flow more naturally visually from left to right. So I'm thinking that a horizontal flip might make it feel more natural. Secondly, perhaps desaturation would further enhance the abstract nature of it, further distancing it from water insofar as the perceptual process is concerned.

On the other hand, if you were to amp up the color to bright greens, pinks, or reds, you might be able to call it something like "electric kool-aid"; a possible name I just made up.

Hi John, if you want I can send you a bottle of this water! But at this occasion my tent was just meters away from the water, and I drank several liters of it without noticing psychedelic effects! Although I did see some northern light later that night....

About your experiments, I tried rotating and flipping it, but this composition definitely works the best for me because the diagonals going from the top left corner to the lower right are the most dominant and work the best this way. I guess my natural flow goes from the lighter part to the darker part! Desaturating it did give some interesting results, so I will be playing around with that! Thanks for the tip!

Roel

Although I did see some northern light later that night....

So you say, Roel... and I believe you <cough> . Experiments are simply that. All have results, whether or not they reject the null hypothesis or not.