From Atlas Obscura …

The story of how the demonveggen, or demon wall, came to be is as strange and disturbing as the mural itself. It’s a tale of scandal, fraud, and possible madness that begins with Gerhard Gotaas, one of Norway’s leading conservators of the mid-20th century.

The article goes on to use further words like: fake, artistic licence, fraud, fabrication, chaos, schizophrenic art, deception. These words pass a harsh but superficial judgement that doesn’t bear scrutiny. I might have been inclined to accept the article’s take on the matter if I hadn’t experienced my own demonvegg.

Years ago, prompted by the works of Carl Jung, I used to explore my subconscious mind, practicing various mental disciplines to power my investigations. In those days, on falling asleep I occasionally saw demonvegger of my own. Once I’d coped with my terror, I’d be caught up in a sense of wonder at the rich, inventive detail of these tableaux, particularly how each face would support the structure of its neighbours in an Escher-like way.

Now I don’t believe for a moment I’d had a glimpse of hell. I’m trained in computer science and AI, with their theories and experiments that completely explain the demonvegg to my satisfaction. The other day I came across footage of an illuminating investigation by Google scientists into the phenomenon, which seems to occurs in both the human visual cortex and modern neural nets.

So I refuse to snap up the calumnies tossed around by the Atlas Obscura article. How about accepting that the conservator Gerhard Gotaas was working in total good faith?

Here’s my two-penn’orth.

Gotaas was faced with a mural which the centuries had completely obliterated. By staring hard at the noise (meant in the precise technical sense of signal-in-noise theory) he grew convinced he could make out the original scene. But in the absence of a signal he was simply amplifying the noise in his own head. To quote the article: “[Gotaas] liked to say that restoration is a magic thing to do. He was not a scientific man.” So how’d he appreciate the risk of this?

It was early 1940s. Norway was suffering under Nazi occupation. Gotaas was hard at work on a decayed mural in an empty ill-lit church. Such murals are there not just to prettify the walls, but to lead the congregation towards contemplating heaven and hell. What’s wrong with supposing the noise in Gotaas’s head readily assumed classical demonic forms?