#macropsia

also known as Todd's syndrome or dysmetropsia it is a neuropsychological condition that distorts visual perceptions. such as micropsia (objects appearing small), macropsia (objects appearing large), pelopsia (objects appearing to be closer than they are), or teleopsia (objects appearing to be further away than they are)

A person with alice in wonderland syndrome might also lose a sense of time similar to lack of spatial perspective. Time might appear to pass more slowly than usual as the lack of time and space perspective leads to a disorder sense of the passing of time.

those effected by alice in wonderland syndrome can also experience disturbances in sound perception. noises could be amplified or distorted.

(shrinking anon) like it hadn’t happened in a while and last night I was looking at my fiancé’s hand and thinking wow his hand is so much bigger than mine and that triggered it and I started panicking and feeling like the room was growing and I was shrinking and he was so HUGE. It fades if I focus on something else like a TV or book or something like that. Idk if I should mention this to my psychiatrist or not since it doesn’t really happen anymore but it’s so distressing when it does.

Hey Anon,

It’s always a good idea to let our psychiatrist know what we’re experiencing. Although it may not seem like a big important thing to mention, the fact that you said that it’s distressing is enough to warrant letting them know. If anything, it’ll give your psychiatrist a fuller picture of what you’re going through and how to help. It doesn’t seem like you have anything to lose from sharing. Letting your fiancee know (if he doesn’t already) might also be helpful because he can know in advance what is happening and what you need from him at that moment.

What  you experienced is a phenomenon called macropsia ie. technical term for objects in the visual field appearing larger than normal causing the person to feel smaller. It could be due to a whole range of reasons, which is why I highly recommend that you let your treatment team know. It’s not uncommon and they can provide you with the best insight on what it is and how to deal with it. I can imagine that it’s really scary and anxiety-inducing when it happens; sharing your experience the people entrusted with your care is the first step to regaining control and overcoming this.

For the module ART404, I wanted to look at the concept of a metaphor through an environmental perspective, with the aim of the making the viewer feel small; for this, I intended to create an immersive experience by making a large-scale piece looking at the individuals view. This was a continuation from ART403, which was a site specific work responding to sketches produced in Berlin through the eyes of a tourist, to contrast this I wanted to make a piece of art that responded to a city I was more familiar with, so I focused my attention on Plymouth.

As I was looking at a city, I wanted to find a site with interesting architecture. I found the Royal William yard with architecture similar to neoclassical and industrial Victorian I thought could be an interesting site to focus my investigation on. I began this project in a similar way to ART403 by sketching on site at the Royal William yard and then moving to larger scale drawings. Many of my practises ranged from A3 to A1 where I began to experiment with mediums and style which I’d found through my research.

I researched different ways of making the viewer feel small, I wanted to alter the way people looked at buildings and shift their perspective; I discovered a neurological condition called Macropsia, which affects human visual perspective where the sufferer perceives objects to be larger than they actually are. I also looked into how children see things. Children tend to look up, in order to discover new things, whereas adults are more absorbed in their daily activities and look at buildings in a more functional manner; in order to portray this I used two main mediums each representing a stage in life. I used watercolour the more fluid medium for displaying the way children see. Using  three main colours blue and yellow and the combination of both to make green, as these colours are the most commonly used in children’s drawings for depicting the world around them; blue for the sky, yellow for the sun, and green for grass, which I used in order to add tone to the building. I also wanted to use bright colours, as children’s drawings are often free of shadows. I then overlaid black fine line pen a medium with more definite lines to introduce a darker colour to contrast the bright paint; representing the adult’s perspective; I started with more detail at the bottom, which gradually became looser the higher the building went. While making the large-scale final piece however it appeared that using fine line pen to add shadow would be impractical to cover such a large area, so I overlaid with charcoal to add shadow and added chalk pastels to highlight the colour.

In order to better interact with the space and bring the audience into the artwork; I looked at ways to bring the artwork into the real world. I was inspired by children in Denmark who use chalk to draw on the pavements and streets as a form of play; once the primary artwork was completed I used chalk to extend the parameters of the artwork out into the space onto the floor.

For this project, I looked at Do Ho Suh for his large to scale artworks primarily of buildings using nylon stretched over a metal frame. His work reflects the way an audience views space in a studio environment, as his work is the outline with highly detailed aspects I put this into practise using fine line pen, however as there was no tone or spatial elements the drawing looked flat and two dimensional. I then began to look specifically at artists who use fine line pen and ink as their primary medium, for their stylistic methods of applying the ink, for this, I looked at Ch’ng Kiah Kiean who I looked at in ART403 and Ian Murphy.

As I was looking to into other mediums I looked at Ghaith Abdul Ahad a journalist and artist, who paints scenes from countries at war using watercolour and fine line pen to add detail; this was inspirational in using watercolour paint and for documenting the site. Later in the project, I looked at john leech for a looser method of using watercolour paint also when looking at his use of a colour scheme I noticed was similar to mine, so was influential with blending and other ways of creating depth.

In this project, I experimented with creating a physical barrier between the two points of view, by using tracing paper to draw the details with pen and overlaying onto the watercolour painting. However, this method dulled the colour of the paint and made the pen more prominent which I felt implied that the adult perspective was dominant. My project was based around making an adult look at things a different way I thought this would invalidate my point, and decided instead to decrease the amount of detail of the fine line pen in the distance making to separate the different perspectives.