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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday, so we

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Speaker 2: are heading into the vault for an older episode of

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Speaker 2: the show. This one originally published on September fifth, twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty four, and it's the first part in our series

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Speaker 2: on odds and evens. I hope you enjoy.

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Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick. And today we wanted to

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Speaker 2: begin a series of episodes about the psychology of numbers,

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Speaker 2: specifically the interesting and strange varieties of meaning and emotion

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Speaker 2: that we attach to the concept of number parody p

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Speaker 2: r it y number parody meaning whether a number is

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Speaker 2: odd or even. Now to start to kind of back

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Speaker 2: up one step and start with the broader question, I

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Speaker 2: do realize at first it might seem kind of counterintuitive

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Speaker 2: that anybody would have emotions about or read meaning into

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Speaker 2: numbers themselves, because a number is almost the textbook example

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Speaker 2: of a neutral, abstract object. You know, it is a

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Speaker 2: tool for describing reality that is supposed to have no

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Speaker 2: connotations of its own until it is applied to a

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Speaker 2: quantity of something. So, you know, when people are just

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Speaker 2: in conversation trying to speak about something that is neutral

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Speaker 2: and without connotations, a number is one of the most

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Speaker 2: common things people will bring up.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, in fact, there's all you know, the idea of like, oh,

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Speaker 1: I'm just a number to you. That would mean, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I have no value to you outside of whatever my

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Speaker 1: numerical value is.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's the idea that you would be

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Speaker 2: stripped of all personality, connotation and significance in somebody else's mind. So,

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Speaker 2: depending on the context, it does seem totally normal that

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Speaker 2: you would have thoughts or feelings about the fact that

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Speaker 2: you have twenty three dollars cash in your pocket, or

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Speaker 2: the fact that you have six eggs left in the refrigerator.

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Speaker 2: They might be kind of simple thoughts like this is

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Speaker 2: enough for now, or this is not enough for now,

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Speaker 2: or something like that. But the question is, why would

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Speaker 2: anybody have particular thoughts or feelings about the number twenty

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Speaker 2: three itself or the number six when quantifying nothing in particular.

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Speaker 2: And yet I do think there's some interesting evidence that

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Speaker 2: we sometimes read meaning into bare numbers and project feelings

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Speaker 2: and human characteristics onto them. And this goes beyond the

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Speaker 2: practical sense of using those numbers to quantify things that

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Speaker 2: are good or bad for us, you know, where we

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Speaker 2: would prefer to have more or less of something. And

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Speaker 2: one example that came to mind when I was thinking

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Speaker 2: about this is in art, music, storytelling, in the creative domains.

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Speaker 2: Now we're going to come back and do a deeper

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Speaker 2: discussion of visual art in a bit later in this episode,

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Speaker 2: but I wanted to start here by saying that I

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Speaker 2: think a lot of times when a number or quantity

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Speaker 2: is featured in an artwork, you cannot explain any rational

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Speaker 2: reason that the number is more appropriate than any other,

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Speaker 2: but it just is. It's just the correct number that

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Speaker 2: should be there, which means it feels like it means something.

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Speaker 2: One example that came to mind for me is on

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Speaker 2: the Beatles White album from nineteen sixty eight. There is

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Speaker 2: a track on there that's kind of famously pretentious in

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Speaker 2: some people's minds, mind blowing to others. It is the

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Speaker 2: avant garde sound collage track Revolution nine or Revolution Number nine,

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Speaker 2: which is made out of a bunch of looping tape

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Speaker 2: segments that play over one another, and it creates this

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Speaker 2: weird sound collage of people reading bits of text, of music,

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Speaker 2: of old orchestras playing symphonic music, of the sounds of people,

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Speaker 2: you know, yelling or street noise, all different kinds of things.

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Speaker 2: And the way that phrases and words are repeated in

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Speaker 2: this track has the most. It creates the most peculiar

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Speaker 2: incantatory feeling. It's both creepy and sort of thrilling, and

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Speaker 2: a major motif in this track is a looping voice

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Speaker 2: that just says over and over again, number nine, number nine. Now,

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Speaker 2: I went and looked up some stuff about this track

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Speaker 2: to see what the significance of the number nine was,

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Speaker 2: because I never knew. And according to John Lennon, that

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Speaker 2: segment came from a test tape found at EMI Studios

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Speaker 2: that featured a sound engineer saying this is EMI test

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Speaker 2: series number nine. Now, of course people have come along,

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Speaker 2: including the artists themselves, and they would later attend all

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Speaker 2: kinds of meaning to that number, like I think this

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Speaker 2: is part of the track that some people thought was

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Speaker 2: like saying Paul is dead when you played it backwards,

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Speaker 2: so contributed to all kinds of conspiracy theories. But originally

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Speaker 2: it was about as close to a totally random number

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Speaker 2: as you could get. It was just a number found

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Speaker 2: on a tape that some engineer was saying. And yet

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Speaker 2: I think something about the vague cloud of emotion created

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Speaker 2: by that track would be very different if it were

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Speaker 2: a different EMI tape series number that had been used.

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Speaker 2: Like I tried to imagine the track, but with a

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Speaker 2: loop of someone saying number eight or number ten. I

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Speaker 2: can't be sure, but it seems like that would feel

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Speaker 2: quite different, even though I can't explain exactly how so,

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Speaker 2: Even when numbers are not quantities of things that matter

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Speaker 2: to our lives, but simply numbers read aloud on a

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Speaker 2: tape over and over, they can feel like they mean something,

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Speaker 2: and by consequence, the meaning would be changed if the

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Speaker 2: numbers were different.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, of course, it's important to note that

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Speaker 1: we're going to get into this obviously, that none of

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Speaker 1: these numbers have been hermetically sealed away from all other

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Speaker 1: culture an influence, so they have other associations that we

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Speaker 1: end up dragging into our reevaluation and reuse of them.

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Speaker 1: And but that being said, I think there you can

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Speaker 1: find something cool about every number. I think about this

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Speaker 1: a lot because when I'm swimming laps, I have to

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Speaker 1: do something to make sure that I don't forget which

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Speaker 1: lap I'm on, especially later on in my set, because

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Speaker 1: if I forget, I have to back up, and then

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Speaker 1: I can't keep doing that because then I'll just be

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Speaker 1: there all day. So you know, it's like, if I'm

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Speaker 1: on lap number four, well, a lot of times I

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Speaker 1: will Well, some of the times I'll think about things

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Speaker 1: particularly tied to four, like a fourth film and a

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Speaker 1: particular franchise or something. But other times I'll just I'll

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Speaker 1: sort of cast about, Okay, what is it about four?

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Speaker 1: I can think about, Okay, well, we got the you know,

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Speaker 1: the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and so forth, the okay, five,

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Speaker 1: what's coming up next? All right? Five Wounds of Christ? Okay,

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Speaker 1: but what do we got next? Six? You know, and

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Speaker 1: so forth? And generally culturally speaking, you know, from from

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Speaker 1: a literary standpoint and so forth musical standpoint, there's going

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Speaker 1: to be something to latch on for all of them.

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Speaker 1: And it depends on what your sort of pyramid of

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Speaker 1: interest and influences are.

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Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, yeah, though I would say I think

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Speaker 2: the number of semantic reference points you can use, either

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Speaker 2: from your life or from broader culture or literature or whatever.

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Speaker 2: That those are going to be clustered lower on the

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Speaker 2: number scale. So like the lower the number is, the

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Speaker 2: more easily you will find lots of different significances of that.

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Speaker 2: Once you start getting into like the triple digits and stuff,

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Speaker 2: I bet then you start you do start to get

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Speaker 2: some numbers where you can't really think of anything for them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a long walk between four twenty and six

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Speaker 1: sixty six, that's for sure. I never swum that high,

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Speaker 1: so I don't have to worry.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, But anyway, So okay, the Beatles example I used.

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Speaker 2: That's in the context of art and music, where we

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Speaker 2: are primed to think about everything as imbued with meaning

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Speaker 2: or call feeling, you know, even if we wouldn't give

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Speaker 2: it a second thought in another context. So that's a

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Speaker 2: different kind of scenario. But I still think that even

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Speaker 2: in everyday life, we sometimes have mysterious tendencies to feel

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Speaker 2: and think about quantities that are not relevant to our

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Speaker 2: personal fortunes. And that's what I wanted to look at

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Speaker 2: for the rest of the series. Specifically, again with respect

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Speaker 2: to number parity meaning odds and evens. So separating numbers

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Speaker 2: into odds and evens is one of the first principles

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Speaker 2: we learn early in mathematical education, and fortunately it's a

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Speaker 2: pretty simple principle to learn and apply. I think I

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Speaker 2: remember the way I thought about it when I was

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Speaker 2: a little kid was just sort of an alternating counting principle.

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Speaker 2: You count starting at one, and every other number is even.

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Speaker 2: The more formal way to express it would be that

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Speaker 2: an even number can be expressed as two times in

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Speaker 2: wherein is any natural number any the positive whole integer,

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Speaker 2: and an odd number can be expressed as two times

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Speaker 2: in plus one. And when I started thinking about this

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Speaker 2: topic for today's episode, it sort of occurred to me

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Speaker 2: that when we begin to think about a number for

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Speaker 2: any reason, any number, a number comes into your mind.

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Speaker 2: I think, at least for me, one of the first

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Speaker 2: things I notice about any number that I think of

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Speaker 2: is whether it is odd or even. In other words,

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Speaker 2: that parity is a high salience characteristic of individual numbers

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Speaker 2: in our brains. And later in my reading preparing for

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Speaker 2: this episode, I did find a reference to a scientific

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Speaker 2: study from the seventies that would seem to kind of

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Speaker 2: line up with that intuition that parity is a high

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Speaker 2: high salience characteristic of numbers. So there was a paper

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Speaker 2: called the Internal Representation of Numbers by Shepherd, Kilpatrick, and

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Speaker 2: Cunningham published in the journal Cognitive Psychology in nineteen seventy five,

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Speaker 2: and in this study, the authors found that if if

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Speaker 2: you give people random numbers, either as Arabic numerals like

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Speaker 2: we used today, or as groups of dots, or as

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Speaker 2: spoken words, and you ask people to arrange these numbers

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Speaker 2: by similarity group them together with other more similar numbers, Apparently,

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Speaker 2: one of the major criteria that people seemed to used

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Speaker 2: to group them by similarity was the odd even distinction.

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Speaker 2: So that seems to be represented pretty high in people's

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Speaker 2: minds as a characteristic of numbers. And this suggests to

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Speaker 2: me that if we do have strange, sometimes irrational feelings

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Speaker 2: about numbers, oddness and evenness would likely play a role

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Speaker 2: in these feelings. So I was casually reading about this

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Speaker 2: looking for references to people having feelings about odd and

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Speaker 2: even numbers, and I came across some evidence that there

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Speaker 2: are indeed patterns in people's feelings about numbers, and one

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Speaker 2: of those patterns has to do with number paroity. So

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Speaker 2: shout out to where I came some of these references.

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Speaker 2: It was in a couple of articles on this subject

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Speaker 2: from twenty fourteen by a British writer and science communicator

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Speaker 2: named Alex Bellows, who apparently writes on mathematics somewhat frequently

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Speaker 2: and had written a book concerning some of these topics

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Speaker 2: around this time. But anyway, these articles mention several different

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Speaker 2: experiments with findings about emotional preferences for odd and even

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Speaker 2: numbers and so. One example was an experiment by a

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Speaker 2: researcher named Mariska Milikowski of the University of Amsterdam who

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Speaker 2: showed subjects random numbers between one and one hundred and

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Speaker 2: then asked people to judge whether these numbers were good

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Speaker 2: or bad, or also excitable or calm, which is sort

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Speaker 2: of an absurd task because why would numbers be any

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Speaker 2: of those things? So, because of the absurdity of the task,

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Speaker 2: you might imagine the results would be random, but instead

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Speaker 2: she found there was a pattern. On average, people are

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Speaker 2: more likely to say that even numbers are good and

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Speaker 2: odd numbers are bad, and also even numbers were judged

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Speaker 2: as more calm, so good and calm.

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Speaker 1: It's so ridiculous, and yet I do feel some of it.

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Speaker 1: As we'll get into.

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Speaker 2: Bellos mentions another research team, Dan King of National University

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Speaker 2: of Singapore and Chris Yanishevitz of the University of Florida,

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Speaker 2: who again gave people random numbers randomly arranged between one

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Speaker 2: and one hundred and asked if they liked, disliked, or

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Speaker 2: felt neutral about all these numbers. And it turns out

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Speaker 2: that people tend to like even numbers and numbers ending

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Speaker 2: in five better than they like the other odd numbers

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Speaker 2: that don't end in five. So people show more emotional

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Speaker 2: positivity toward numbers that are divisible by two or five.

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Speaker 2: Seems like kind of a strange pattern again, but as

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Speaker 2: we go on in the series, we might find some

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Speaker 2: interesting reasons for that kind of pattern why people would

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Speaker 2: have preferences of this sort. One more thing, there's a

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Speaker 2: kind of practical business implication. Bellows says that consumer research

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Speaker 2: appears to show, at least in some cases, that people

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Speaker 2: have preferences for products with an even number in their

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Speaker 2: name as opposed to the same product with an odd number.

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Speaker 2: I think the article mentions a hypothetical cleaning product that

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Speaker 2: was in one of these experiments. But you can just imagine,

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Speaker 2: you know, V eight juice versus V seven juice. I

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Speaker 2: don't know if I'm drinking a V seven. Some seems

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Speaker 2: wrong there, I will admit.

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Speaker 1: V seven sounds more like it's supposed to go in

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Speaker 1: your engine, I guess, and VA could conceivably go in

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Speaker 1: your body.

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Speaker 2: Wait, isn't a vight a type of engine?

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Speaker 1: I guess. I guess part of what's going on here

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Speaker 1: is that V eight is coded to both engine and

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Speaker 1: tomato drink. V seven does not have a drink connotation,

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Speaker 1: but he's close enough to the thing that is also

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Speaker 1: you know, something do with cars. So so yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: I feel like there's a lot of this that goes

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Speaker 1: on with any of these, Like there's there's the reference

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Speaker 1: you're aware of, and then there's like another sort of

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Speaker 1: like phantom reference in your pyramid of interest and influences

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Speaker 1: that is changing the way you think about a number. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, But anyway, this made me so curious, like if

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Speaker 2: these patterns are actually valid in the real world, if

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Speaker 2: people do, in many cases show a kind of greater

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Speaker 2: liking or emotional preference for even numbers, especially in certain contexts,

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Speaker 2: or maybe even numbers and numbers, numbers that are otherwise

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Speaker 2: easily divisible by a common factor like five. What causes that?

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Speaker 2: And how do similar patterns manifest throughout human life and

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Speaker 2: in our cultures and in our art. Oh and just

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Speaker 2: to throw this in, because it was a funny thing

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Speaker 2: that belos mentions in one of these articles I was

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Speaker 2: talking about, he brings up the fact that Douglas Adams

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Speaker 2: has talked about the number forty two seems like a

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Speaker 2: mostly unremarkable number, though it does play a role in

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Speaker 2: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because spoiler alert, it

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Speaker 2: is discovered to be the uh oh, what is the

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Speaker 2: exact phrasing? It is the answer to the question like

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Speaker 2: what is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?

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Speaker 2: I apologize if I get that's like, that's correct, okay, yeah,

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Speaker 2: and so so the answer is forty two. But Douglas Adams,

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Speaker 2: speaking of the number forty two, apparently said that it

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Speaker 2: was quote the sort of number that you could without

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Speaker 2: any fear, introduced to your parents. That you know, that

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Speaker 2: seems kind of right, something feels absolutely correct, communicates rectitude. Why,

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Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't think it's a cultural association

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Speaker 2: with the number. It feels deeper, it feels like something

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Speaker 2: mathematical about the number. Forty two kind of seems like upstanding.

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Speaker 1: Yeah it should be. There's like a proof for it. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's weird to think about it. Like you were

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Speaker 1: talking about revolution number nine earlier, and it's like, to me,

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Speaker 1: on some level, nine feels right. Nine feels nine is

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Speaker 1: kind of a bad boy. You know, it belongs in

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Speaker 1: a rock song, so somehow, you know. Now, I do

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Speaker 1: want as we get into all this, I do want

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Speaker 1: to just throw this out there that even when we're

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Speaker 1: talking about evens and odds, we do have to be

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Speaker 1: aware of the the temptation of the realm of numerology, uh,

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Speaker 1: the you know, the belief in a magical, mystical, infernal

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Speaker 1: or divine relationship between numbers and reality. It's really easy

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Speaker 1: to get into with with with numbers in general, if

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Speaker 1: only even if you're only doing it like surface level,

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Speaker 1: you know, just sort of like accidentally believing in various

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Speaker 1: superstitions about numbers. And then and then when push comes

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Speaker 1: to shove saying well, okay, I'll go with twelve instead

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Speaker 1: of thirteen. Thank you, very much. But then you'll find

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Speaker 1: some some very strong examples of numerology concerning say, oh,

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Speaker 1: I ran across one that said, okay, look to even

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Speaker 1: numbers in the Bible, because that's that's how God is

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Speaker 1: speaking to you. God speaks through even numbers. Why you know,

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Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna I didn't. I didn't go too deep

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Speaker 1: on it because I had a feeling the answer was

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Speaker 1: not going to be fulfilling.

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Speaker 2: What's wrong with the odd numbers in the Bible.

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Speaker 1: Well, one thing that through that I instantly thought of

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Speaker 1: is like some other bit of I guess, sort of

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Speaker 1: you know, vaguely Christian numerology. I mean, maybe this is

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Speaker 1: rooted in like more traditional Christian numerology, or maybe it

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Speaker 1: was more like you know, recent like nineteen nineties fundamentalism.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but I remember reading at some point

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Speaker 1: in my past that, oh, well seven is the holy

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Speaker 1: number because it's odd and it can't be divided, but

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Speaker 1: six six is bad because it can be divided, And I, like,

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Speaker 1: I distinctly remember that, and for a while, I when

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Speaker 1: I was younger, I was like, yeah, yeah, that that

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Speaker 1: that adds up, right, But no, it doesn't it. What

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Speaker 1: is what sense does that possibly make? And yet on

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Speaker 1: some level I still hope by it that, Like, yet, yeah,

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Speaker 1: seven feels like a wholly righteous number, and six six

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Speaker 1: falls a little bit short. Six is going into the inferno.

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Speaker 2: Well, it's funny you mentioned seven, because this also came

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Speaker 2: up in some of the articles I was reading for today.

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Speaker 2: I don't remember the exact source, so I'm sorry, but

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Speaker 2: one of them got into the idea that if you

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Speaker 2: ask people to pick a random number between one and ten,

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Speaker 2: the most common number people will pick is seven. And

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Speaker 2: there's actually a logic there because it's the number between

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Speaker 2: one and ten that actually feels the most random, like

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Speaker 2: all the even numbers between one and ten. That doesn't

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Speaker 2: seem right because there's something about even numbers that doesn't

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Speaker 2: feel very random to us. The even numbers feel too predictable,

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Speaker 2: So you need to pick one of the odd numbers.

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Speaker 2: So you shouldn't pick one because that's the beginning of

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Speaker 2: the scale. You shouldn't pick nine because that's divisible by three.

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Speaker 2: You shouldn't pick three because three times three is nine.

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Speaker 2: You shouldn't pick five because five times two is ten.

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Speaker 2: But seven, that's nothing. You can't do anything with that

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Speaker 2: In there. No, there's no multiple, there's no way to

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Speaker 2: divide seven into a whole number. It's prime, and there's

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Speaker 2: no way to multiply it and still get a number

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Speaker 2: within the scale of ten. So it's like the one

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Speaker 2: that stands out in there.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's kind of the rationale behind some

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Speaker 1: of the ideas that the seven is holy, that it's

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Speaker 1: like it is, it is like God, and that it

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Speaker 1: is it cannot be divided, it's and it can't be

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Speaker 1: doubled and still hit something within the one to ten

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Speaker 1: range and so forth. I don't know, but you know, again,

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Speaker 1: this is also, at the end of the day, pretty silly.

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Speaker 1: The late m Berto Echo rightfully pointed out. He goes

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Speaker 1: into this in an extended bit in Fuco's Pendulum, but

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Speaker 1: he rightfully pointed out that humans have manipulated numbers since

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Speaker 1: ancient times to create illusions of meaning, and that one

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Speaker 1: can ultimately do whatever one wants with numbers. You can

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Speaker 1: torture the numbers and get what you want. You can

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Speaker 1: do all sorts of weird analysis of like, oh, well

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Speaker 1: this this person has, you know, so many letters in

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Speaker 1: their first name, so many in their last name. You know,

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Speaker 1: divide by the root of such and such, and we

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Speaker 1: have the number of the beast, and so you can

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Speaker 1: do that kind of thing all day and it doesn't

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Speaker 1: mean anything other than you can make the numbers do

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Speaker 1: what you want. And on top of that, number based

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Speaker 1: superstition's number based heuristics. These can be very sticky, you know,

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Speaker 1: even if you don't really believe in them. Absolutely, they're

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Speaker 1: in there in the background of your mind when you're

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Speaker 1: dealing with numbers that otherwise don't mean anything, and your

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Speaker 1: mind again always wants to make the best sense of

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Speaker 1: the data it's presented with, even if it has to

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Speaker 1: depend on things that are not real. So that's a

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Speaker 1: warning against going too far. But that's not what we're

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Speaker 1: for the most part talking about in this.

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Speaker 2: Series, right Well, I personally take no position on whether

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Speaker 2: odd or even numbers are holy or unholy or whatever.

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Speaker 2: But I am interested in if we have patterns of

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Speaker 2: feelings about them or ascribe meaning to them, and if so,

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Speaker 2: why do we have the psychological tendency to do that. Now.

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Speaker 2: One of the things that first got me interested in

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Speaker 2: this subject of preferences for odd and even numbers or

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Speaker 2: odd and even quantities of things was an idea that

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Speaker 2: actually comes from the world of art, of art theory,

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Speaker 2: art criticism, and the idea is that there is a

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Speaker 2: widely held natural preference that people have for the staging

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Speaker 2: of odd numbers of items within visual art, or the

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Speaker 2: division of visual art into odd numbers, into odd patterns,

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Speaker 2: basically odd quantified patterns, and that this applies to painting

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Speaker 2: and photography and film and so forth. And I found

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Speaker 2: that so curious, and that does ring very true to me.

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Speaker 2: But I don't quite know where that preference would come

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Speaker 2: from or why that is. And if so, is that

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Speaker 2: I don't know, does that go to something deep within

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Speaker 2: our brains or is it just sort of a is

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Speaker 2: sort of a cultural preference. It's a convention that we've established.

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Speaker 2: What's going on with this idea about odds and visual art?

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Speaker 1: Well, the short answer is absolutely yes, definitely no, and

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Speaker 1: it depends on who you ask. But it is really

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Speaker 1: fascinating to get into. So one of the big ones.

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Speaker 1: There are several different things that are kind of like

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Speaker 1: different concepts and laws and rules that are involved here,

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Speaker 1: but the big one, the one that I imagine a

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Speaker 1: lot of you are thinking of, is, of course, the

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Speaker 1: rule of thirds. This is a pretty widespread and famous

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Speaker 1: composition rule. It's pretty standard in photography, cinematography, various forms

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Speaker 1: of visual art, and it's a standard overlay in various

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Speaker 1: visual editing software, titles, and even in phones and cameras.

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Speaker 1: Most of you have seen this. It's pretty basic though.

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Speaker 1: It's also interesting that when we're talking about the rule

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Speaker 1: of thirds, how do we compose it? Well, we use

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Speaker 1: we divide the frame up into an odd number of

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Speaker 1: zones by using an even number of lines. So it's

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Speaker 1: kind of like depending on which team you on, are

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Speaker 1: you on Team even or team odd? You could like

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Speaker 1: either team could make a claim for this and say

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Speaker 1: that your team is at the center of visual perfection.

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Speaker 2: Oh interesting, Yeah, So.

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Speaker 1: The standard overlay in question consists of two evenly spaced

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Speaker 1: horizontal lines and two evenly spaced vertical lines, thus breaking

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Speaker 1: up an image. And this particularly works well if you're

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Speaker 1: thinking of you know, the movie screen, you know, rectangle

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Speaker 1: breaking it up into nine equal parts nine Another big

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Speaker 1: score for team odd. But how do you use this grid? Well, okay,

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Speaker 1: they're major caveat that they are different versions of this

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Speaker 1: rule that break it down a little differently, So there's

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Speaker 1: not like one definition, that is the answer, and there

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Speaker 1: seems to be a little bit of wiggle room, and

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Speaker 1: even more wiggle room when we get into the details.

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Speaker 1: But the prevailing wisdom is that you make sure that

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Speaker 1: the important parts of the image, the parts where we're

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Speaker 1: going to focus our attention or where we're meant to

425
00:24:09,119 --> 00:24:13,120
Speaker 1: focus our attention, that those points exist along these lines

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Speaker 1: or at their intersection. And there's so many examples of this,

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Speaker 1: and I honestly think that it's probably best for listeners

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Speaker 1: to look up some examples, because we'll talk about some here.

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Speaker 1: We'll try to describe some of the simpler ones. But

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Speaker 1: for the most part, you know, this is an audio

431
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Speaker 1: medium and we're talking about visual arts that we can

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Speaker 1: only take you so far. But for example, if you

433
00:24:39,359 --> 00:24:42,200
Speaker 1: think of a particular film that is very well regarded,

434
00:24:42,280 --> 00:24:45,520
Speaker 1: you know, a great director, great cinematographer, you can probably

435
00:24:45,920 --> 00:24:48,320
Speaker 1: probably look up the title of that film or that

436
00:24:48,400 --> 00:24:51,760
Speaker 1: director and the term rule of thirds, and you might

437
00:24:51,800 --> 00:24:54,199
Speaker 1: get some shots from that film where somebody has been

438
00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:57,080
Speaker 1: so kind as to apply the grid and show you

439
00:24:57,119 --> 00:24:59,920
Speaker 1: how things line up. I included one for you here, Joe,

440
00:25:00,400 --> 00:25:02,679
Speaker 1: for us to look at and discuss. This is a

441
00:25:02,720 --> 00:25:06,080
Speaker 1: scene from Stanley Kubrick's two thousand and one, A Space Odyssey,

442
00:25:06,480 --> 00:25:09,879
Speaker 1: And yeah, you can see it. They hear two people

443
00:25:09,960 --> 00:25:13,520
Speaker 1: talking to each other in a spacecraft and their heads

444
00:25:14,080 --> 00:25:18,040
Speaker 1: are perfectly aligned with the nexus of these lines.

445
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:20,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is the famous scene where the two

446
00:25:20,119 --> 00:25:22,439
Speaker 2: astronauts in the ship have begun to suspect that there

447
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 2: is something wrong with Hal, and so they step off

448
00:25:25,600 --> 00:25:28,440
Speaker 2: of the ship into a secluded I think they step

449
00:25:28,440 --> 00:25:31,399
Speaker 2: into like a I don't know, an airlock or a

450
00:25:31,440 --> 00:25:34,320
Speaker 2: pod or something, so that they can talk to each

451
00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:37,000
Speaker 2: other without being listened to. And so they're sort of

452
00:25:37,160 --> 00:25:39,760
Speaker 2: both leaning toward the middle of the frame, but they're

453
00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:43,080
Speaker 2: at each side of it. And as they talk to

454
00:25:43,119 --> 00:25:46,760
Speaker 2: each other, we get that reveal where Hal is watching

455
00:25:46,800 --> 00:25:49,120
Speaker 2: through the window and reading their lips as they talk,

456
00:25:49,200 --> 00:25:51,439
Speaker 2: so they are not having the privacy they think they have.

457
00:25:52,440 --> 00:25:54,479
Speaker 2: But before that, we're shown the two of them just

458
00:25:54,560 --> 00:25:58,040
Speaker 2: sitting opposite one another, sort of reasoning about what's going on.

459
00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:00,640
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's interesting. I don't know if I would

460
00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:03,560
Speaker 2: have noticed this without the lines imposed on the screen,

461
00:26:04,040 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 2: but the characters are lined up perfectly along this division

462
00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:11,360
Speaker 2: of thirds vertically, and sort of their heads are right

463
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:14,880
Speaker 2: at the top division of the thirds horizontally.

464
00:26:15,560 --> 00:26:17,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then there are other ways to break down

465
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:21,200
Speaker 1: even a simple but beautifully shot scene like this as well.

466
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:24,840
Speaker 1: You have two individuals, two humans, but also how the

467
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:28,600
Speaker 1: third individual visible through the panel in the center. So

468
00:26:28,640 --> 00:26:33,120
Speaker 1: you have this triangle where you have these two individuals

469
00:26:33,160 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: in the foreground the one in the back, and that

470
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:38,399
Speaker 1: is serving as a way to sort of channel your

471
00:26:38,440 --> 00:26:42,280
Speaker 1: attention back towards how who they are talking about. Now,

472
00:26:42,359 --> 00:26:45,640
Speaker 1: another important way of thinking about the rule of thirds

473
00:26:46,040 --> 00:26:48,119
Speaker 1: is the way that you may have encountered it with

474
00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:51,760
Speaker 1: your camera before, if you've ever been encouraged to use

475
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:53,600
Speaker 1: the rule of thirds, and that is, if you're taking

476
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:56,560
Speaker 1: a picture of somebody, especially if it's like a portrait,

477
00:26:57,600 --> 00:26:59,960
Speaker 1: you don't want to take that picture of them dead center,

478
00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:02,159
Speaker 1: because if they're dead center, they're in the middle of

479
00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:05,080
Speaker 1: the grid. They're not at any of the on any

480
00:27:05,119 --> 00:27:08,439
Speaker 1: of the lines, or any at the convergence points. No,

481
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:10,879
Speaker 1: you want them generally a little bit to the left

482
00:27:11,040 --> 00:27:13,520
Speaker 1: or a little bit to the right. And you know,

483
00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:16,280
Speaker 1: if you look at various portrait shots out there, and

484
00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:18,919
Speaker 1: plenty of scenes in films and paintings and so forth,

485
00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:21,960
Speaker 1: this often holds up. They're not dead center, they're a

486
00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:26,639
Speaker 1: little bit to the side, and often times the rest

487
00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:29,080
Speaker 1: of the shot, like the over to their left or

488
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:32,080
Speaker 1: over to their right, there is sort of the thing

489
00:27:32,119 --> 00:27:35,040
Speaker 1: they're looking at, or the thing or the vista that

490
00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:37,960
Speaker 1: we're supposed to sort of take in as being either

491
00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:41,159
Speaker 1: part of the story that's happening in the shot or

492
00:27:41,320 --> 00:27:44,119
Speaker 1: part of some other level of contemplation, like I don't know,

493
00:27:44,160 --> 00:27:47,600
Speaker 1: it's a shot in your it's a photograph in yours,

494
00:27:47,720 --> 00:27:50,480
Speaker 1: your local newspaper about a gardener, and well, here's the

495
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:54,240
Speaker 1: gardener in the picture, and there's their garden. The gardener

496
00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:55,920
Speaker 1: is going to be a little bit to the right,

497
00:27:56,320 --> 00:28:00,720
Speaker 1: lining up with that second vertical line, and then you're

498
00:28:00,760 --> 00:28:03,160
Speaker 1: going to see their garden more or less in full

499
00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:06,560
Speaker 1: to their left. Now, to be clear, this again is

500
00:28:06,640 --> 00:28:10,520
Speaker 1: not a natural law. There's nothing absolute about it, and

501
00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:13,399
Speaker 1: in creative endeavors, rules are made to be broken. And

502
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:17,480
Speaker 1: there are plenty of other overlays you can use, though

503
00:28:17,520 --> 00:28:20,359
Speaker 1: some of them line up with the rule of thirds,

504
00:28:20,400 --> 00:28:22,280
Speaker 1: like the golden spiral is a big one, and you've

505
00:28:22,280 --> 00:28:26,360
Speaker 1: probably seen this overlay and film editing software or cameras

506
00:28:26,400 --> 00:28:28,960
Speaker 1: and so forth, or also people you know, showing you

507
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:31,720
Speaker 1: the brilliance of their favorite scene from their favorite movie.

508
00:28:31,760 --> 00:28:34,240
Speaker 1: Look what happens when I put this golden spiral over

509
00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:36,960
Speaker 1: this scene from Underworld three, Rise of the Lichens.

510
00:28:37,359 --> 00:28:40,440
Speaker 2: Clearly they did that on purpose. Yeah yeah.

511
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:44,120
Speaker 1: But on the other end of the spectrum, symmetry can

512
00:28:44,160 --> 00:28:47,840
Speaker 1: be quite intoxicating. And this is where it gets tricky too,

513
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:50,320
Speaker 1: because you can have a very symmetrical shot that lines

514
00:28:50,400 --> 00:28:53,400
Speaker 1: up with the rule of thirds, but this idea of

515
00:28:53,480 --> 00:28:56,240
Speaker 1: having like a single person in the shot and they're

516
00:28:56,240 --> 00:28:58,239
Speaker 1: a little to the left or the the right, that

517
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:01,320
Speaker 1: ends up making a shot that's not symmetrical. But then

518
00:29:01,360 --> 00:29:05,920
Speaker 1: we are also drawn to symmetry. And I was talking

519
00:29:05,920 --> 00:29:09,080
Speaker 1: about this was my wife, who's a photographer, and she said, well,

520
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: you know, this is why you see so many pictures

521
00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:14,760
Speaker 1: of bands on a railroad track, oftentimes very symmetrical looking,

522
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:18,040
Speaker 1: because it's just irresistible. We like the symmetry and all. Yeah,

523
00:29:18,120 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 1: we also like those parallel lines heading off into the distance.

524
00:29:22,640 --> 00:29:25,840
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, not only thematically suggesting that like there's a

525
00:29:25,840 --> 00:29:29,320
Speaker 2: lot of road to go or something, but they meet

526
00:29:29,360 --> 00:29:31,960
Speaker 2: the vanishing point they converge far away.

527
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:34,720
Speaker 1: Plus they're bad boys because they're on the tracks and

528
00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:39,280
Speaker 1: it's dangerous. Just a word of caution, please don't take

529
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:41,480
Speaker 1: photos of your band on active train tracks. Those are

530
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 1: active train tracks, y'all. But as for the term the

531
00:29:45,360 --> 00:29:48,080
Speaker 1: rule of thirds, where does this come from? Well, the

532
00:29:48,160 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 1: concept under this name is generally attributed to English painter

533
00:29:52,720 --> 00:29:56,280
Speaker 1: and engraver John Thomas Smith, who lives seventeen sixty six

534
00:29:56,320 --> 00:30:00,760
Speaker 1: through eighteen thirty three, who provides the earliest known reference

535
00:30:00,800 --> 00:30:04,080
Speaker 1: to it by this name in his seventeen ninety seven

536
00:30:04,120 --> 00:30:07,880
Speaker 1: work remarks on Rural Scenery, a work described in library

537
00:30:07,920 --> 00:30:11,120
Speaker 1: catalogs as a collection of quote essays on landscape gardening

538
00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:16,160
Speaker 1: and on unit uniting picturesque effects with rural scenery, containing

539
00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:19,200
Speaker 1: directions for laying out and improving the grounds connected with

540
00:30:19,240 --> 00:30:20,280
Speaker 1: a country residence.

541
00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:22,320
Speaker 2: The way you said that about the coinage of the

542
00:30:22,400 --> 00:30:26,280
Speaker 2: term rab, I take that to mean you're saying that

543
00:30:26,320 --> 00:30:29,840
Speaker 2: Smith is not necessarily saying that he invented the idea

544
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:31,280
Speaker 2: of using thirds in art.

545
00:30:31,680 --> 00:30:35,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, he's based on my reading of this section

546
00:30:35,160 --> 00:30:37,120
Speaker 1: of his book. It's a rather stuffy book, by the ways,

547
00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:42,400
Speaker 1: which I think you can get from the topic covered

548
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:46,600
Speaker 1: time period. But my take on it is that he

549
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:50,280
Speaker 1: is saying, hey, here's this thing I've observed. This seems

550
00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:53,520
Speaker 1: to hold true. I'm not sure if it has a name,

551
00:30:53,720 --> 00:30:55,360
Speaker 1: but this is what I'm going to call it. In fact,

552
00:30:55,520 --> 00:30:57,920
Speaker 1: he refers to it as the rule of thirds and

553
00:30:57,960 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 1: says if I may be allowed to call it, So

554
00:31:01,640 --> 00:31:04,160
Speaker 1: he's not pretending to invent it, but he's pointing it

555
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:07,760
Speaker 1: out as a guiding principle of good esthetics, calling out

556
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:11,800
Speaker 1: other principles that were well established, like Hogarth's line or

557
00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:15,479
Speaker 1: the line of beauty. That's an S shape, curved line

558
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:18,240
Speaker 1: that is often held to be attractive in visual works,

559
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:22,120
Speaker 1: and not merely in a sexual fashion either. But you'll

560
00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:24,160
Speaker 1: see it like lined up with just say, pictures of

561
00:31:24,240 --> 00:31:27,680
Speaker 1: just you know, random humanoid figures or abstract patterns.

562
00:31:27,920 --> 00:31:31,240
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know about this already, but I

563
00:31:31,280 --> 00:31:33,480
Speaker 2: googled it after I saw this in your notes, and

564
00:31:33,520 --> 00:31:35,320
Speaker 2: this is interesting. So yeah, it's like a sort of

565
00:31:35,480 --> 00:31:38,080
Speaker 2: S shape that I don't know figures and a lot

566
00:31:38,080 --> 00:31:40,760
Speaker 2: of old drawings and paintings do seem to follow. It

567
00:31:40,840 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 2: kind of reminds me of something we've talked about before

568
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:47,840
Speaker 2: in sculpture, which is a kind of a popular posture

569
00:31:48,080 --> 00:31:52,440
Speaker 2: used in classical sculpture that is sometimes called contraposto, meaning

570
00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:56,480
Speaker 2: sort of counterpoise, where a figure is not standing exactly

571
00:31:56,520 --> 00:31:59,400
Speaker 2: straight up, but their body is kind of tilted or

572
00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:00,480
Speaker 2: leaning at the hip.

573
00:32:01,080 --> 00:32:05,200
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Smith speaks to the rule of thirds, generally

574
00:32:05,240 --> 00:32:09,520
Speaker 1: for landscapes, and he speaks of it as two thirds

575
00:32:09,520 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 1: of one element to one third of the other, with

576
00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:15,920
Speaker 1: his given example being two thirds land to one third water,

577
00:32:16,400 --> 00:32:19,479
Speaker 1: providing us with, for example, a beach scene. And indeed,

578
00:32:19,480 --> 00:32:22,760
Speaker 1: this is what we see in some beach paintings. I

579
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:24,680
Speaker 1: was looking around at various beach paintings, and there are

580
00:32:24,680 --> 00:32:26,760
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways to paint a beach, and

581
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:29,320
Speaker 1: they certainly don't all line up with this. But for

582
00:32:29,760 --> 00:32:33,960
Speaker 1: your an easy example for listeners is imagine you have

583
00:32:34,120 --> 00:32:38,320
Speaker 1: a horizontal painting and if you're scanning it from left

584
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:41,000
Speaker 1: to right, all right, here's ocean. Okay, I'm halfway through

585
00:32:41,040 --> 00:32:43,640
Speaker 1: the painting. There's still nothing but ocean. And then the

586
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:47,200
Speaker 1: third the right most portion of the painting, Oh suddenly

587
00:32:47,200 --> 00:32:49,720
Speaker 1: it's beach and there people and buildings and so forth.

588
00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:53,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, And of course this can have very interestingly different

589
00:32:53,240 --> 00:32:55,800
Speaker 2: effects depending on which part of the scene you decide

590
00:32:55,840 --> 00:32:58,520
Speaker 2: to devote the two thirds versus the one third two.

591
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:04,120
Speaker 2: I often notice I'm kind of attracted to landscape paintings

592
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:08,120
Speaker 2: where the two thirds part is the more empty part,

593
00:33:08,200 --> 00:33:10,120
Speaker 2: you know, where it gives more to the void. In

594
00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:13,360
Speaker 2: this case with the ocean, is the two thirds.

595
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:16,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And then we'll get into different ways to

596
00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:18,560
Speaker 1: potentially read a painting as well, because I just use

597
00:33:18,600 --> 00:33:20,920
Speaker 1: the example of left or right, but there's nothing that

598
00:33:20,920 --> 00:33:23,440
Speaker 1: says you can't go right to left. There are some

599
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:26,280
Speaker 1: very definite reasons why you might do that. And I

600
00:33:26,320 --> 00:33:28,160
Speaker 1: was just thinking of this casually too. If you've ever

601
00:33:28,200 --> 00:33:30,280
Speaker 1: been to an art museum, if you were at one

602
00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:33,800
Speaker 1: where there are other people, sometimes you end up approaching

603
00:33:33,800 --> 00:33:36,000
Speaker 1: a piece that already has someone viewing it, and you

604
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 1: don't get to choose at what point you start viewing

605
00:33:38,560 --> 00:33:41,560
Speaker 1: the picture. You know there might only be room on

606
00:33:42,040 --> 00:33:44,280
Speaker 1: the right or the left, and that might or might

607
00:33:44,320 --> 00:33:48,280
Speaker 1: not dictate how you scan it. And that's assuming you

608
00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:51,040
Speaker 1: just give it like one really meaningful scan and you

609
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:53,440
Speaker 1: don't sit there and try different things on it. So

610
00:33:53,560 --> 00:33:55,480
Speaker 1: I'll read just a quick quote from Smith. I say

611
00:33:55,600 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 1: a lot of his writing is a little stuffy for

612
00:33:57,520 --> 00:33:59,960
Speaker 1: my taste, But this kind of sums up what he's saying.

613
00:34:00,560 --> 00:34:03,760
Speaker 1: In short, in applying this invention generally speaking to any

614
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:07,200
Speaker 1: other case, whether of light, shade form, or color, I

615
00:34:07,240 --> 00:34:09,520
Speaker 1: have found the ratio of about two thirds to one

616
00:34:09,600 --> 00:34:12,239
Speaker 1: third or of one to two a much better and

617
00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:16,600
Speaker 1: more harmonizing proportion than the precise formal half the two

618
00:34:16,800 --> 00:34:20,799
Speaker 1: far extending four fifths, and in short, than any other

619
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:24,319
Speaker 1: proportion whatever. So fair enough, this is a man who's

620
00:34:24,320 --> 00:34:26,279
Speaker 1: tried out different proportions.

621
00:34:27,160 --> 00:34:28,480
Speaker 2: Doesn't like that four fifths?

622
00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:31,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, what about three fifths doesn't like it?

623
00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:33,560
Speaker 2: What about two fitths doesn't like it?

624
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:37,520
Speaker 1: Now? I've also read an interpretation that the rule of

625
00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 1: thirds also works because the eye is typically drawn towards

626
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:43,880
Speaker 1: points just beyond the center of an image, and in

627
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:47,239
Speaker 1: cultures where people read left to right, they also tend

628
00:34:47,239 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 1: to scan an image in the same fashion, making the

629
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:53,640
Speaker 1: upper left hand portion of an image the easiest to overlook,

630
00:34:53,640 --> 00:34:56,960
Speaker 1: in the bottom right the likely focus. I was reading

631
00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:00,680
Speaker 1: about this in a masterclass article on the rule of thirds,

632
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:04,200
Speaker 1: and this got me interested to learn a little bit

633
00:35:04,200 --> 00:35:07,000
Speaker 1: more about this whole linguistic effect, And indeed, there have

634
00:35:07,120 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 1: been various studies on the effects of language reading direction

635
00:35:10,880 --> 00:35:14,440
Speaker 1: on a number of cognitive and centsory processes. So, you know,

636
00:35:14,600 --> 00:35:17,759
Speaker 1: just to remind everyone, you know, not all languages are

637
00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:21,440
Speaker 1: read left to right. Some are read right to left,

638
00:35:22,120 --> 00:35:25,440
Speaker 1: and there have been a lot of observations and thoughts

639
00:35:25,520 --> 00:35:28,720
Speaker 1: and some research looking into well, how does that change

640
00:35:28,760 --> 00:35:34,280
Speaker 1: the way that various things work, you know, cognitively and observationally.

641
00:35:35,880 --> 00:35:38,640
Speaker 1: So according to Smith at all in native reading direction

642
00:35:39,120 --> 00:35:43,880
Speaker 1: and corresponding preference for left or right lit images. This

643
00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:48,240
Speaker 1: is from twenty thirteen in Perceptual and Motor Skills. Apparently

644
00:35:48,280 --> 00:35:49,759
Speaker 1: at the time there was a lot that hadn't been

645
00:35:50,040 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 1: agreed on yet, and I'm to believe that this is

646
00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:57,760
Speaker 1: still largely the case. They point out that the first

647
00:35:57,920 --> 00:36:02,520
Speaker 1: language and individual learns does appear to influence spatial attention,

648
00:36:03,040 --> 00:36:07,160
Speaker 1: and it may factor into differences in eye movement as well. However,

649
00:36:08,360 --> 00:36:10,120
Speaker 1: one of the things that you see when you start

650
00:36:10,120 --> 00:36:12,400
Speaker 1: looking at some of this research is that it tends

651
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:16,840
Speaker 1: to result in a leftward bias in left to right readers.

652
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:19,200
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure if that really lines up with

653
00:36:19,239 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 1: some of these ideas about positioning objects in the rule

654
00:36:24,040 --> 00:36:24,520
Speaker 1: of thirds.

655
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:29,880
Speaker 2: Okay, so if the classical idea is a person who

656
00:36:29,960 --> 00:36:32,919
Speaker 2: is in a left to right reading literacy culture would

657
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:35,880
Speaker 2: quote read a painting from left to right, and thus

658
00:36:36,080 --> 00:36:38,120
Speaker 2: they will end up on the right, and so you

659
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:40,120
Speaker 2: should have stuff at the bottom right if you want

660
00:36:40,120 --> 00:36:43,160
Speaker 2: people to kind of land decisively on that when looking

661
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:46,160
Speaker 2: at the image. This research would seem to suggest more

662
00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:48,239
Speaker 2: of the opposite, that there's more of a tendency to

663
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:50,799
Speaker 2: look to the left of the painting, more towards the

664
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:53,000
Speaker 2: beginning of the lines on the page where he used.

665
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:57,279
Speaker 1: To Yeah, And I think an important thing to note

666
00:36:57,360 --> 00:37:01,399
Speaker 1: here too is that maybe some of these concepts would

667
00:37:01,440 --> 00:37:06,000
Speaker 1: be more defined if you're dealing with something really abstract.

668
00:37:06,280 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 1: But when you get into scenes via it in visual

669
00:37:09,239 --> 00:37:11,680
Speaker 1: arts or certainly in films where there are human beings

670
00:37:11,760 --> 00:37:16,560
Speaker 1: involved and or environments that are realistic or unrealistic for

671
00:37:16,600 --> 00:37:20,560
Speaker 1: that matter, your mind is also trying to put piece

672
00:37:20,600 --> 00:37:23,680
Speaker 1: together a story. It's trying to predict the future. Even

673
00:37:23,719 --> 00:37:25,640
Speaker 1: if you're looking at a still painting where you haven't

674
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:28,080
Speaker 1: had an update on what happens next, but your brain

675
00:37:28,120 --> 00:37:30,080
Speaker 1: is still trying to figure out what will happen next

676
00:37:30,120 --> 00:37:32,319
Speaker 1: in the world of that painting, and therefore there are

677
00:37:32,320 --> 00:37:35,200
Speaker 1: all these other things involved, like where's what's the person

678
00:37:35,239 --> 00:37:37,160
Speaker 1: looking at or they looking at me, or they're looking off.

679
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:40,040
Speaker 1: If the person in the painting is looking to the

680
00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:42,759
Speaker 1: left or to the right, well then that changes the

681
00:37:43,200 --> 00:37:45,160
Speaker 1: value of the left or the right to me, the

682
00:37:45,239 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 1: reader or the viewer. And so like I say this,

683
00:37:49,040 --> 00:37:50,520
Speaker 1: a lot of this comes back to the fact that

684
00:37:50,600 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 1: the rule of thirds, the exact definition of it and

685
00:37:53,520 --> 00:37:56,280
Speaker 1: the application of it, kind of depends on who's accounting

686
00:37:56,320 --> 00:37:58,959
Speaker 1: it and how much weight they're putting behind it. Again,

687
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:02,240
Speaker 1: it's not a natural law or anything. It is often

688
00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:05,120
Speaker 1: held up as kind of maybe a best practices for

689
00:38:05,320 --> 00:38:09,799
Speaker 1: subjective art, but it's a rule that's made to be broken.

690
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:13,000
Speaker 1: I was reading about it a little bit more in

691
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:16,799
Speaker 1: a paper titled evaluating the Rule of Thirds in Photographs

692
00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:19,920
Speaker 1: and Paintings by A Mirasha at All. This was from

693
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:24,719
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen in the journal Art and Perception, and they

694
00:38:24,719 --> 00:38:30,160
Speaker 1: conducted a study where the researchers compared computer calculated rock values.

695
00:38:30,200 --> 00:38:33,879
Speaker 1: I should note that in multiple articles folks abbreviate rule

696
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:37,600
Speaker 1: of thirds to rot. Rot ended up reading a lot

697
00:38:37,600 --> 00:38:40,680
Speaker 1: about Rot and testing out Rot, but they compared computer

698
00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:44,720
Speaker 1: calculated rock values with human test subject rock values concerning

699
00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:48,960
Speaker 1: images and their findings. They argued suggested that rot might

700
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:51,480
Speaker 1: not be as essential to the evaluation of photos and

701
00:38:51,600 --> 00:38:54,680
Speaker 1: artworks as previously thought, and that quote it might have

702
00:38:54,719 --> 00:38:59,319
Speaker 1: become a normative aspect of creating artworks rather than a

703
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:00,399
Speaker 1: quality if one.

704
00:39:01,040 --> 00:39:03,560
Speaker 2: Ah okay, So if that's the case, it could be

705
00:39:03,719 --> 00:39:06,880
Speaker 2: more a result of a kind of convention that we

706
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:12,120
Speaker 2: expect to see replicated because it is a convention used

707
00:39:12,160 --> 00:39:15,480
Speaker 2: by artists, but not so much a natural preference of

708
00:39:15,520 --> 00:39:16,600
Speaker 2: all viewers of art.

709
00:39:17,280 --> 00:39:20,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's my understanding. I was reading a little

710
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:23,040
Speaker 1: bit more about this too, in a paper titled when

711
00:39:23,120 --> 00:39:25,960
Speaker 1: might We Break the Rules? A Statistical analysis of Esthetics

712
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:30,239
Speaker 1: and Photographs from plus one twenty twenty two by one

713
00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:35,120
Speaker 1: at All, and they they pointed out something that is

714
00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:37,399
Speaker 1: also worth taking into account here, because they were talking

715
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:40,200
Speaker 1: about how, okay, high quality photographs often obey a handful

716
00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:43,440
Speaker 1: of various rules, not only the rule of thirds, but

717
00:39:43,480 --> 00:39:47,520
Speaker 1: also things like the rule of odds, which simply states

718
00:39:47,520 --> 00:39:49,960
Speaker 1: that if you're going to have multiple subjects or objects

719
00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:52,920
Speaker 1: in your work, an odd number is better than an

720
00:39:52,960 --> 00:39:54,120
Speaker 1: even number. Ah.

721
00:39:54,120 --> 00:39:56,120
Speaker 2: Here we come full circle. So this is what I

722
00:39:56,200 --> 00:39:58,560
Speaker 2: was thinking about originally, though the rule of thirds does

723
00:39:58,640 --> 00:39:59,920
Speaker 2: sort of catch some of this as well.

724
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:02,399
Speaker 1: Well. Yeah, and there are a lot of examples of this,

725
00:40:03,440 --> 00:40:05,880
Speaker 1: and like basically, like we can basically go back to

726
00:40:05,920 --> 00:40:07,840
Speaker 1: the example we were talking about with how and the

727
00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:11,239
Speaker 1: two humans earlier. Three figures may be positioned in a

728
00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:14,719
Speaker 1: triangular format, which naturally draws our attention in and gives

729
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:18,800
Speaker 1: us that depth. I included a picture I've included to

730
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:22,640
Speaker 1: still here from the excellent Carosawa film Throne of Blood.

731
00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:25,760
Speaker 1: This was on a video maker article by Wayland Bourne.

732
00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:28,080
Speaker 1: And this is another one. This is kind of I'll

733
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:31,359
Speaker 1: briefly describe this because this is a classic setup. To

734
00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:33,439
Speaker 1: the right and the left. You have two individuals their

735
00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:36,640
Speaker 1: backs turned to you, and they are entering into a

736
00:40:36,760 --> 00:40:39,960
Speaker 1: room or a structure, and there is a third person

737
00:40:40,080 --> 00:40:43,480
Speaker 1: in the center of the frame facing out, facing us,

738
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:45,759
Speaker 1: the viewer, and this creates that triangle.

739
00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:50,080
Speaker 2: Coras was a genius at framing scenes like this, And yeah,

740
00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:53,840
Speaker 2: this does look incredibly striking, especially because of the So

741
00:40:53,960 --> 00:40:55,759
Speaker 2: this is a film in black and white. It is

742
00:40:55,880 --> 00:41:00,239
Speaker 2: an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. And these two characters I

743
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:05,400
Speaker 2: think are the story's equivalents of the Macbeth and Banquo characters.

744
00:41:05,400 --> 00:41:07,800
Speaker 2: I don't recall what their names are in Throne of Blood,

745
00:41:08,400 --> 00:41:11,360
Speaker 2: but they're coming across the equivalent of what in Macbeth

746
00:41:11,520 --> 00:41:16,440
Speaker 2: is the three witches who give the prophecy. In this movie,

747
00:41:16,520 --> 00:41:19,440
Speaker 2: it is an old figure who lives in the forest

748
00:41:19,520 --> 00:41:21,960
Speaker 2: and is working some kind of device. Is it like

749
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:23,759
Speaker 2: a spinning wheel or something like that?

750
00:41:24,040 --> 00:41:24,680
Speaker 1: Something like that.

751
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:29,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, And whereas the two warriors are dressed in dark

752
00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:33,360
Speaker 2: samurai armor, the prophet or witch figure is very brightly

753
00:41:33,440 --> 00:41:36,080
Speaker 2: lit and appears kind of hazy and pale. And so

754
00:41:36,880 --> 00:41:40,359
Speaker 2: this three person composition with the opposite facing and the

755
00:41:40,360 --> 00:41:44,520
Speaker 2: difference in the white versus dark, the contrast there, it's brilliant.

756
00:41:44,560 --> 00:41:45,480
Speaker 2: It looks so good.

757
00:41:45,840 --> 00:41:49,000
Speaker 1: I'll have more on witches here shortly. Because another way

758
00:41:49,080 --> 00:41:52,279
Speaker 1: to look at this rule of odds is that if

759
00:41:52,280 --> 00:41:56,520
Speaker 1: you have four characters in a scene in an image,

760
00:41:56,960 --> 00:41:59,239
Speaker 1: you can also go ahead and group three together and

761
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:01,279
Speaker 1: have one off the side. You can do things like

762
00:42:01,320 --> 00:42:05,960
Speaker 1: this where Okay, I have an even number of subjects

763
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:08,440
Speaker 1: in this picture, but I can group them in a

764
00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:12,680
Speaker 1: way that makes them read as odd. You know. Now,

765
00:42:12,719 --> 00:42:16,000
Speaker 1: again this is another thing where this is not a

766
00:42:16,400 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 1: natural law. This is a rule that's made to be broken,

767
00:42:19,200 --> 00:42:21,120
Speaker 1: and so you'll find plenty of examples of people not

768
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:24,840
Speaker 1: following this because you don't have to follow it. But

769
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:27,320
Speaker 1: it was it was interesting. I started thinking about witches

770
00:42:27,680 --> 00:42:31,240
Speaker 1: more because you know, what is the classic number of witches,

771
00:42:31,400 --> 00:42:35,400
Speaker 1: and certainly in Western traditions, is three, right, three witches

772
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:39,200
Speaker 1: or three hags. And I instantly thought to some of

773
00:42:39,200 --> 00:42:44,000
Speaker 1: the paintings of Goya, for example, and some of them

774
00:42:44,040 --> 00:42:46,000
Speaker 1: have a lot of witches in those pictures where it's

775
00:42:46,239 --> 00:42:48,080
Speaker 1: not even really worth thinking about whether it's an even

776
00:42:48,160 --> 00:42:52,480
Speaker 1: or odd number. But there is one called Elcunjuro that

777
00:42:52,560 --> 00:42:55,520
Speaker 1: is sometimes is given the English title witches or incantation.

778
00:42:56,320 --> 00:42:59,479
Speaker 1: And if you look here, we have what's a one, two, three,

779
00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:04,680
Speaker 1: four five witches. So it's a nice odd amount of witches.

780
00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:07,080
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I don't know if you're

781
00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:09,560
Speaker 1: being like very analytical of it too. Okay, well, we

782
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:11,960
Speaker 1: have one, two, three, four five witches and then a

783
00:43:12,560 --> 00:43:14,520
Speaker 1: we have a sixth individual here that is like the

784
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:19,600
Speaker 1: subject of their interests, and the way that he's blocked

785
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:23,000
Speaker 1: the witches is interesting in that we basically have four

786
00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:25,319
Speaker 1: witches and then a fifth individual, and then we have

787
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:29,080
Speaker 1: one witch in the foreground. Another comparison that I ran

788
00:43:29,120 --> 00:43:32,480
Speaker 1: across is you look at Albert Duro's The Four Witches

789
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:36,080
Speaker 1: as a black and white image, and you have four

790
00:43:36,080 --> 00:43:38,920
Speaker 1: witches that they're basically nude females. You don't know that

791
00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:41,399
Speaker 1: they're witches based on anything other than the title. They're

792
00:43:41,400 --> 00:43:44,240
Speaker 1: not doing anything that I can see it's particularly witchy

793
00:43:44,520 --> 00:43:47,759
Speaker 1: other than their naked But I've seen it compared to

794
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:53,320
Speaker 1: a sculpture by Antonio Canova titled The Three Graces. The

795
00:43:53,400 --> 00:43:57,520
Speaker 1: Three Graces as the title and indicates three naked individuals

796
00:43:57,920 --> 00:44:03,160
Speaker 1: and the witches. We have four, but in Albreuch Duur's artwork.

797
00:44:03,200 --> 00:44:06,399
Speaker 1: Here they're grouped like three with a fourth witch kind

798
00:44:06,400 --> 00:44:08,520
Speaker 1: of in the background. You'll only really see her from

799
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:09,480
Speaker 1: the shoulders up.

800
00:44:09,719 --> 00:44:12,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it still feels like three. It's three and

801
00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:13,520
Speaker 2: one instead of four.

802
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:25,879
Speaker 1: Now, going back to that paper by Wing at All,

803
00:44:26,360 --> 00:44:28,840
Speaker 1: they point out that we have these various rules, but

804
00:44:28,920 --> 00:44:31,400
Speaker 1: we also have plenty of examples of artists that break

805
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:35,440
Speaker 1: the rules, but in doing so, it doesn't seem to

806
00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:38,959
Speaker 1: hamper the aesthetic merits of their work, and they break

807
00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:41,680
Speaker 1: all this down at a level of detail that doesn't

808
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:44,120
Speaker 1: really suit our purposes here, but suffice to say that

809
00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:47,400
Speaker 1: they point to a number of various other desirable aesthetic

810
00:44:47,440 --> 00:44:50,520
Speaker 1: elements that enable the breaking of rules, and the paper

811
00:44:50,560 --> 00:44:53,000
Speaker 1: seems interested in codifying all of this further. But I

812
00:44:53,080 --> 00:44:55,920
Speaker 1: think one of the big takeaways for our purposes is

813
00:44:55,920 --> 00:44:58,480
Speaker 1: that something like the rule of thirds is important and

814
00:44:58,520 --> 00:45:01,560
Speaker 1: seems to align with the sort of esthetic qualities we

815
00:45:01,640 --> 00:45:04,640
Speaker 1: look for. But again, there are plenty ways to There

816
00:45:04,640 --> 00:45:07,160
Speaker 1: are plenty of ways to skirt around it. Rules and

817
00:45:07,239 --> 00:45:10,480
Speaker 1: subjective art once more, are there to be broken. In

818
00:45:10,640 --> 00:45:12,920
Speaker 1: thinking about all of this too, and certainly thinking of

819
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:17,000
Speaker 1: cinematic examples, I also instantly thought about the work of

820
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:21,239
Speaker 1: director Wes Anderson, who is especially with his long time

821
00:45:21,280 --> 00:45:25,279
Speaker 1: cinematographer Robert Yeoman. It's known for shots that often have

822
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:30,840
Speaker 1: a high degree of symmetry to them. Yeah, and you

823
00:45:30,880 --> 00:45:35,400
Speaker 1: know this often helps create that sort of signature, stage flavored,

824
00:45:35,880 --> 00:45:39,360
Speaker 1: slightly surreal vibe that he's going for in his pictures.

825
00:45:39,680 --> 00:45:43,560
Speaker 2: Yes, there's absolutely that. I would almost say also the symmetry,

826
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:47,799
Speaker 2: there's something kind of cute about it that can that

827
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:52,080
Speaker 2: can make a scene kind of feel cute or tidy

828
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:56,480
Speaker 2: or friendly or amusing in a way where even if

829
00:45:56,480 --> 00:46:00,640
Speaker 2: the subject matter would otherwise be I don't no, more

830
00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:04,200
Speaker 2: more threatening or upsetting or something like that, there's a

831
00:46:04,280 --> 00:46:08,120
Speaker 2: kind of gentle harmlessness that creeps in with the symmetry

832
00:46:08,120 --> 00:46:09,880
Speaker 2: of the framing, if that makes any sense.

833
00:46:10,320 --> 00:46:14,239
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. The most recent full length film his that

834
00:46:14,280 --> 00:46:17,120
Speaker 1: I've seen is twenty twenty three's Asteroid City, which I

835
00:46:17,160 --> 00:46:21,480
Speaker 1: thought was quite good. But it has there are elements

836
00:46:21,520 --> 00:46:24,919
Speaker 1: to the plot that involve stage productions, and then there's

837
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:27,440
Speaker 1: this flavor extends throughout the rest of the piece, and

838
00:46:27,480 --> 00:46:30,560
Speaker 1: so you'll often have these, you know, for instance, that

839
00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:35,680
Speaker 1: very symmetrical subject in center shots that also do, at

840
00:46:35,760 --> 00:46:38,120
Speaker 1: least via the background, adhere to the rule of thirds,

841
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:41,080
Speaker 1: So you could you could definitely lay the grid over

842
00:46:41,120 --> 00:46:42,760
Speaker 1: this and be like, all right, you know, there are

843
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:44,800
Speaker 1: things line up here, but we are looking at the

844
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:49,160
Speaker 1: character dead center. Sometimes I feel like that kind of

845
00:46:49,239 --> 00:46:53,719
Speaker 1: blocking in his films. It kind of creates this feeling of,

846
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:56,520
Speaker 1: you know, very much an amateur play, but with of

847
00:46:56,520 --> 00:47:01,040
Speaker 1: course impeccable set design and generally you know, a very

848
00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:04,520
Speaker 1: talented actor at the center of it. So you get

849
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:08,560
Speaker 1: this kind of interesting juxtaposition there that again create helps

850
00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:12,520
Speaker 1: create this feeling of slight unreality. All right, so I'm

851
00:47:12,560 --> 00:47:15,080
Speaker 1: gonna skip up my other examples from Wes Anderson's work,

852
00:47:15,080 --> 00:47:18,400
Speaker 1: because again you can't see them listening to the podcast,

853
00:47:18,480 --> 00:47:20,960
Speaker 1: so I feel like it would just mostly be Joe

854
00:47:21,320 --> 00:47:24,000
Speaker 1: and Me geeking out over some of these images. But

855
00:47:25,200 --> 00:47:26,920
Speaker 1: to skip ahead a bit, I will point out that

856
00:47:27,000 --> 00:47:30,839
Speaker 1: there are critics of rot of the rule of three

857
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:34,280
Speaker 1: that very much argue that there's less of a direct

858
00:47:34,360 --> 00:47:37,680
Speaker 1: connection here. For instance, I was looking at a twenty

859
00:47:37,719 --> 00:47:40,760
Speaker 1: sixteen post by an artist by the name of Anthony

860
00:47:41,480 --> 00:47:45,160
Speaker 1: Wallcoulis who this was titled A Spurious Affair A Primer

861
00:47:45,200 --> 00:47:50,400
Speaker 1: on Pictorial Composition, Part four, and he argued that it

862
00:47:50,480 --> 00:47:53,880
Speaker 1: is akin to theories of spontaneous generation, you know, the

863
00:47:53,960 --> 00:47:58,360
Speaker 1: idea that flies are born from rotten mead and rats

864
00:47:58,400 --> 00:48:02,360
Speaker 1: and so forth, that it's you know, it's correlation that

865
00:48:02,680 --> 00:48:06,000
Speaker 1: might spring forth from a bag of grain exactly. That's

866
00:48:06,040 --> 00:48:09,840
Speaker 1: sort of thing basically, and it's it's a very good boast.

867
00:48:09,840 --> 00:48:12,040
Speaker 1: He makes the argument that, look, there's so many things

868
00:48:12,040 --> 00:48:13,879
Speaker 1: going on in the human brain when we make sense

869
00:48:13,880 --> 00:48:17,240
Speaker 1: of an image, including you know, quite importantly again prediction

870
00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:21,960
Speaker 1: and modeling over what's going to happen next, including you know,

871
00:48:22,160 --> 00:48:26,920
Speaker 1: arguably better supported visual perception biases such as inward bias

872
00:48:27,040 --> 00:48:30,640
Speaker 1: that's inward facing objects, of bias for inward facing objects

873
00:48:30,719 --> 00:48:34,680
Speaker 1: near the border, center bias that's front facing figures near center,

874
00:48:35,120 --> 00:48:38,560
Speaker 1: and goodness of fit, which can also depend on how

875
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:42,160
Speaker 1: you're tackling it, favor central stability and an image.

876
00:48:42,440 --> 00:48:45,279
Speaker 2: Okay, so those three things like inward facing objects near

877
00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:48,920
Speaker 2: the border or front facing figures in the center. This

878
00:48:48,960 --> 00:48:52,680
Speaker 2: author is saying that those are better supported by research

879
00:48:52,719 --> 00:48:55,719
Speaker 2: as things that we naturally favor in artworks than the

880
00:48:55,800 --> 00:48:57,520
Speaker 2: rule of thirds is correct.

881
00:48:57,560 --> 00:48:59,920
Speaker 1: That's their their argument. So I you know, I think

882
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:03,080
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, again, it's not a

883
00:49:03,160 --> 00:49:05,720
Speaker 1: natural law. It's a rule that's meant to be broken.

884
00:49:06,080 --> 00:49:09,600
Speaker 1: But there's something about it that does at least correlate

885
00:49:10,160 --> 00:49:15,160
Speaker 1: with the things we like and or create in visual representations.

886
00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:20,920
Speaker 1: There is something about dividing things up into thirds that

887
00:49:21,080 --> 00:49:24,800
Speaker 1: works really well for us, and it processes well for us.

888
00:49:25,480 --> 00:49:28,200
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean we can only deal with thirds, but

889
00:49:29,280 --> 00:49:31,000
Speaker 1: there is something about it, and it serves as a

890
00:49:31,000 --> 00:49:34,600
Speaker 1: great guide, certainly for people who are figuring out what

891
00:49:34,600 --> 00:49:38,279
Speaker 1: they're doing with their art, with their visual representations and

892
00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:39,880
Speaker 1: in their filmmaking.

893
00:49:39,920 --> 00:49:41,719
Speaker 2: Right, So, I mean the way I would look at it,

894
00:49:41,719 --> 00:49:43,880
Speaker 2: if you're thinking about the rule of thirds or the

895
00:49:43,960 --> 00:49:47,040
Speaker 2: rule of odds with numbers of subjects in an artwork,

896
00:49:48,680 --> 00:49:51,440
Speaker 2: I would never say that like, oh, well, good art

897
00:49:51,520 --> 00:49:54,839
Speaker 2: follows this rule and bad art doesn't. But I would

898
00:49:54,880 --> 00:49:58,560
Speaker 2: say there is likely a reason. There's some kind of

899
00:49:58,680 --> 00:50:02,440
Speaker 2: reason that there is this tendency to say, uh, you know,

900
00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:06,160
Speaker 2: grouping things in terms of three or five is better

901
00:50:06,239 --> 00:50:09,080
Speaker 2: than two or four, and that if you have four

902
00:50:09,120 --> 00:50:11,759
Speaker 2: of something, you have this impulse to split it into

903
00:50:11,800 --> 00:50:14,840
Speaker 2: three and one, or if you have two of something,

904
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:17,319
Speaker 2: you have this impulse to put something between them to

905
00:50:17,400 --> 00:50:21,040
Speaker 2: make it more like three of something. There is something

906
00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:24,120
Speaker 2: we're feeling there, even if it's not actually the difference

907
00:50:24,160 --> 00:50:27,800
Speaker 2: between art being good or bad, there's an impulse we're following.

908
00:50:28,520 --> 00:50:30,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I would like to come back to the

909
00:50:30,200 --> 00:50:33,080
Speaker 1: rule of odds in another episode and look at some

910
00:50:33,160 --> 00:50:38,200
Speaker 1: of the literature around it's usage in food advertising, because oh, yeah,

911
00:50:38,160 --> 00:50:40,239
Speaker 1: I feel this seems like an area where you can

912
00:50:40,280 --> 00:50:43,120
Speaker 1: be a lot more on target with how we're processing it.

913
00:50:43,160 --> 00:50:46,120
Speaker 1: Because we want to eat the food, or at least

914
00:50:46,360 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 1: we're thinking about eating the food, and therefore there's like

915
00:50:49,160 --> 00:50:51,600
Speaker 1: more of a like a direct relationship with the number.

916
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:53,920
Speaker 1: Because Yeah, the basic idea here is that, Yeah, if

917
00:50:53,960 --> 00:50:56,640
Speaker 1: you're going to have an advertisement for I don't know,

918
00:50:57,400 --> 00:51:02,080
Speaker 1: slider Hamburgers, would want to have three on a little

919
00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:06,640
Speaker 1: silver platter, Yeah, in your magazine ad, not two, not four,

920
00:51:07,080 --> 00:51:09,080
Speaker 1: not one, but three.

921
00:51:09,040 --> 00:51:12,480
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah, especially if you're showing them on like a

922
00:51:12,520 --> 00:51:17,000
Speaker 2: TV commercial or in a visual picture. The idea even

923
00:51:17,040 --> 00:51:19,439
Speaker 2: if they like the two were bigger and you're getting

924
00:51:19,480 --> 00:51:22,320
Speaker 2: the same amount of food overall, you want the three.

925
00:51:22,680 --> 00:51:25,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, huge victory for team odd there.

926
00:51:26,239 --> 00:51:28,720
Speaker 2: Why are there always three things in a fast food combo?

927
00:51:28,960 --> 00:51:32,400
Speaker 2: You know, it's like you get the sandwich, the fries,

928
00:51:32,560 --> 00:51:34,720
Speaker 2: and the drink, and they never like put the fries

929
00:51:34,760 --> 00:51:36,640
Speaker 2: on the sandwich and you just get two things, the

930
00:51:36,680 --> 00:51:37,600
Speaker 2: sandwich in the drink.

931
00:51:38,040 --> 00:51:40,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, you gotta have that side, right, you have that

932
00:51:40,600 --> 00:51:44,160
Speaker 1: third element. Otherwise it feels like you're missing something, like

933
00:51:44,200 --> 00:51:47,560
Speaker 1: even if it's just a very measly side salad. And

934
00:51:47,600 --> 00:51:49,560
Speaker 1: I love a good side salad, but sometimes a side

935
00:51:49,600 --> 00:51:52,320
Speaker 1: salad is just some lettuce thrown on there, like it

936
00:51:52,440 --> 00:51:56,040
Speaker 1: still feels like a certain sacred law is being obeyed,

937
00:51:56,080 --> 00:51:59,520
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of Game of Thrones esque arrangement

938
00:51:59,560 --> 00:52:02,120
Speaker 1: where it's like, okay, a side has been served, we

939
00:52:02,160 --> 00:52:03,319
Speaker 1: cannot murder each other.

940
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:08,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, the law of hospitality. I accept your bread and

941
00:52:08,800 --> 00:52:12,879
Speaker 2: chicken fries or whatever. They're still doing chicken fries out there.

942
00:52:12,880 --> 00:52:14,560
Speaker 2: I wonder how many of those you get. I bet

943
00:52:14,560 --> 00:52:15,480
Speaker 2: it's an odd number.

944
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:18,120
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about chicken fries, so I can't

945
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:20,479
Speaker 1: speak to them. Is it chicken or fried? Like, what's

946
00:52:20,520 --> 00:52:23,600
Speaker 1: the or is it like fries made with chicken fat?

947
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:26,359
Speaker 2: I don't know, well, Rob, I think it's fries made

948
00:52:26,400 --> 00:52:28,319
Speaker 2: out of chicken. It's like, you know, you can get

949
00:52:28,400 --> 00:52:31,520
Speaker 2: chicken parts that come in normal chicken parts shapes, but

950
00:52:31,560 --> 00:52:34,040
Speaker 2: then you could also just take that chicken and turn

951
00:52:34,080 --> 00:52:35,719
Speaker 2: it into fries, and that's what they do.

952
00:52:36,239 --> 00:52:38,439
Speaker 1: That really sounds like chicken fingers to me. I don't

953
00:52:38,480 --> 00:52:41,840
Speaker 1: understand why this is we need this category confusion.

954
00:52:42,360 --> 00:52:44,839
Speaker 2: Chicken fingers got a lot of edges, a lot of contours,

955
00:52:44,880 --> 00:52:47,880
Speaker 2: you know, don't you just want a straight pillar of chicken,

956
00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:50,200
Speaker 2: just like just like.

957
00:52:50,160 --> 00:52:54,279
Speaker 1: A shredded chicken. But shredded but stiff. I don't know,

958
00:52:54,360 --> 00:52:55,280
Speaker 1: maybe I guess.

959
00:52:55,600 --> 00:52:57,760
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I think we're gonna have to call it there,

960
00:52:57,800 --> 00:53:00,799
Speaker 2: But we will have more to say about about our

961
00:53:00,840 --> 00:53:03,520
Speaker 2: thoughts and feelings about odd and even numbers next time.

962
00:53:03,960 --> 00:53:06,759
Speaker 1: That's right. In the meantime, I'm sure you have some

963
00:53:06,840 --> 00:53:10,520
Speaker 1: observations and thoughts about about odds and evens and numbers

964
00:53:10,560 --> 00:53:13,359
Speaker 1: in general. Write in. We would love to hear from you.

965
00:53:14,200 --> 00:53:16,920
Speaker 1: Let's see our core science and culture episodes of Stuff

966
00:53:16,920 --> 00:53:19,279
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind air on Tuesdays and Thursdays here,

967
00:53:19,280 --> 00:53:21,720
Speaker 1: and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed short

968
00:53:21,760 --> 00:53:25,799
Speaker 1: form episodes on Wednesdays. Weird House Cinema on Fridays. That's

969
00:53:25,800 --> 00:53:27,840
Speaker 1: our time to set aside most serious concerns and just

970
00:53:27,880 --> 00:53:31,040
Speaker 1: talk about a weird film. Then we have some vault

971
00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:33,919
Speaker 1: episodes sprinkled in there. And then we also are still

972
00:53:33,960 --> 00:53:36,680
Speaker 1: doing listener mail episodes. They're just not occurring every Monday.

973
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:41,399
Speaker 1: They are occurring periodically once or twice a month as

974
00:53:41,440 --> 00:53:44,399
Speaker 1: the mail bag fills up, so keep those emails rolling in.

975
00:53:44,840 --> 00:53:47,000
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976
00:53:47,080 --> 00:53:50,040
Speaker 1: at STBYM Podcast. That's our handle there.

977
00:53:50,480 --> 00:53:54,120
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway.

978
00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:56,040
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us

979
00:53:56,080 --> 00:53:58,480
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

980
00:53:58,520 --> 00:54:00,640
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

981
00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:03,359
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

982
00:54:03,400 --> 00:54:11,959
Speaker 2: your Mind dot com.

983
00:54:12,000 --> 00:54:14,960
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984
00:54:15,040 --> 00:54:18,880
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985
00:54:18,960 --> 00:54:34,720
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