a life of photographs

I was incredibly engaged while reading the Sacks story about Stereovision. Sacks tells the story of a woman named Sue who was born cross eyed. After three surgeries she was able to gain control over the direction of her eyes, but still the two retinas did not create a stereoscopic vision of the world. Instead, Sue saw the world flat and without space. Although, as explained by Sacks, and Livingstone as well, this lack does expand one’s peripheral vision, it also makes everything seem flat. When I try picturing it I imagine seeing the world in front of me as almost a photograph I am always unable to enter. Sue saw the world in this way, although she was still able to intellectually understand what she was missing from her vision. Through this understanding she was still able to interact in the 3D world in a way that wasn’t noticeable to others and manage motor skills.
Towards the end of the article Sue explains how once she was learned to exercise her eyes to work as two separate retinas while still working together. She describes seeing snow for the first time in 3D, how she saw every snow flake individually and wrote “. In the past, the snow would have appeared to fall in a flat sheet in one plane slightly in front of me. I would have felt like I was looking in on the snowfall. But now, I felt myself within the snowfall, among the snowflakes.” It seems so disturbing and upsetting; the inability to penetrate the scenery of your own life. I am curious to know how stereovision could potentially effect people in their perceptions of self, others and social interaction. When I imagine myself in Sue’s beginning position I immediately feel removed from the world and my surroundings. Sometimes when I have a moment of anxiety I take a moment to feel/observe myself in my surroundings with the hopes of grounding myself. I wonder how this would look different to a person with monocular vision… I would imagine that there is almost a part of you that always feels a bit disconnected from scenery or persons. Also, if I saw the world monocularly, I would find it odd to touch things. How would it be to hold someone’s hand? If there hand looks flat, how would it feel to cup it within yours? Furthermore, I am curious about how motor skills are affected when one’s vision is unable to properly determine the depth of an object. When we reach for an object our brain identifies the object and then sends messages from our brain to our hand to determine how to sufficiently pick-up the object. For a person who is unable to see the object in 3D, I would imagine this is quite challenging.
Last night my grandfather and I went to see an awful movie in 3D. Having just read Sack’s article on “Stereo Sue” I began paying close attention to the experience of watching a 3D film versus a more typical flat version. It was interesting to notice that when fast paced action happened while wearing the glasses I felt it much more challenging to take in all the information on the screen. I had to keep my eyes focused in a singular position for a moment to gain a cohesive image, and then would spend a bit of time getting grounded in another segment. Ultimately, I felt that I missed a lot. It is almost like an exaggerated version of how we do not have as great peripheral vision as Sue did while seeing the world flat. My grandfather complained that he couldn’t see anything while having the glasses on, and found it much easier to see images with the glasses off for the entirety of the film.