I cannot keep away from the perception of the body itself to talk about how to understand the world through knowledge. No matter the limitation of the innate body structure or the acquired habits of thinking, it is easy for me to involuntarily ignore certain things around us, thus making them meaningless in my consciousness.
The senses of the body provide me with the most direct experience, and physiology also limits it. Scientists believe that matter is composed of particles, and we are living in a granular universe. Such scientific theories are very far away from my daily lives, but the sound of radio broadcasts and the cells I seen in the microscope all reveal the fact that there are even more miniature worlds that exist beyond human's sensibility in this universe. Body functions limit the range of what we can perceive. It is difficult for our eyes to distinguish things in the dark like owls, nor can our sense of smell detect subtle smells like dogs. I cannot rely on the naked eyes to see the ultraviolet rays irradiated on my body, nor can hear the ultrasound. I could ignore many things if I rely solely on my senses to understand the world. The development of science has gradually proved the existence of things that cannot be observed, but many phenomena are still challenging to explain. For example, in the Telepathic Piece created by Robert Barry in 1969, it is difficult for viewers to detect the existence of works through their senses accurately, but Barry believes that even if the work cannot be seen or felt, people would somehow know it is out there. Science cannot fully interpret the world yet. Phenomenon such as telepathy and sixth sense cannot be proved by science to be true or false yet, and they seem to hover in my life because I know the bodily senses are not precise.
The basic experience in daily life comes from the most direct perception. The first impression brought by perception is straightforward to be preconceived in consciousness and then easily become habitual. Mark Rothko once said: "Our basis of being concrete about the world. it is a lustful relationship to things that exist." When looking at Joseph Jastrow's Rabbit/Duck (1899) or Rorschach inkblots, it is easy to make judgments with the first impression. "A thing" is usually a general and subjective term in life, and it is an answer that is intuitively felt. If I saw a stone on the park's path, why would I think it was a stone? Because its visual characteristics are persuading me, its colour, shape, and size are all pushing to conclude that "it is a stone". A single perception can effortlessly impact cognition, just like the visual image conveyed by the photos of the Loch Ness monster, which people have debated over two centuries. When I face online texts, images, and video materials, whether water monsters exist has become a metaphysical concept, and my intuitive feelings dominate the judgment.
Warhol discovered that we often have a state in our daily life: the brain easily neglects the information that is repeatedly browsed spontaneously. He once said: "I don't want it to be essentially the same - I want it to be exactly the same. Because the more you look at the same thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel." For example, the advertisements in subway stations and manhole covers on the street. After the eyes have confirmed their information once or twice, I would unconsciously ignore the objects in similar outlines. Graham Gussin interprets this emptiness caused by the same recurring information as "objects or figures reaches critical mass and becomes a collective nothing." 10 Of course, this situation is not exclusive in the visual information. John Cage's 4'33" (1952) guides the concert audience to discover the surrounding noise that is usually ignored due to the music played on the stage. Bronislav Malinowski, in his The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages (1923), put forward the concept of "phatic communion", which points out many formal and fixed processes in social contact are to maintain relationships instead of focusing on content. As for me, I did not expect the repeated and similar dialogues such as "hello", "How are you?", "Have you had lunch?" bring me any meaning; hence I would quickly forget them. Subjective feelings are not completely real, and whether it is the physical limitations of the body or the consciousness's autonomous choice of perception, my senses are destined not to be able to see the complete picture of the world. I either fill in the blank of sense through imagination or use all the strength from toes to hair to activate perception to understand the fuzzy space outside my mind. These attempts produce the feeling of "somehow know they are out there", as Barry said. But no matter how they are so inaccurate to me.
