Ways of Seeing

Knowledge is the key to seeing any given thing in a different light. An architect will look at a building differently than a person with little architectural background. As a person who works with textiles, I see stitches and patterns when I look at clothing allowing me to be more aware and interactive with cloth than someone who has no knowledge of the subject. This ‘awareness’ can apply to trivial things such as clothing, but it can also be applied to dealing with social issues or even conceptual art. The more time one spends analyzing the world around them, the more they will “see.”

Getting ridiculously close to something allows you to see abstractly, and allows for a breakdown of an object into its essential parts. When you get really close to the TV screen, you can see all the little colored pixels that make up the whole image, but you have no idea what the image is anymore. The use of zoom or macro shots on a camera shows us details that the human eye is incapable of seeing. Igor Siwanowicz photographs insects using the macro setting on his camera and turns “creepy” bugs into beautiful and amazingly intricate creatures. Spider’s eyes are given a friendly and innocent look that rivals the eyes of a baby seal creating an empathetic emotion in the viewer.

I personally love this concept for the metaphors that can be applied to the idea of closeness and sense-of-self. How do we feel once we get close to someone? What happens when the sense of closeness abruptly changes?

You can physically change how you see by taking hallucinogenic drugs that have been credited for centuries as inspirational tools for artists. From absinthe to shrooms and LSD, these substances create chemical changes in the brain which alter reality. Some drugs make colors more vivid and create a type of animation in inanimate objects. Others have been said to have the power of transforming the perception of the passage of time. Not hallucinating is a different chemical state of the brain, not necessarily more “real” than the images produced when on drugs. This then leads to asking the question, “What is seeing?”

I feel that drugs may be helpful for some people who want to step out of the restrictions they normally feel when creating art. However, I think that they should be used only on occasion and never as a permanent means of creating art. I also think that artists who rely on drugs get pushed into a category of art that ends up in dorm rooms lit by black lights.