I watch the Behavior Panel on Youtube each time they have a new episode. Today I watched their analysis of the body language of several government officials who address the question of UFOs. Because of my current preoccupations, however, this time upon seeing a now famous Navy footage of an unexplained flying object, the feature that caught my attention is not the UFO but the amazing structure of the cloud canopy. I realized how much it resembles certain Chinese ways of portraying mountains, and as some of you know I am currently in full mountain mode myself with my painting.
The UFO is nice too, but isn’t that cloud canopy interesting? When you go to the footage, you also notice something that Chase Hughes of the Behavior Panel explains in passing, that the figure-ground contrast changes on the infrared video depending upon whether “black is hot or white is hot.” So, in certain passages the tops of the clouds are dark, and that produces an unexpected effect.
I was primed to think about the cloud canopy as mountainous by my current artistic preoccupations. I’ve been looking for new mountain subjects, and whenever I light upon some by happenstance, bells start sounding in my brain. Last night I was watching the old “Jewel in the Crown” series and was struck by the beautiful mountain scenes in that movie, as here, in this cropped frame of one scene:
With the Indian mountain range already firmly planted in my subconscious, I was well primed to see mountains in the cloud canopy of Navy UFO film, so much so as really to bump the UFO mentally aside. UFO? What UFO? I’ve also been thinking a lot about how to invent mountain images and that’s a process that you find a lot in Asian art. So while the US intelligence agencies are perhaps wondering if UFO phenomena have anything to do with Chinese drone technology — me, I’m wondering about how Chinese artists past or present would have depicted those layers of clouds.
I make little doodles in the notebook thinking about the positioning of dark and light passages in a picture, striving to create authentic “randomness.” It’s a topic I ponder a lot these days because deliberation is my way. I try to be deliberate even in regard to accident.
I have written brilliantly about obsession, space aliens and art before. You can find that HERE –> #Imnotsayingitsaliensbutitsaliens – Aletha Kuschan’s Weblog (wordpress.com) give it a click and a read.
If you’ve got some idiosyncratic ways that ideas pop into your head, leave a comment. And if you like this post, please share it with your friends, relatives and neighbors, with the intelligence agencies and with anyone else you know!
Aletha Kuschan's Weblog 
Chinese landscapes provide a lot of inspirational food for thought. As to aliens–well, we’re just part of a video game anyway, right? (K)
The Chinese landscape is amazing, isn’t it, and very inspiring as you say.
The Navy UFO footage is particularly noteworthy for having been publicly confirmed by the Navy as genuine. Some sort of declassified report is supposed to appear soon about various anomalies imaged by radar or other tools, pilot accounts of sightings of odd things, and whatnot. My childhood sci-fi interest in the topic persists, but as noted what really fascinates me now with the Navy video is the cloud canopy. Well, one’s interests change over time, right? haha
Yes, every day sometimes.