Alicia Gledhill

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perception is our interpretation of the information we receive through our senses.  We see, hear, and become aware of our surroundings through our senses.  This information helps make up our conscious experience, and allow us to interact with the people and objects around us. It comes to us naturally. We learn and we create memories from these senses.  At any given moment, you might see familiar objects in your environment, feel the touch of objects and people against your skin, smell the aroma of a home-cooked meal and hear the sound of music playing in your next door neighbour’s apartment.

But our perception of this world is fragile. It can be easily altered and skewed to mislead us. There are many influences on our perception that constantly question how we view this world. Technology helps us see past the visual limitations of our own sight, being able to see the microscopic of our world, being able to see the vastness of space, capturing a moment, and slowing down time.  Technology disturbs our perspective; it makes the microscopic and the enormous the same size, bringing them into a scale in which we can perceive.

I use microscopes and photography to alter the way we view everyday items, taking something that is instantly recognisable and making it unrecognisable. By using the microscope we view the material past our initial limited view, which begins to remove perspective. I continue this by removing and editing colour through manipulation of the images, and then displaying it in a large scale, thus removing it further from the size of the original content. By removing the context in which we view these objects, my work begins to question perception.