The Author

The author is an observer and creator, a creator and a creation, whichever comes first. The author should think of that analogy every once in awhile. He should always keep one thing in mind. Whatever appears to be unclear to him as an artist will not be clear to someone else either. The table, mentioned earlier, is now a good basis for the following experiment.

1. The glass might lose its features but the content will remain white. Or, the glasss will retain its shape, but the colour of the milk will change. The colour blue would be good for it is so unfamiliar in this context. Red would not be a good choice for it immediately conjures the image of wine, deeply familiar and filled with meaning. Another possibility is to tilt the content contrary to the shape of the vessel, or to extend the shape beyond what is deemed possible.

2. A shoe box might be presented as if it is made of rusty metal, or even of a piece of carpet.

3. The egg would be made as a piece of a mirror, reflecting what is in front of the painting.

4. The enormous chunk of cheese might be given a look of a brick, together with the brik's definitive colour.

5. And finaly, the loaf of bred would be white, resembling a loaf of alabaster.

All of the elements of the table setting will change, and so the observer will change as well. Keeping a thread, although an invisible one, will hold the composition together. A new sensation will occur, causing the observer to change his perspective or his point of view. The dynamic between observer and object will grow because of unexpected turnabout, and yet this is only the first stage of defamiliarization. The next step would be more abstract, more oriented towards accidental, or as is it also called, automatic kind of change, caused by mutual influence among the elements presented.

Interactions

You have just opened your eyes, still lying in your bed. Except for a little light that is coming through the curtain, the room is dark. Then you see something strange and you can not recognize what it is. The thing is on the floor, has a round shape and seems to be white, but now because of the darkness its meaning to you is incomprehensible. Then you see your shoes lying next to it. All of a sudden it clicks in your mind. The soks, that's what it is.

This is an example of an inductive conclusion. This is how our mind makes connections using the closest reference in order to explain to itself something that seems to be unreachable in the moment of awakening. The mind will use the shortest distance in order to solve the problem or adapt to a new situation.

If we are carefully selective, the elements in a painting will interact with each other on the canvas. We may defamiliarize some of them letting the other elements influence those that are naked, stripped of their conventional meaning. When we don't yet have a word for a thing, we make use of words describing something else that resembles the thing in some way. So if there is nothing to be identified with, there will be another way of reflecting the essence that is hidden under that crust of everyday world that we call reality.