Seeing without knowing in the 2.5-dimensional

Abstract

Our ‘knowing’ about ‘seeing’ is like watching the optical illusion or the ambiguous figure of the old and the young woman. The knowing look alternates, you never see both women at once. For the not-knowing look, such an image is totally uninteresting because it has the ability to note several slips between (spatial) realities at a time. A separate interpretation of the one or the other reality is impossible, so automatically, we move into a zone in which it is nor this nor that, but in which meaning arises in their complex coherence. Where for the knowing look the oscillation between the young and elderly woman needs a split second in order to make the recognition possible, this short instant of time evaporates into nonexistence in the not-knowing look. The young woman ís the old woman and vice versa, and the lifetime between them is captured in the image. In the lecture, this view is translated into seeing in between the flat and the spatial. Something is not flat or spatial, but both at once. Essential is the mental movement you make while looking. This is not sub- ordinate to origin or end point. It is about the way in which one is moved throughout the image, and how the image forces this motion.