Peripheral failings.

I think its safe to say we've all seen at least one video online in which a situation unfolds dramatically and often suddenly. I think its also fair to say that we've all seen (or made) comments on such videos to the affect of "I'd have dodged that" or "how did they not see that coming".

I find these interesting because it displays just how readily and poorly we position ourselves in another's scene. These comments made always seem to ignore that the cameras POV is not the persons POV, from positioning, to field of view, to light sensitivity, and focal length distortions, what you see played back is not what anyone saw in the moment, not truly.

And even if it was some how a 1 to 1 recreation of another's line of sight, it would still not account for the fact that our brains are not digital sensors robotically receiving and displaying light. We are beings of variation and interpretation, our apertures are not fixed, we composite two differing feeds of light, the edges of our aspect ratio are not hard lined and clearly defined, they are ambiguous, shifting, and full of our brains best guesses at what it thinks takes up that space. Much more than that there are a myriad of other signals passing though the processor at any one given time, distorting the interpretation and reaction to the image "captured" by our brains

Yes as much as we take self satisfaction in stating how we would do x or y differently in any given situation, we must accept we are not immune to this, this best guess, this faltering perception, this inattentional blindness.

We may try to fool ourself or simply sit in self assured delusional ignorance, but at the end of the day your brain does not contain the next evolution in visual perception, your eyes are not set to a dramatically higher FOV than anyone else's, you are just as failible as I or anyone else.

We all missed the gorilla when asked to count how many times the ball was passed. Yet when placed on the outside we'd deride and dismiss those who did.

And I want to extrapolate this thinking to art, to how important it is to be aware of not just what you show but how another may see it, and not just what you see, but what you think you see vs what is actually there.

I think this and many other notions about how we see, how our brains make up the world around us through that captured light, should be taught as more intrinsic to art. Psychology, the study of perception, art, and science should all sit alongside one another at times, to learn best what it means to live and be human, by understanding how we perceive and feel the world.