As if I needed another reminder, I'm always mindful of not getting assimilated too much into projections on a blank screen to the point of forgetting that I'm watching mere light and shadows.
The main reason is of course losing a sense of perspective on where I stand on reality versus illusion, but also unwinding oneself from an assimilation is usually a disorienting experience.
Last week, I paid a visit to a friend and he had a new projector in his room that he was very keen on trying out. I helped a bit on setting it up and we decided to debut arguably the most popular sci-fi movie called The Matrix as the first show watched on the projector.
Seeing Through the Simulation
I'm not sure if it was coincidental on the choice of the show to watch. I didn't think much of it at first, but while the characters were moving across the wall, my perception was more so looking through the show than looking at it.
Given the lack of intensity and groundedness of the projected image quality from this projector, it wasn't really hard to achieve this split or rather simultaneous awareness of the illusion and reality behind it.
In some sense, certain dreams are like that too. They just lack the tangible aspect of reality as we see it with our physical eyes. So better to enjoy the process of dreaming than trying to take it too seriously.
Interestingly however, there are people who view it the other way round.
Reality as we see it with our physical eyes is more of a dream than the actual dreams we often experience while we're asleep; to them, the latter feels more real than the former.
Where do you stand on this?
How to Trick an Eye (and Maybe a Mind)
Now, I think a projector as a piece of tech is invariably fascinating when you consider what it actually does. It takes digital information and transforms it into beams of light that create moving images on any surface.
The technology essentially tricks our eyes into seeing motion where there is none. Just rapid sequences of still frames, much like how our minds piece together the fragments of dreams into seemingly continuous experiences.
Modern projectors work by manipulating light through tiny mirrors or liquid crystals, creating millions of pixels that dance across space before hitting a screen.
For me, there's something a bit almost magical about how these machines can fill an entire wall with stories, yet when you look behind the projector, all you see is a small lens and some electronics!
Perhaps that's why watching that sci-fi movie felt so meta.
Here we were, using a device that projects illusions to watch characters who are themselves living in a projected illusion.
Another loop added to this could occur through the use of virtual reality, that's if we were to step into the world we were watching.
Human Constructs on Borrowed Surfaces
Sometime along the viewing of the show, it occurred to me that the projector can become a metaphor for a belief system, too.
Like it takes abstract ideas and projects them so convincingly onto our shared reality that we forget they're human constructs. Money, status and even national borders become as real as the wall they're projected on, so to speak.
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