UNLEARN THE PICTURE PLANE

Studies done of peoples who are completely separate from the western media and mindset are illuminating. Joan and Louis Forsdale demonstrate that our understanding of the contents of a two dimensional picture plane seems to be acquired knowledge.  It is not innate.

The Forsdales conducted simple experiments by showing conventional photographic images to Eskimos and to African tribespeople. The photographs that each of these people looked at were of objects that were common to their daily lives. So while these objects should have been instantly recognizable, the native people could not see these objects in the photos.

Rather, they simply saw the photograph as an artifact in an of itself, with no relational meanings. The picture did not correspond with the boundlessness of visual reality. So how could the objects depicted on the photographic paper possibly have any meaningful content?

And we have seen other instances of the basic human incapacity to comprehend the contents of a picture plane. Previously, we saw the oriental mind, when shown a linear perspective, unable to understand the image in the way that we do. Or we have seen our acceptance of the linear perspective as a process of habituation. And there are instances of Western children not understanding that the end of a map does not delineate any sort of boundary.

So we seem to be assembling more and more examples demonstrating that our understanding of the two dimensional picture plane is not innate. Rather, it is learned. In the same way that we learn language, we learn our visual orientation.

In our world today, we are increasingly having to unlearn inaccurate and harmful societal precepts. Quite possibly, we need to begin to unlearn our basic visual orientation.