Constructed Reality

I've been thinking recently that reality has very little ground truth to it. My reality, at least. My perception is in control, directed by a world-view - a little toy model of how the world works built up from my experiences.

There's a feedback loop in here, and it can be a bit of a nightmare. The world-view is fed by perception, and perception is directed by the world-view. If you've ever spent five minutes looking for your 'lost' phone only to find that you've been holding it the whole time, then you've experienced a downside of this model. Your world-view told your perception that your phone was lost, that you couldn't be holding it - so your perception stopped seeing it.

Many artists, too, have to contend with this feedback loop. They have to strive to capture what is really there, not what they expect to be there.

I find this fascinating.

I was at Sunny Bank Mill a few weeks ago with a group of textile artists connected by my wife's art organisation Thread Collective. As we walked past a particular spot I noticed that it didn't look how I expected - it was a pretty surreal feeling. It was the building I had photographed the last time I was there, and then ended up painting (as seen in the image for this post). I had spent hours on end looking at a photograph of this building, but it somehow looked wrong to me.

This surreal feeling threw me at first, until I got thinking about memory, and the world-view, and perception. I think I eventually landed on what happened. When we make a memory, it is of the perception we had - not the "reality" - it is coloured by the world-view. Then when we remember it again, it is changed once more by the perception. Each remembering moves it further from where it began. It becomes a memory of a memory of a memory, ad nauseam.

So when I had been painting this building, occasionally turning to review my photograph reference, I had been remembering the building. Modifying it. Replacing it with a reality constructed of the painting and my thoughts about the painting. I had spent far longer with the painting version of Sunny Bank Mill, and my memory of the place is now constructed from the painting as much as the painting was constructed of the memory. In a way, the end of the painting was informed by the memory of itself.