Tricks Of Light And Shadow

You've probably received an email at some time in your life showing a guy doing chalk drawings on the street that, from a certain perspective, look amazingly 3D.  His name is Kurt Wenner and he is currently exhibiting several of his works, along with some Indonesian artists, here at the Ciputra Artpreneur Center.

Preserved on canvas, these pieces lie flat on the floor or form a 90-degree angle with the wall.  When viewed through a wide-angle lens, ghostly three-dimensional images pop out of the canvas, appearing to rise out of the background or apear in front of it.  It's really quite amazing and something photos just don't quite capture.  Makes you wonder how Kurt views the world.

What the art works highlight is the weird world of perception.  How we view the world and what reality is comes down to a matter of perspective.

In the midst of all the excitement, an email pops in from my Canadian bud and long-time ex-pat.  It contained a quote that he found "out there":

“Given the fact that it has been proven that our moon is a very suspiciously perfectly placed artificial satellite that is composed of non-naturally occurring material without which we could not have life on this planet combined with the fact that our Earth is very suspiciously the only place within our solar system and very likely our galaxy that can support life there is absolutely no question in my mind that, at the very least, the entire surface of our planet and all of its life forms are in fact nothing more than elements of a very large and complex software system that is being used to run what I am completely convinced are military experiments by some non-humanoid entity.”

I shot back:

"This is just a take on the ancient concept that we create the Universe through our collective consciousness.  The Hindus and Buddhists place this idea at the center of their beliefs.  The idea of a holographic reality or software simulation is just modern terminology wrapping the same concepts."

Seems this week's theme is 'perception', since everywhere I turn there are hints about reality not being all that real and our minds creating Creation.  It's strange how Life keeps throwing theme weeks at us.  It's like Bogart week on the Million Dollar Movie or something.  Just more proof that we create our reality, or it's created for us on a regular basis.

Related to that, do people really have premonitions, or does the intensity with which they think something create the situation?  My father used to think of people he hadn't talked to in years and out of the blue they would call or contact him within 24 hours.  This was before the internet and you could track most people down fairly easy.  But you have to ask, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

As Wenner's work shows, perception is all a matter of perspective.  One step in any direction and the world we see changes quite radically.  For those who see beyond the 'trick' of light and shadow, the paintings represent a profound look at reality.  Suppose we all exist on a canvas that appears three-dimensional and solid, until you shift to the side just a bit.

Perhaps if we all mentally stepped to the side and looked at the world from a slightly different perspective, we might see something completely unexpected and remarkable.  Of course, it begs the question what would we do if we found out the Universe was just a construct of imagination?

Happy Friday!