We use technology to feed our insatiable curiosity for translating the unknown into the symbols and syntax of our known world. Simultaneously, technology feeds and enables both this curiosity and our need for translation. However where there is translation, there is bound to be noise.

Despite the implications of the term, all noise is not created equal. Whether audio or visual, some noise is qualitatively different, more stimulating than others. And yet we treat it all with the same disdain. Like an abnormality. A distortion. An error to be avoided, ashamed of and erased. If, on the other hand, we could let go of our arbitrary values, we might glimpse for a moment, perhaps even decipher, the aesthetics of the so-called ‘error’.

Experimental data suggests that human vision is not quite as straightforward as school curricula would like us to believe. The image at the back of our retinas is not a faithful reflection of the object in front of it. Instead, what we actually see is an interference pattern. A composite of present external reality and our stored visual memories. A simultaneous distortion of encoded intent and decoded content. Of subject and object. More holographic than photographic.

Everything is an interference pattern, a distortion. It’s just a question of which distortions we are comfortable with. Exposure to new sights on the peripheries of perception will stretch our senses, and open up new playgrounds for unleashing our curiosity. Who knows what patterns we’ll find in the chaos, once we meaningfully start looking for them. Maybe all we need to do is open our eyes. And look at things long enough for them to blur out of focus, and reveal what is otherwise concealed beneath the pixilated surface.

* available as wallpaper and prints.