Russians draw a house without doors

The artist studied how people from different countries depict the same objects

In November 2016, Google launched the browser game Quick, Draw! - the user was asked to draw a certain object, and the neural network had to guess what it was. Thanks to the game, Google has collected millions of drawings that can be analyzed . Los Angeles-based artist Kyle MacDonald broke down the pictures by country and found out how the drawings made by residents of different regions differ typologically.

Artist Kyle MacDonald and Google employee Ian Johnson explored data from Quick, Draw! by overlaying country-by-country drawings of the same items. And found that chairs in the US and Taiwan are drawn differently.

The chair example was included in post a Google blog that was published on August 25th. It also said that some objects - for example, cats - look the same to the inhabitants of all countries.

A few days later, McDonald tweeted about other cases where people of different nationalities portray objects in different ways. There are quite a few such examples.

It turned out that residents of other countries of Southeast Asia also draw chairs at an angle.

In Asia, emoticons are also drawn in a special way - with smiling eyes.

Many users who have been asked to draw a candlestick have usually drawn it as if it were hanging from the ceiling. But not the French - they have a candlestick on the table.

The difference is in architecture: in different countries, the roofs of houses are painted differently, and in Russia and Belarus it is customary to depict a window instead of a door.

Another feature of Southeast Asia: they know for sure that fish and ducks should look to the left (in other countries they draw with their heads in both directions). Among all, the Turks stand out - their fish looks strictly to the right.

In Asia, snowmen are drawn in two parts, not three. On Twitter, McDonald was told that in Japan, snowmen are called " snow daruma " - a roly-poly doll, which is depicted as squatting (and therefore consisting of two parts).

Users who were asked to draw a watermelon usually drew a wedge. But in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, they could not decide whether to draw a slice or a whole watermelon.

Briefs: In some countries, boxers were painted more often than in others.

Finally, sockets: in each country they are drawn the way they look there.

Read also: Quartz analyzed how people from different countries draw circles.

Sultan Suleymanov