I first heard about Aphantasia a bunch of years ago in a random news article and was fascinated so I immediately did the casual test for it. The test, if you don’t know about it, is to establish whether you can bring a mental picture of something to mind and what degree of clarity it might have if any.
Oh that’s so interesting that synesthesia pairs with hyperphantasia for you! I wonder if that’s a “common” pairing. It does make some sense and goes in line with the relative lack of sensory feedback/memory that I seem to have with Aphantasia.
I also have aphantasia and similarly think of myself as a very visual person. I have an art practice and while I don’t often work realistically I can and could.
I can’t summon a image in my mind, but if I have read something that has stuck with me, I will remember where it is situated on the page, but not a visual image.
My dreams have occasionally had precise images, but are often a fuzzy image or no image, remembering of the situation and people in the dream.
I also have a very poor memory of so much of the past, and have been amazed at how much other people, my partner for instance do remember. Although I have read a lot of memory gets transformed over time, by the process of re-remembering. Sometimes my siblings will share a childhood memory that I do have some memory of and it is very different from mine.
Like you I find the whole process fascinating. I also know from comparing with others that the way I visualize characters or setting of what I’m reading are not distinct visual images, but a more ‘vague’ sense. I probably wasn’t aware that it was unusual until I read an article about this years ago. Interestingly with my kids, my son can clearly visualize images, as could his kids, and my daughter is like me.
Anyway I have enjoyed your art work, as well as now your writing. Thanks!
Thank you for sharing your experience! There are always these spectrums within the spectrums. It’s so interesting how different these natural senses and cognitive abilities can be person to person.
Interesting concept. I used to wood carve, mostly birds that I knew and studied. ( actually hunted ). Carving is difficult for many as you have think backwards and to remove what is not wanted in the final form. Many profile templates and cut lines later I would finally start to carve. My old neighbour Jim carved a dancing bear without a single pencil line used. ( his 3D mind was incredible ). My education and career has enabled me to still draw buildings and automotive parts in 3D, but I have a difficult time writing a legible check in cursive! Computers may ruin our artistic abilities....
That’s especially interesting the spatial awareness aspect of imagination. The the hyperphantasia end of the scale, some people can view an object from any angle and do “fly though” passes in their mind. Wild stuff to me when I can’t even get the most banal static image to appear up there.
Your description of your process makes me think about something that's always fascinated me, which is the the different ways that artists work compared to scientists or engineers.
The engineer wants to have all of the answers about what they are producing before they produce it ... the schematics, the specs, the blueprints, all the i's dotted and the t's crossed, and you can estimate the work and know ahead of time how long it will take and what you're going to get, and really the only unknowns are what unforseen things are going to come up during production. And there's value to this approach.
But I don't think it is at all unusual for an artist to have no idea what the end result is going to be when they start. There may be a feeling or a mindset that drives them into the work, but it's only through a process of being present for, and "actively sensing" the things that are being discovered in the moment that the result will emerge. So what's really needed is the time and space for safe exploration, whether it's alone like when you draw, or together, like actors or dancers or musicians rehearsing.
To the engineer, from the outside, this might look like inefficient fucking around, but it's actually a very mindful, efficient process when you're in it, and in a flow state. Your way of pulling a drawing out of your imagination even though you can't perfectly "see" it beforehand doesn't strike me as weird at all :).
Hey Nick! And of course there are artists that employ lots of planning, structure, and probably even estimates in their work successfully without it hampering their creative process. I think the converse can be true even for engineering and development work. All the best highly skilled technical people I’ve known have also been truly creative people. And I think sometimes that raw skunkworks phase is often necessary even when the goal is a refined, spec’d out and budgeted plan.
This resonates with me a lot, I only came across aphantasia maybe a month ago in a random guardian article and was very surprised to realise that I can't bring up any images in my head. I do sometimes see images but they are almost never ones I'm actively trying to see, more my brain daydreaming.
I'm considered fairly artistic and also am pretty good at spacial reasoning.
What's I realised whilst doing the tests for aphantasia is that most of my attempts to visualise things basically ended up with the "audio described" version, I could summon up different versions of an apple and could tell that I was imagining different apples because I could list the differences etc but couldn't see them...
Hi Pippa thanks for sharing. Yes, it’s like understanding the concept and properties of something we know from experience. I’m the same, I can think through all sorts of aspects of a given thing and describe them but not from a visual representation that I have access to.
This is fascinating and so relatable. I will find that book on horses that you've shared. Also, my eldest who is 16 and an incredible artist, has hyperphantasia. He describes spending time in the worlds of his imagination and translates them into handbound books with maps and characters, &c.
"I have both a great memory for certain types of knowledge and a terrible memory for experiences. Many of my experiences are just missing for me — blank like trying to see the apple."
Wow. Me too!
And as for dreams, I never knew. But recently I had a dream — almost an answer to these questions — where the dust was so distinct in the sunlight I wanted to photograph it. (in the dream)
I've been keeping a journal for most of my life. I often wonder how this impacts me in general, and now especially with aphantasia. Like at some point I needed to document in words because experiences never stuck.
Ha - Yes this is true. Before I knew this was how my brain worked, I would sometimes wonder why it was that I had never really imagined characters in novels as looking any specific way.
Oh that’s so interesting that synesthesia pairs with hyperphantasia for you! I wonder if that’s a “common” pairing. It does make some sense and goes in line with the relative lack of sensory feedback/memory that I seem to have with Aphantasia.
Wow - this sounds like a fun place to live!
I also have aphantasia and similarly think of myself as a very visual person. I have an art practice and while I don’t often work realistically I can and could.
I can’t summon a image in my mind, but if I have read something that has stuck with me, I will remember where it is situated on the page, but not a visual image.
My dreams have occasionally had precise images, but are often a fuzzy image or no image, remembering of the situation and people in the dream.
I also have a very poor memory of so much of the past, and have been amazed at how much other people, my partner for instance do remember. Although I have read a lot of memory gets transformed over time, by the process of re-remembering. Sometimes my siblings will share a childhood memory that I do have some memory of and it is very different from mine.
Like you I find the whole process fascinating. I also know from comparing with others that the way I visualize characters or setting of what I’m reading are not distinct visual images, but a more ‘vague’ sense. I probably wasn’t aware that it was unusual until I read an article about this years ago. Interestingly with my kids, my son can clearly visualize images, as could his kids, and my daughter is like me.
Anyway I have enjoyed your art work, as well as now your writing. Thanks!
Thank you for sharing your experience! There are always these spectrums within the spectrums. It’s so interesting how different these natural senses and cognitive abilities can be person to person.
Interesting concept. I used to wood carve, mostly birds that I knew and studied. ( actually hunted ). Carving is difficult for many as you have think backwards and to remove what is not wanted in the final form. Many profile templates and cut lines later I would finally start to carve. My old neighbour Jim carved a dancing bear without a single pencil line used. ( his 3D mind was incredible ). My education and career has enabled me to still draw buildings and automotive parts in 3D, but I have a difficult time writing a legible check in cursive! Computers may ruin our artistic abilities....
That’s especially interesting the spatial awareness aspect of imagination. The the hyperphantasia end of the scale, some people can view an object from any angle and do “fly though” passes in their mind. Wild stuff to me when I can’t even get the most banal static image to appear up there.
Your description of your process makes me think about something that's always fascinated me, which is the the different ways that artists work compared to scientists or engineers.
The engineer wants to have all of the answers about what they are producing before they produce it ... the schematics, the specs, the blueprints, all the i's dotted and the t's crossed, and you can estimate the work and know ahead of time how long it will take and what you're going to get, and really the only unknowns are what unforseen things are going to come up during production. And there's value to this approach.
But I don't think it is at all unusual for an artist to have no idea what the end result is going to be when they start. There may be a feeling or a mindset that drives them into the work, but it's only through a process of being present for, and "actively sensing" the things that are being discovered in the moment that the result will emerge. So what's really needed is the time and space for safe exploration, whether it's alone like when you draw, or together, like actors or dancers or musicians rehearsing.
To the engineer, from the outside, this might look like inefficient fucking around, but it's actually a very mindful, efficient process when you're in it, and in a flow state. Your way of pulling a drawing out of your imagination even though you can't perfectly "see" it beforehand doesn't strike me as weird at all :).
Hey Nick! And of course there are artists that employ lots of planning, structure, and probably even estimates in their work successfully without it hampering their creative process. I think the converse can be true even for engineering and development work. All the best highly skilled technical people I’ve known have also been truly creative people. And I think sometimes that raw skunkworks phase is often necessary even when the goal is a refined, spec’d out and budgeted plan.
This resonates with me a lot, I only came across aphantasia maybe a month ago in a random guardian article and was very surprised to realise that I can't bring up any images in my head. I do sometimes see images but they are almost never ones I'm actively trying to see, more my brain daydreaming.
I'm considered fairly artistic and also am pretty good at spacial reasoning.
What's I realised whilst doing the tests for aphantasia is that most of my attempts to visualise things basically ended up with the "audio described" version, I could summon up different versions of an apple and could tell that I was imagining different apples because I could list the differences etc but couldn't see them...
Hi Pippa thanks for sharing. Yes, it’s like understanding the concept and properties of something we know from experience. I’m the same, I can think through all sorts of aspects of a given thing and describe them but not from a visual representation that I have access to.
This is fascinating and so relatable. I will find that book on horses that you've shared. Also, my eldest who is 16 and an incredible artist, has hyperphantasia. He describes spending time in the worlds of his imagination and translates them into handbound books with maps and characters, &c.
"I have both a great memory for certain types of knowledge and a terrible memory for experiences. Many of my experiences are just missing for me — blank like trying to see the apple."
Wow. Me too!
And as for dreams, I never knew. But recently I had a dream — almost an answer to these questions — where the dust was so distinct in the sunlight I wanted to photograph it. (in the dream)
I've been keeping a journal for most of my life. I often wonder how this impacts me in general, and now especially with aphantasia. Like at some point I needed to document in words because experiences never stuck.
The good thing about aphantasia is you'll never have a book ruined by the movie, at least not when it comes to your idea of how the characters look!
Ha - Yes this is true. Before I knew this was how my brain worked, I would sometimes wonder why it was that I had never really imagined characters in novels as looking any specific way.