Cities and suburbs, real and imaginary.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

alien impressionisms

the impressionist movement of art (monet, renoir, pissaro, etc.) would be utterly insensible to any alien eye. the movement is deeply rooted in the way the human mind and the human eye interact, creating shape out of familiar chaos, and light out of the suggestion of dots and swirls and smudges of patchy colors.

alien eyes, with alien ways of seeing, would be incapable of making heads or tails of this stuff. the science of it is too human.

i've been spending perhaps a little too much time standing around the art museum thinking about aliens. if that's even possible. (there's no such thing as pondering aliens too much.)

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