Sidewalk Artist Extraordinaire Helps Us to 'Really' See

One of the most convincing demonstrations of the eye's fallibility and the illusions to which 'looking' is liable comes here in the form of these photo's of  Edgar Mueller a master sidewalk street artist who uses chalk as his primary medium. [be sure to scroll down to the bottom of this post to view "the making of crevasse" clicking on HD recommended]



The world really is not as we see it, as it "appears" to us...now is it? After gazing at these images the answer is absolutely most certainly NOT! Most of the relatively misleading information we receive comes from our most outward directed sense- the eye. The more our attention is directed inwards, the less incorrect information we receive. The unfolding of an eye culture, the constantly intensifying dominance of seeing and the seeable, is quite possibly despiritualizing [is thats a word?] our existence. We have become less aware that our 'inner eyes' are just as important as the 'outer' organs, and that 'looking within' is as crucial as what we see externally.



The word mystic comes from the Greek myein = close the eyes. Ever since ancient times mystics have, however, been viewed as human beings who see more.



Edgar spent five days, working 12 hours a day, to create the 250 square metre image of the crevasse, which, viewed from the correct angle, appears to be 3D. He then persuaded passers-by to complete the illusion by pretending the gaping hole was real. 'I wanted to play with positives and negatives to encourage people to think twice about everything they see,' he said.
'It was a very scary scene, but when people saw it they had great fun playing on it and pretending to fall into the earth. 'I like to think that later, when they returned home, they might reflect more on what a frightening scenario it was and say, "Wow, that was actually pretty scary"

"The human eye cannot see most of the lights in this world. What we percieve of surrounding reality is distorted and weakened by our organ of vision." 

- Lincoln Barnett