Field Notes on Perception

Rocket 99.

The original photograph that Rocket 99 came from.

I shared the image without explanation and asked only one question: What do you see?

What came back wasn’t agreement — it was alignment.

Some people saw an eagle playing a guitar. Others saw a bird, a witch, a ghost, or a guide. One person looked into what they described as a time tunnel. Another saw a ship floating on blood- and oil-slicked water. There were sunsets, reflections on stone, tree lines, fire, and light. A sloth appeared, calmly watching from a branch.

Several people didn’t describe what they saw at all — they described what they heard.

Slow. Heavy. Bluesy.
Smokey. Sultry. Intense. Soulful.
A guitar that burns.
A psychedelic guitar dream.
Fire breaking like a phoenix wave.

No one was told to look for a guitar.
No one was told to listen for music.

Yet music kept arriving.

What interests me most is not the variety of images, but the consistency of feeling. Fire and water appear again and again. Movement through time. Passage. Thresholds. Reflection. Weight. Heat. Stillness before motion.

The image doesn’t behave like a picture. It behaves like a place.

People don’t examine it — they enter it. Their own history, memory, and temperament determine what steps forward to meet them. The work doesn’t explain itself. It doesn’t resolve. It waits.

One response said it best, without trying to:

That’s what I love about art. People’s experience shapes their interpretation.

That is the entire point.

I’m not interested in whether the viewer sees the same thing I do. I’m interested in whether the image gives them somewhere to arrive — and whether something inside them recognizes the sound when it gets there.