Remote Viewing Art

[GrandMasterFox]

Hey everyone. A friend of mine showed me the folllowing link.
I know the page is in hebrew, but the movie is in english so there shouldn't be a problem.

It shows a couple of remote viewers and a woman named Keren Russo.
She is an artist who is interested in all sorts of spiritual stuff and she wanted to see if they can use remote viewing to identify a painting of hers she hasn't painted yet. And then see how accurate they are.

I say this is completely bogus and even showed him more than a few ways of what really happened. He agreed on some but still thinks it's possible these guys are for real and just that their ability isn't developed enough to be 100% correct.

In the intrest of fairness, I won't give my impressions because I don't want to seem to be misleading.

So what do you think about it?

http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3876207,00.html

Also, if anyone happens to recognizes who those guys are and can provide more info on them I'd appriciate it.

 

[Akhenaten]

Hey everyone. A friend of mine showed me the folllowing link.
I know the page is in hebrew, but the movie is in english so there shouldn't be a problem.

There is when the video doesn't work and you can't read what the error message says.

It shows a couple of remote viewers and a woman named Keren Russo.
She is an artist who is interested in all sorts of spiritual stuff and she wanted to see if they can use remote viewing to identify a painting of hers she hasn't painted yet. And then see how accurate they are.

Remote viewing and predicting what someone is going to paint aren't the same thing.

I say this is completely bogus and even showed him more than a few ways of what really happened. He agreed on some but still thinks it's possible these guys are for real and just that their ability isn't developed enough to be 100% correct.

You're right and your friend is wrong. Tell him I said so.

In the intrest of fairness, I won't give my impressions because I don't want to seem to be misleading.

So what do you think about it?

I think it's probably bogus.



ETA: I finally got the video to work and now I'm even more sure it's bogus. What little I could understand of the explanation seemed to be a word salad that could have been made to fit just about anything the artist created, especially if the 'remote viewers' were at all familiar with her previous work.

In any case, it's still not, by any definition, remote viewing.

 

[GrandMasterFox]

Remote viewing and predicting what someone is going to paint aren't the same thing.

This is the terminology they used. So I'm letting them call it like that.
It's kind of like saying "real vampires don't walk in sunlight". Have you seen a real vampire?

I finally got the video to work and now I'm even more sure it's bogus. What little I could understand of the explanation seemed to be a word salad that could have been made to fit just about anything the artist created, especially if the 'remote viewers' were at all familiar with her previous work.

Can you be a bit more specific? Please believe me when I tell you I'm not trying to be a lazy ass or something. I did watch the movie several times and did some minor research and provided him with a very detailed analysis on it.

The thing is:
1)He says I saw a certain pattern which he doesn't believe to be true.
Therefore, I'm interested to see if other people will notice the same things even without me telling what it was.

2)In order to imporve my own critical thinking, I'd be more than interested to see what others say and if I missed something myself.

 

[Akhenaten]

Okie dokes.

I didn't put a lot of thought into my first response, so I'll take a bit more time and care with watching the video and try to give you a better answer.

I have to admit, however, even though the dialogue is ostensibly in English I'm having a lot of trouble understanding it.

 

[Akhenaten]

Right then . . .


I've given it my best shot, and watched the entire video three or four times, but I can't claim to have gained any great insights, I'm afraid. The biggest handicap is that bloke's accent - I can barely understand one word in every sentence he speaks, although to say he speaks in sentences at all is probably being overly generous.

First up, the most obvious point to note is that it's just a video of some people I've never heard of talking about stuff in a dialect that I can barely understand, subtitled and backgrounded in another language that I know not a word of. For all I know the whole thing, from the first frame to the last could be made up out of whole cloth.

The whole thing about the sealed envelopes was pretty meaningless, given that we viewers have no idea what was in them, who had access to them, whether they had been tampered with - they were simply a prop, and did nothing at all to convince me that everything was above board. The fact that the written material was only shown as a series of fast-panning, incomplete and poorly-explained camera shots didn't add to it's credibilty at all.

Having said this though, if I were going to make up something like this I'd hope I could do a more convincing job of it. My overall impression of the entire video was that it was vague and underwhelming. At the end of it, despite the bonhommie, I got the idea that even the participants weren't terribly enthusiastic about the result.


There were very few complete sentences that I could understand from the fellow doing all the talking and quite frankly I have no real idea of what his explanation was for the all the pages he was flipping through. The first thing I noted was that he was skimming through a heap of stuff and saying words to the effect that "We don't need to concern ourselves with that." Kind of makes me wonder why they bothered writing it down in the first place.

What I did understand from the dialogue though were a few words Mr Mumbles repeated numerous times. These words appeared in the written notes as well, and among them were:

(my comments in red)

water (I'll call this a hit)
biologics (people) (no)
cold (who can say, although it might go with 'water')
wet (you don't get another hit for calling water 'wet')
dark (indeterminate)
mysterious (not really)
"shamanic" (WTF?)
radiating (no, not at all)
spongy (this seemed to be a favourite, and when the picture was revealed the guy is all, like, "See! Spongy!" and I'm all, like, "What have you been smokin', Dude?")

I'm pretty sure I heard 'landscape' as well, which is obviously wrong.

The biggest thing I noticed during the presentation of this written stuff was the expression on the artist's face. It certainly wasn't saying "ZOMG! They've nailed it perfectly!" I think a better description might have been "This is getting embarrassing."

Finally, we get to see something that the remote viewers had drawn:

Now, for my money, that not only doesn't fit the words we've been hearing, but it doesn't look anything like the actual picture:

Some might try and count that thing over on the right-hand side of the Remote Viewer's picture as a bit of a hit, but I don't think I will. Why are we supposed to automatically dismiss the cubic-looking thing? Counting the few possible hits and dismissing the many huge misses sounds very familiar where this sort of thing is concerned, doesn't it?

For all I know, this picture might be one of thousands on a similar theme by this particular artist, and familiarity with her work is the only reason for the hit with 'water'. Apart from that, my overall impression is "nothing to see here - move along". I don't think I can offer much more in the way of a debunking because in all honesty, there's nothing much to debunk.


One final comment, which I confess has little to do do with remote viewing:

Yummy​

 

[Akhenaten]

As an aside, this is another work by the same artist (Keren Russo) which was displayed at a contemporary art exhibition in Rishon LeZion, Israel, during March/April, 2010.

Image from Keren Russo's Economy of Excess​

Here again is the list of words that I gleaned from the 'Remote Viewing' video.

water
biologics
cold
wet
dark
mysterious
shamanic
radiating
spongy​

Hmm . . .

 

[Kopji]

Ok I watched this. Not by the way, a recommendation for the speed of the site.
Akhenaten commended for an excellent review and image post. "Seconded".

The copies in the envelopes were to give the artist a copy in one, while they kept a copy in the other. This is just nonsense to make it appear like there is nothing underhanded going on. This tactic proves nothing, but at the end I'm pretty convinced that the artist had nothing to do with this.

I count 11 pages of data about the "viewing".

more translation snippets from the viewer:

says he's confused, has not seen this configuration or gestalt before
says it biological, meaning that its people
[a small ideogram (wavy line)]
'thin stick-like things'
something biological as in human beings
manmade
white black radiating
biological human female
the energy is radiating
smell of methanol - paintlike smells
sad or distressed or rushed
spongy like spongy paints

Before the unveiling:
he says the mysterious aspect is that it is hidden behind the black cloth. - disingenious
The horizontal lines are the brick wall - say what?

At about 8:24 in the video he drops a page to the floor by accident and makes no motion to pick it up. The artist picks it up for him, hands it to him. It is accepted without so much as a thank you. I consider this to be a significant indicator of how the 'remote viewers' think themselves superior.

The video is heavily edited. 'hits' are given special coverage by showing the excellent handwriting on the pages close up, but all the misses (like the biological claims) are left for us to understand verbally (the terrible accent). This gives extremely unfair emphasis to the one or two maybe hits over the many more definite misses. Even to the point of deception. The artist's English is MUCH better than the viewer, but she was not used.

My conclusion for this is that the video crosses the line into being a deliberate deception, emphasizing a couple of 'hits' over many more misses. 11 pages of data do not yield the quality of the following:

,,,,,,,|||||||,,,,,,,,

If they had posted that simple diagram anywhere, I'd be really impressed.

She is btw, completely hot.

 

[Akhenaten]

My conclusion for this is that the video crosses the line into being a deliberate deception, emphasizing a couple of 'hits' over many more misses. 11 pages of data do not yield the quality of the following:

,,,,,,,|||||||,,,,,,,,

If they had posted that simple diagram anywhere, I'd be really impressed.

Nice work Kopji, and we seem to be pretty much in agreement.

She is btw, completely hot.

In the interest of furthering our research, or something . . .

Keren Russo​

 

[Kopji]

Ah yes. I feel my psychic ability kicking in. I can tell just by looking at a photographic image.
She is thinking... ahhh... ummm...

these guys are putting me on

 

[GrandMasterFox]

First, Akhenaten and Kopji I would really like to thank you for taking the time to look into this. I know it was a bit of time consuming.

I have to admit I totally missed the part about zooming on the pages. Good One! Other than that, I agree with most of what you guys said.
Here is my take on it in a nutshell:

1)I am positive they made a search about her. When they kept saying the word "shamanic" I was suspicious since that is not something anyone would guess lightly (and it can't be due to a "real" ability since they were wrong...)

I google searched her and found an article regarding her most known work, which included the words: "death, religion, afterlife, mysticisim and vodoo". Gee, I wonder why they guessed "shamanic"? Also the last word the second guy reads is "religious" and it has nothing to do with anything else he reads.

I also found several other paintings of her, most of them were either black and white or had insane amount of black and white dominance in them.

2)The word salad trick is obvious, throw as many words as you can and try to get the audience to notice the hits and not the misses.
Part of that trick is the painting. Why is it covered?
I mean the guys already written down their notes and we already got a glimpse of it. So why keep it hidden?

Because certain hits like "water" would stand out while misses like "people" would stand aside because the audience is "not sure" and doesn't recall exactly.

3)Another part of the word salad trick is the fact that supposably two people did the reading, yet only 1 of them reads it. Why? Doesn't the other one want to know how well did he do? He is not even present in the room at the time of the reading.

Basically put, if one person reads 60 words there is a greater chance for the words to get mixed up than if each individual read 30 words.

So only one guy with one voice reads the whole list as fast as he can.

4)There was never any attempt to actually confirm what they were wrong or right about. Even if we accept a few misses, how many things they did get wrong? All he bothers reading are 4 words, two of which (sponge and diaganol) are completely BS.

5)As for the words themselves.... Most of it was just garbage of general opposites.
Tall, Short, Fast, Slow, Black, White, Verticle, Horizontal, Circle, Rectangle etc
In fact when I transcribed the words themselves (easier for me since I could use the translation in the film) I found that the only things that did not include an opposite were either complete misses (like shamanic) or "water". That's it. Just one word.

 

[Akhenaten]

So, did we pass?



Honestly, I'm glad you prompted me to go beyond my first, somewhat lazy response, and actually try to analyse the thing, and it's quite pleasing that we've all come to roughly the same conclusion. Yay for us!

You didn't mention the most important aspect of the investigation though. Is Keren gorgeous, or what?

 

[Aepervius]

Right then . . .

Now, for my money, that not only doesn't fit the words we've been hearing, but it doesn't look anything like the actual picture:

But note that it present the usual TRICK of the remote viewer :
1) basic geometrical form which can be interpreted in multiple manner (building, trees, etc...)
2) no detail whatsoever which would narrow anything down

 

[Akhenaten]

But note that it present the usual TRICK of the remote viewer :
1) basic geometrical form which can be interpreted in multiple manner (building, trees, etc...)
2) no detail whatsoever which would narrow anything down

Yes. It's indeed a common theme in lots of these paranormal vision claims. If, as the proponents claim, they're actually seeing these things then why are the results so ambiguous?

I think I'll stick with TV for my remote viewing needs.

 

[yairhol]

From the article in Hebrew, this is what they say about Remote Viewing:

Mental practice developed by the CIA during the cold war era for military purposes in which the viewer can describe a certain target which is not accessible to the ordinary (human) senses.
The explanation for this practice, whos outcome can be extremely accurate, is based on knowledge from different fields such as quantum physics, neurology and psychology and tied to the concept that everything in the world is connected to everything.

Typical woo talk.

 

[GrandMasterFox]

So, did we pass?

Oh absolutely. I just wanted to see if I was imagining things or others see the same or more. I guess great minds think alike

Sadly though, my friend's response was that he agreed on several things like the fact that they have researched on her and possibly used a few tricks but he still thinks they have a real ability just not a very developed one.

I'm going to try and teach him a thing or two about cold readings and other techniques but I'm not expecting a miracle at this point.

Honestly, I'm glad you prompted me to go beyond my first, somewhat lazy response, and actually try to analyse the thing, and it's quite pleasing that we've all come to roughly the same conclusion. Yay for us!

And your work was appriciated

The sad thing is how many people are falling for this garbage. Heck, going to the links and reading the comments users posted overthere about it, most of them said "wow" and only one said "bs".

Oh and I also tried searching and found the names of the guys in the movie. The guy who shows the list is (surprise surprise) is a major promoter of other woo garbage like homeopathy. The other guy has "remote viewing workshops" and such.

You didn't mention the most important aspect of the investigation though. Is Keren gorgeous, or what?

Wooish girls are always hot. They are always gullable and very open to probing

 

[Akhenaten]

From the article in Hebrew, this is what they say about Remote Viewing:

Typical woo talk.

Hebwoo!

 

[GrandMasterFox]

Yes. It's indeed a common theme in lots of these paranormal vision claims. If, as the proponents claim, they're actually seeing these things then why are the results so ambiguous?

My friends response to this: "Because their ability is not developed enough".

I of course asked him, if they are allowed to do drawings (as both of them did draw stuff like that bs podium thing) why didn't they attempt to draw the actual drawing?

Even if they had some form of stick figure or something it would be appriciated and far more convincing. I'm still waiting for a response.

 

[Ethan Thane Athen]

My friends response to this: "Because their ability is not developed enough".

I of course asked him, if they are allowed to do drawings (as both of them did draw stuff like that bs podium thing) why didn't they attempt to draw the actual drawing?

Even if they had some form of stick figure or something it would be appriciated and far more convincing. I'm still waiting for a response.

It bemuses me how people fall for this stuff. Even if you believed the general concept, you'd have to dismiss these guys as proponents of it. It's not as if the picture was particularly complex - if they could actually remote (and future) see it then why couldn't they just say 'Big splash in a stormy sea done in black and white'. Then I'd be impressed - mind you, 'black and white' would be a logical guess if they'd researched her work.

So, I can just about get my head around people believing in remote viewing but why are they impressed by such a poor result? It's like 'believing' in gymnastics and then being impressed by someone doing a wonky forward roll!

 

[Cainkane1]

I hope they don't describe her painting before she paints it.

 

[Akhenaten]

I hope they don't describe her painting before she paints it.

Umm . . .

It shows a couple of remote viewers and a woman named Keren Russo.
She is an artist who is interested in all sorts of spiritual stuff and she wanted to see if they can use remote viewing to identify a painting of hers she hasn't painted yet. And then see how accurate they are.