Looking Without Seeing

"Lost in Art" by Liu Bolin

Excerpt from The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman:

I mean, seriously? Invisible? You should know better. You do know better. Tangible objects can't be invisible, ever. But they don't need to be. That's the crux of the concept. One of the most meaningful things I've learned from this is that people barely see what's openly in front of them, much less things that are camouflaged.

We all have a fixed perspective on how the world looks, and that perspective generates itself. We mentally change what we see to fit our unconscious perception of order.

I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase "People see what they want to see," but that's not really accurate. A more accurate phrase would be "People see what they assume must be seeable."

If there's no sense of movement and no unexpected sounds, we typically let our mind produce a backdrop that matches our memory. People will look at the world without seeing anything beyond their unconscious expectation.

See also:

• Hide In the City by Liu Bolin, Feb. 24, 2011
• How does Liu Bolin Make Himself Invisible? Sep. 2012
• "Chuck Klosterman: An Awesomely Long Interview," by Tony Dushane, The Nervous Breakdown, Nov. 12, 2011
• "Chuck Klosterman," KCRW's Guest DJ Project, July 4, 2012