I think we get used to seeing things the way we've seen them before, and then we assume that that is how things are. A few moments in my life disrupted this for me. I remember the first time I wore eyeglasses to correct my nearsightedness. My Mom was driving me home from picking up my new glasses and I sat in the front seat mesmerized by the branches of the trees passing by through the car windshield on a winter day. I could see each and every tiny little branch and to me, this was spectacular. I’d had no idea that all of this was out there, available to be seen. I’ve never gotten over it.
In elementary school when they showed films, the teacher used to bring the projected image into focus, and I always found that moment of blurriness shifting into clarity, and back and forth for a second or two to be strange and compelling. As a little kid, I had the habit of standing on my head (while leaning against the couch) long enough so that my brain would begin to see the ceiling as the floor. I thought this was magical and occasionally terrifying.
Recently I read Laura Snyder’s book, The Eye of the Beholder. She writes about the Netherlands during the early modern era, and the work that was being done with lenses. She writes about scientists and artists and how profound the effect of these lenses, and being able to see things clearly, differently, was on these individuals but also on the culture at large. The idea that a person could see things for oneself that had previously been hidden had radical and revolutionary implications. One did not need to rely on an authority figure to reveal some hidden truth; one could go and observe closely, and find one’s own truth. Snyder posits that this was an important moment in the emerging modern era. Each individual had access to knowledge and therefore the right and perhaps obligation to study the world and come to thoughtful conclusions.
We are in a very strange time now. The idea of one perceivable, accepted reality has long been disputed by artists and creative thinkers, and as an artist I think it is fascinating and essential to question our accepted truths and to realize that perceptions of the world from different viewpoints may vary. But, this very open-mindedness has been taken up and transformed into something very different, something that seems to be aggressively opposed to curiosity and exploration. If we are to function as a civilized society we need to have methods of discovery and ways of agreeing on some crucial things.
I’m not entirely sure exactly how all of this informs the work I do, and to be honest, I often become less interested the more literal and concrete something becomes, but these ideas and also wonder and fascination are present when I am looking at the world. Curiosity is a better companion than fear.