A Few Technical Questions Answered Directly

Why do the images seem to be so carefully framed, and why do the enhancements always seem to be aligned straight up and down?

The constructions in many areas use an underlying texture as a template for forming the tolas dioramas. Think of  the billboards that have slats on them with different images on each side so when you drive past, or a mechanism flips them, you see something different. The principle is much the same, but three dimensional and far more complex. Those running the cameras did not necessarily understand the complex aspects of this, and assumed that aligning the camera track with the axis of the texture lines would yield the best results. Also, the lines could then be catalogued as “noise”, for public consumption. Anyone applying comb filters to remove them would be destroying some of the actual content, which was fine. Not all of the texture-templates are lines or rows or ridges, however. Many are more like a  mesh or webbing. The distinction probably means something, but  I don’t know what.  I should stress that the camera people are not stupid, they simply had an incorrect working model.

The answer to the second part of the question is related to those factors, but it ties in with another obvious question…

How do those Martian picture things work, anyway?

…so I’ll answer them together. Don’t let your Eyes Glaze Over, it isn’t necessary to understand all the details, just follow through and you’ll get the idea easily enough. Basically any imaging apparatus or image processing system works with squares. Or rectangles, or X axis and Y axis. All the same thing, in this context. Linear. Nothing wrong with that. But the content of these images is not carried by the linear components of the template-textures. Being more aptly described as  shadow play, it uses the complex interactions of various elements, which might be thought of structurally as the “noise”. The irregularities on those linear components are where the content is created, as a visual phenomenon. That is how viewing from a different distance or angle can yield a different image. Or at different wavelengths, for that matter. So when a camera freezes the viewpoint at one angle, the full effect is lost. Thus, they take numerous shots to try and capture more of it, but if the angle is the same, then little new is seen. Higher resolution does not necessarily help, either, because the dioramas were meant to be read by the integrating functions of the eye at specific distances, not the inflexible single focus of a camera.

When processing and enhancing the images, the “squareness” of the software combines with that camera inflexibility to grab one particular plane of the available scene. This translates into a well-aligned view of something, but it does not represent all that was there. In other words, it is almost impossible to get a crooked view- some different vista is revealed instead. A slice of an apple is always flat on the face of the cut, no matter what the angle of the cut. For anyone who wants a more technical way to consider it, what is captured by the processing is like the virtual edge of influence of a fractal expression, which is called a frace.

OK, But how did the Martians do it? How does a scene morph like that?

 Elsewhere, I talk about stereograms, those dot-pattern images which contain a second, hidden image that becomes apparent when you force your vision out of  focus. The mechanism used for generating those is similar. In the Martian examples, there is a distribution template for the components of each phase of the display which is based on a series of fractal patterns . Each separate "player" in the display has a base fractal that differs from the others. So a series of larger-scale iterations of that fractal are utilized to portray the steps of the mutation. As your eyes and related visual cortex recognize a fractal patterning, you follow it through the changes . In other words, as you move, your eyes automatically track the recognized pattern and translate it into an apparently moving or morphing shape. This is nothing more than an unfamiliar usage (in our Earth experience) of one of the standard visual mechanisms which we seldom if ever think about. We ignore it because we are not typically exposed to any "artificial" situations that stimulate it- except for those stereograms, which have only appeared in recent years, an invention of a mathematician who actually found a way to make money from his math, which is an unusual achievement in itself. Anyway, this is one reason the Martian scenes were so inscrutable to the first modern observers.

Where does the color come from in the enhanced images? Aren’t the originals black and white?

I much prefer working from B&W or greyscale images, yes.  The color resulting from processing those is an outcome of the histogram alignment, rather than the arbitrary assignment of color value to selected filtered bands that NASA uses for theirs. So the F3 enhancement color scale is determined by the source image, not by me. The only real variable is the saturation level, where I have to make the final determination. Believe it or not, as best I can tell, I am probably reducing the actual intensity of the color most of the time. The Martian Artscape is quite colorful. But the results from the various cameras are inevitably affected by the filter sets they use, so I try to be conservative in my attempts to achieve consistency in the finished images. So much more detail is visible with a full range of color values than in black and white that I would be cheating you if I simply bled off all the color. But if you wish to consider the color as  enhancement  rather than accept it as natural, go ahead. That doesn't alter the contents.

The reason the color seems to be closely  correspondent to what the eye would see directly is a little more controversial. Lab studies have been done in the past, by Kodak back in the 1950s and probably others as well, attempting to match greyscale values to color temperatures. It seems logical that there would be some conditional relationships, but from a mainstream science perspective, the results of experiments were far better than any of the models could explain. Remember, the essence of the scientific method is repeatability, leading to predictability. The tests yielded repeatable correspondences, but the factors they considered as causes could not explain why. Lesson One: go with the evidence, and look for the excluded Unknown, if your textbook falls short. Kodak apparently gave up and abandoned the project after a while, since no product seemed likely to result.

I call it resonant affinity. Richard C.Hoagland and his associates call it hyperdimensional physics.  Whichever term you like, the principles and concepts are the same. There is an aspect to any relationship which persists. That’s what I call, not unreasonably, an affinity. In the mainstream physics world, they have quantum entanglement, which proposes that since all things were once One, at the moment of the Big Bang, they are all still linked at a quantum level through some commonality that survived the differentiation into the various stuff (all right, baryonic components) of the Universe. Beyond that, the various camps of scientists argue the details vigorously. Trouble is, those tend to be passive models. Big, but primarily focused on deriving  a metric that can integrate the non-Newtonian behaviors of sub atomic particles into the primary canon.

The affinity / hyperdimensional perspective is more active. Not limited to any particular scale, and concerned with the interactions of systems and complex things. Truth be told, it pretty closely matches the mystical view of Life, that the linkage  is the consequence of the interaction, not the other way round. Before this turns into an alternative physics lecture, I’ll answer the color question.

When an image is captured, a link is forged between the instant and locale being photographed and the recorded image. At another level, that link can be extended to whoever views the resulting picture, but let’s keep this simple. Only when the image is reconstituted- printed or displayed, in other words-is that affinity linkage active. Think Heisenberg again. But while the transformation from recording to picture is proceeding, there is a volatile state which can be manipulated. Since that sounds like meaningless, self-evident gobbledygook, let’s put it  another way. The original moment in space-time represented on the recording will resonate with the “child”, the recreated display, and if the process of making the child-print-image is volatile (i.e., susceptible to modification) in certain specific ways, the two states will synchronize, and the output file will become a more accurate representation of the original scene. In theory, as in similar metaphysical models, this relationship of influence goes very far indeed, but in a practical environment, all one gets is an alignment of color values as the saturation is increased during processing…and the ability to enlarge while simultaneously increasing rather than diminishing data density.  To enable this, you need only avoid doing things which skew the development of the color or break the synchronization. Unfortunately, most traditional enhancement protocols involve doing exactly the wrong things at the wrong points, in this context. The haphazard success of the Kodak experiments was due to their disregard for this possibility- it is actually a robust phenomenon that wants to happen. And here you thought those aboriginal peoples who avoid having themselves photographed to safeguard their souls were silly unsophisticates- yet you probably carry a picture of a loved one around with you.

In any case, I have done numerous experiments with ordinary photos, and the results are quite consistent and reliable. Someone at a company which uses zone-painting techniques to colorize old movies once sent me a “challenge”, a B&W image to color–enable, one where he knew the actual content colors. I was able to inform him that he had cheated, as the image was really a B&W promotional picture which his company had color-painted to demonstrate their technique, and which he had subsequently converted back to B&W to send to me. I gave him the colors of the actual suits worn in the pose, and the false colors they’d painted over them. The enhanced result was marginal, by my standards, because all that paint messed up the process. The enhancement does not work on graphics or paintings, only photos. But my analysis turned out to be correct (he had no choice but to send me the real picture). Never spoke to me again.  I do  therefore tend to trust the colors in the Mars images. You are not required to agree. I am always open to new interpretations. Most people do accept that with or without the element of hyperdimensional certainty, the colors are reasonable- and easier on the eye than a bunch of fuzzy grey squares. I apologize for this explanation being so lengthy.