distortion

I listened to a RadioLab episode today (among my favorite things to do while I work) about self deception.  In one study it was found that when shown a series of computer manipulated images of ourselves where the images diverge toward increasingly ugly or increasingly beautiful, (I am uncertain exactly what perimeters were used to determine beauty and ugliness) people consistently think the image that is 20% better looking than their actual photo is the original.  In other words, we see ourselves as more beautiful than we are.  This is a delicious piece of information for me.  It gets me thinking about the work of the artist, absorbing and recording images, then filtering them back out through their own peculiar and of course distorted mental, visual, and tactile pathways.  I think distortion is what makes art intriguing.  In that rather small space between how I imagine or see something, and how you imagine or see it, there are infinite unanswered questions.