Changing the Channels

 

Simply by changing the channel in an image, you can see a new reality--or unreality--an interesting metaphor for consciousness. 

A few weeks ago when the skies were strangely orange, I was thinking about filters and channels in digital images. Very often when we look at the other channels in an image we either find something that is more interesting or unnerving or less interesting. In some of these images, looking at the red channel, for example, you see more of a banal image because what was interesting in all of the channels at once (intense heat, fire) is not interesting in one channel. And in other images, the blue channel is hugely interesting. 

A Blue Channel

 When the smoke clears (the "event"), and the filters are removed (emotion), what is left is sometimes quotidian banality, or life as usual (like William Eggleston images which look stupid, but could be emotionally charged for other people).