although artist mette colberg was very nervous and it seemed like she cut her TED talk abruptly short (probably due to her nervousness), my interest in her work with glass, especially her filter project, was piqued. she works in glass and has made some blown-glass "lenses" to fit onto a camera, in order to explore the way which glass transforms the objects which we look at through it.
always keen to do something new with my daily photo project, i came home and started looking at the glass around the house in terms of how it might give me a new view on the everyday scenes around me. last night, at the dinner table, i noticed the orangey sunset light coming through the big jar of stones on the windowsill and decided to snap a few photos through the thick glass of the jar. the double layer of thick glass rendered the sunset scene almost watery and wavy, despite the clear skies. the tree branch sticking up outside the window ended up looking a bit like one of the big steampunk electrical pylons that are visible in the distance when you look at it through the much clearer lenses of your own eyes.
it's interesting how glass both clarifies and distorts. if i didn't have my glasses or contact lenses i'd practically need a dog to guide me around, so some glass makes things clearer. but other glass, even the glass on our windows, can distort the things we see, transforming them into something strange and unfamiliar. to do this intentionally is an interesting notion.
this is the sort of thing i hoped TEDx Copenhagen would do for me - inspire me to look at the world around me in new ways. so, although i thought mette become overwhelmed onstage and exited much before she had intended to, she did inspire me to see the world just a bit differently.
more on TEDx Copenhagen as i continue to ponder the experience.
