Invisible City

This is the first time you are in a new city. Look around you. Everything looks so fresh, as if the trees are breathing out interesting oxygens. For you, the first impression of what you see had become the truth and only memories of this city later on.

Perhaps you had heard a lot about this city from the mouths of your friends, or you have been overloaded with images of this city from movies-- speaking New York, Paris, London. Those previous images inside your warehouse of memories now become the framework constructing how you see- your simultaneous visual reception is intertwining with your memories. Yet it doesn't matter, as what you see is what you get.

Next second you are in a museum, a worldly famous one. You cruise around among tourists, gallery after gallery, artwork after artwork, images after images. Sometimes you allow yourself looking at the little white paper next to the artwork.

You read the words. The context of the work unfolded. You might be already familiar with this artwork and the artist, or you have completely lost in the first glance, while you are reading the words it is the moment you start generating new meaning of the artwork in your mind. Then you look at the artwork again, for a while. The words are fading away, in the meantime they are embedded in the image that you are perceiving. You finished looking at this artwork. You move on to the next. A new cycle of looking starts.

What does looking even mean? You look at the form, read the sign, memorize the pattern. Yourself is constantly reforming and your unconscious does the work.

Traveling and looking at artworks both involve the idea of looking at variations, and with an open expectation of something new. But would there be anything really "new" in the world? Or it's only perception that can be renewed.