Take a look into the grid. Do you think you see what others see?


We asked friends to look at this wall in a soundproof room and draw what they saw.
We then digitized and compiled their drawings to look at their shared structure and individuals' idiosyncracies. The structure in their sight is clearly imprinted with the grid's geometry, but composed of shapes not inherent to it -- forms that change with time, often moving and sometimes in colour. Despite the grid's loose constraints, the commonalities are striking -- drawers tell us it's annoying that the six-pointed star doesn't quite meet in the middle -- but not monolithic. We wonder: could the regularities in everyday visual experience explain what we see in the grid? Could we model, down to individuals, how visual content will be rendered? Do similar perceptual-cognitive processes support abstract symbolic forms created throughout time?


As a first look through the drawings, we grouped them into categories based on form. You can view all the drawings, including compilations by form or author, below.
Interactive gallery
Static form compilations

This is the first in a series of experimental phenomenology projects.
Thank you to Andrea van Doorn and Jan Koenderink for useful discussion.