WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get. Isn’t that the dream? Your eyes don’t deceive you. Well, that is the ideal, at least. 

What You (Don’t) See

Your eyes see a thing, and then your brain lets you know what it wants to be seeing instead. From that feedback loop, something else is born—something we have to hope and believe is better. When that product finally arrives, it is the flattening of everything. It is the linearized, compacted edition. That final compression of creativity occludes all the interesting, strange decisions that eventuated it—a multivariate thing hashed into one consumable string, a superposition of stimuli. 

Most of the time, those constituent parts deserved their flattened fate. Yet, their elision can be regrettable. Indeed, it’s possible that the irreducible parts that guide can actually be more interesting than the final thing they work toward. Each decision still exists in its own right, but each beginning mark is blurred—smudged by the touch of the person who thought to push it that way instead of another. 

While a keen and critical eye can be capable of spotting all of the streaks and strokes that result in the final image, ultimately, as an observer/consumer, one is inextricably stuck in that jealous, retroactive perspective of an outsider looking back on history as it had been made. What was hidden from view will always be coveted by you. 

What You (Can) Get

In the broader world, the act of seeing is impelled by immediacy. Your eyes see something, and your mind reflexively creates an entire story and impression of what is going on, including everything that has gone on and all that may go on in the future. Art is a function of harnessing our instinctual curiosity about reality as defined by our animalistic interest in others and the spaces we inhabit.

When you appreciate something someone else made, you’re interfacing with a new world with different rules. The vocabulary usually isn’t novel, but even defining the scope of what you should expect to see is a curiosity to figure out. As an observer, one explores that constructed world, curiously exploring its crevices, toying with the limits of the space until they’re understood, surfaced, and discarded. The unknowns are rooted out by our eyes—which is largely the work they are responsible for. 

Something unknown is that which must be eventually surveyed, assessed, and understood. Our eyes are passively primed to look at a person, interpret their state of mind, and extrapolate their intent. When you can’t do that, there’s something uncanny and unsettling about it. A stranger loitering in the shadows is inherently menacing, if only because a lack of information leaves their motives unexplained and resultantly imbued with guile. 

Seeing, in that sense, is a highly reactionary enterprise, one derived primarily from survival. Indeed, the quickest answer that gets the job done is what evolution has tended to reward. The sheer effortlessness of perception, while essential to existence, affords a seamless descent. 

A belief builds over time as more and more things are seen, and that belief is that, after a certain point, there is nothing truly unseen for reality to offer. The things you have not seen are probably similar enough to what you have: you could surmise them instead, which is simpler. You’ve seen it all. Indeed, an object out of view will soon enter it. Yet even old, tired eyes can detour, dally, and try to see something genuinely new, if only for a brief view.