Hey, are you seeing what I’m seeing? Or is my own reportable experience just a distorted perception of reality? While the idea of hallucinations are generally stigmatized, being lumped with psychiatric conditions and drug use, as many as one in twenty people have experienced them under normal conditions. Illusions, on the other hand, are experienced by every human and are distinguishable from reality as the experiencer knows what they are seeing is not physically true. Both phenomena are puzzling to us as humans, because while we like to think of ourselves as an all-knowing species, but in fact the most complicated and mysterious object known to our universe sits in each and every one of our heads. Since our brains seem to control our subjective conscious experience, they harness the power to instill whatever reality seems fitting. As the late and great Oliver Sacks once remarked “Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination”. In “Do You See What I See”, I invite viewers to reflect on the power of their own minds and memories of unique, maybe seemingly absurd, experiences. I encourage all to utilize the spark of creativity evoked by such reflection as a launchpad for discussion and artistic/ philosophical ventures. The original photograph was taken at Joshua Tree National Park and manipulated using photoshop by planting the design under deliberated holes in the picture.

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