What's Your Approach To Visualization?

[Ranger]

This is something that's been bothering me about visualization- I strongly suspect our mindset on how to visualize is really limited. I'm curious how you guys approach how to visualize things.

 

Spoiler

While thinking about something else, I realized our ideas for how to improve your visualization ability boil down to "think about it more". Having trouble imagining a chair? Think about what a chair is made of, the shape of the back, and what it tastes like if you're feeling adventurous. This approach isn't dependent on the object you're visualizing, nor does it matter how you break up the visualization task. While this approach is very flexible and useful, it feels very limited, one-wayish. I refuse to believe there's only one way to imagine something.

 

I'm aware of a few other approaches, but there's only one I can think of that really counts. I suppose visualizing by staring at noise could be visualization, but I think that's really imposition/hallucinating things and not really seeing it with your mind's eye. I think the Tetris effect is better because that does create visuals in your mind, but you are dependent on an external source like a videogame to help you and I'm more interested in how people can imagine things on their own.

 

Discord mirror: https://discord.com/channels/431579755037589505/431591425872887828/966135655790940200

Edited April 20, 2022 by Ranger

[arsonistJester]

WHat i dO is while taking a walk, is tO Picture my tulpa Walking next to me. witH this, its kinda like hOw in death nOte ryuk will float beside light and talk to him. its a rather interesting imPosition method i learned from a discord friend a WHile agO.

[Diana]

(I’m on mobile so the font size of this might be a bit off)
 

We don’t start off with thinking about what the object looks like, but rather what it “feels” like. So, using your chair example, I would surf through my concepts of the different types of chairs I know of (lawn chair? Recliner?) until I settle on one then get to work with thinking about it. 

 

Maybe I choose a wooden chair. I get a warm feeling from the concept of a wooden chair, and I start with that feeling. It glows amber and maroon against a dark background. I have memories of wooden chairs at our grandparents’ house, and they’re always a rich red-brown color. I remember the details and texture of the grain, and I add them to my mental picture. Then I pull from a different memory, maybe supper at home, to build other parts of the chair: legs that are angled outwards, carvings in the arms, etcetera. The memories help to incorporate senses other than sight, too. It’s like baking, in that I need all of the ingredients (various pieces of knowledge) to make a cake (chair). 
 

It doesn’t need to be perfect and oftentimes I just stick with the basic concept of “this blurry object represents a chair because I say so” out of laziness (and perhaps from being accustomed to bad eyesight 😂). The most important thing I’ve learned is that if I get frustrated at myself for not being able to visualize something perfectly, then I won’t be able to visualize it at all. 

Edited May 9, 2022 by Diana