About: I am a digital artist and computer geek with interests in Linux, open source design programs, and saving the world. You will find me blogging here about art, life, technology, and other mildly amusing things. That which I cannot see
Lately I’ve begun recognizing my assumption that everything I look at, everything I perceive, has a backside that I can’t see. A side that is hidden from me because of my current perspective.
I see books on tables nearby, realize that the side facing down is completely hidden from my view. While in my mind I percieve things in this room as objects, and my mind can fill their forms in, what I am really viewing is a but 2D shadow of their existence. Just “the tip of the iceberg,” with far more of the surface hidden from my vantage point.
Yet, even as I move around and view the room from another angle, this backside is still there, and there is just as much unseen to me as there was before. And there always will be. It is like this backside of non-perception is dependent upon my very context of perception: I move, and it moves with me. The backside of things is a natural antithesis to the frontside that is accessible to my vision.
While this should seem a very simple and commonplace rule of existence, the more I think about it, the more I find it rather disturbing. If I am sitting still, looking at my world around me, and from my perspective canot determine if these objects really do have a backside, methaphorically, what other parts of my world are going unseen? Further, this aspect of concentrating upon the backside of things makes me uncomfortable. In my mind, I feel the temptation to view things as “inside-out,” to try and envision the backside while I am readily viewing the frontside. Isn’t it kind of futile to be placing my emphasis on the part that I accept to be impossible for me to see?
I can look at my laptop screen, percieve the fact that the screen has a backside that is currently facing away from me. I see it in my mind, the “Dell” logo circle and the silver finish. But this backside is one that from my current vantage point I cannot see. So why do I assume it exists? Now I test it, I reach out and touch the back of the screen, run my fingers across the surface. But internally my mind reels! Where is the connection between this sensation of what I am feeling, and this surface that I cannot see but know is there? Yet now that I am looking for a visual contact to what I am feeling, I am forced to realize that it simply is not there! I am touching something that currently does not exist in my perception.
Until now, as an artist and as an existing human, what I have concentrated upon is what is being seen, what is presented to the viewer, but never what is naturally obscured from them. For me, “seeing is believing:” if I can see something, I can reasonably accept its existence as being there. But now, when thinking about it, I challenge my vision; I doubt its importance and validity. I begin to feel like I am seeing without percieving: I am blind. Oh, how strange it is to contemplate that which I cannot see! 
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Similarly is our perception of any information preempted by more immediate data. At such a time when a country whose inhabitants do not all own iPods is considered third-world, imagine the amount of sound that will be blocked out.
The analogy becomes even more apparent after the realization that vision is simply the product of light from a source scattering off of objects. We could just as easily see through objects if our eyes were sensitive to higher-frequency light waves, but we have evolved to see “visible light”. This is because the most important information to humans is all that should be processed, with other information that would usually be only a distraction ignored. So, what is an “ear-bud” headphone? It serves two purposes different from larger speakers: to block out the sound that would normally be distracting, and to avoid distracting others with the sound that it project. We’ve basically designed a filter that blocks out non-immediate sound in the same way that our eyes have developed to block out non-immediate light.
As to the existence of parts of objects invisible from your current point of view: there’s a bag with bottled water in it downstairs. The bottled water is there, whether I can see it or not. I certainly don’t need to go downstairs to check on it! The only time for me that it gets weird is when there’s an angle that I generally don’t see an object from, and so I have no image of it in my head. It does start to bug me when I think about the backside of such an object.
I think you’d like quantum physics, as properties of objects have been proven to not exist unless they are observed. The answer to the metaphysical question of “Is it there and I just can’t see it, or is it nowhere until I see it?” turns out to actually have an effect on experimental data. The effect of the latter option has been experimentally observed, which leads to the corollary that there is no deterministic model to be formulated that describes the world we live in.
Then, of course, there’s the question of whether anything we observe is actually there. Physics assumes as an axiom that what we observe is an accurate description of what is there, that nothing external is modifying what we see. There’s nothing to say that we don’t live in a Matrix-style world where our “observations” are merely being fed to us, giving us the impression that we are living in a completely different world. What if there is no real world, and what we observe is simply random data that whatever defines our consciousness is picking up on?
I need to stop, now, as I’m approaching the dangerous subject of self-consciousness – one that has been a major source of headaches for me.
Comment by pandas — May 25, 2006 @ 12:10 am
Very interesting, pandas. I really like your discussion of our selective filtering of our senses. I would argue that our culture generally strives towards selectively filtering human perception – from removing undesirable sensory experiences to maximizing desirable ones. For instance, take polarized sunglasses – a suitable parallel to your concept of ear-bud headphones. Or pain medication. We often (though not always) try to reduce or remove unpleasant or somehow detrimental sensations from our experience.
To parry your recommendation, I think you could really like Existential Philosophy. It’s intriguing that the deeper and further we probe into the “stuff” of our existence, the further the nature of matter diverges from our everyday expectation of things we perceive. But what is empirical evidence, if we base our point of reference philosophically? Where these two worlds collide is of great interest to me.
Existential philosophers often ask the question of the nature of truth, what we know, how we can structure what we experience. This has the annoying tendency to start to complicate the simplest empirical evidence itself… your “question of whether anything we observe is actually there.” Approach the subject of self-consciousness. Don’t turn away!
I can’t really say what exists for you, but it’s all questions for me!
Comment by chromakode — May 25, 2006 @ 10:44 pm