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Mon 31 Mar, 2008 08:14 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LHoyB81LnE
Is this real? Holy crap! It draws better than my four-year-old.
I haven't found anything definite but it seems possible it's not fake per se but that the elephants have been trained to follow the lines their trainers draw in the air. As in, the elephant is really holding the brush and really making the lines; but a trainer is guiding it all.
Example:
Quote:My parents visited Thailand a couple of years ago and visited the Maesa elephant camp in Chiang Mai where much of the "too good to be true" elephant art comes from.
They saw the elephants painting and it is genuine. They bought a painting they saw one of the elephants paint and it does look pretty amazing... very similar to the paintings in the link above. Most of the elephants at the camp had an "abstract" style, but a couple of eager-to-please individuals painted "trees" and "flowers".
These elephants paint a lot of pictures and the "quality" of the art will be pretty variable. At a guess, you might get one stunning painting for every 20 paintings an elephant paints, and they'll all be very similar... a few vertical lines with green and red splodges at the top.
The elephants aren't consciously trying to represent trees. They're given a brush with brown paint on it and the trainer waves his arms up and down. Then they're given one with green on it and the trainer makes a prodding motion towards the paper, etc. If the elephant copies the trainer, it gets a bun or something.
Here's one of the elephants in action...
http://www.elephantart.com/catalog/images/Sequence3.mov
You can see how the trainer directs it, but all the brush strokes are all carried out by the elephant.
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=1492
Since I searched for that, there's something new on Snopes especially about the "self-portrait" thing:
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?p=563222
Also indicates that it probably has something to do with training rather than "gee, I think I'll paint a picture of myself today."
Even if it's all training, it's cool tho.
Sozobe, I was wondering if they'd been trained behind the scenes or if there were faint lines on the canvas. As you said, any which way they do it, it is still amazing.
I doubt that the "trainers" could have been using gestures during that exhibition, because you can hear, and at one point briefly see, "tourists" in the background. Those could be plants, too, just for the video. However, i rather suspect that if anything, they had been trained with repetition, if they are not actually responsible for these "works of art." And that would still be amazing, given that we have no reason to assume that an elephant (a long-lived, and apparently rather intelligent animal) sees the world in the same way that we do.
Setanta wrote:I doubt that the "trainers" could have been using gestures during that exhibition, because you can hear, and at one point briefly see, "tourists" in the background. Those could be plants, too, just for the video. However, i rather suspect that if anything, they had been trained with repetition, if they are not actually responsible for these "works of art." And that would still be amazing, given that we have no reason to assume that an elephant (a long-lived, and apparently rather intelligent animal) sees the world in the same way that we do.
Didn't anyone else see people passing in front of the elephant with drawings on frames?
I saw one clearly, and it had a heap of the flowers painted on it.
I am sure they are trained to do it....but it's still breath-taking.
At least some elephants are self-aware.....I wonder if any of them make any sense of what they have been trained to do?
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