@kevinakwok @KevinSimler @backus @nayafia My visualization in the original poll started at #1, but I could get it to go towards #6 by persisting. I have a huge capacity for something I call spatialization, which is like visualization but for shapes, not sight. It's not directly sensory...
Spatialization: imagining shapes instead of images
7 tweets · May 2019 · 26 likes · 3 retweets · read on Twitter
@kevinakwok @KevinSimler @backus @nayafia I do this by default when "imagining". So when people say "imagine a dog in a field" then ask what color it is, or what color is the sky, my response is "well I hadn't given it any texture, it was just a 3D shape. I can tell you how big the dog was and how it was posed"
@kevinakwok @KevinSimler @backus @nayafia If I mentally bring up my hometown, the immediate thing that springs to mind is a sense of main street sweeping down past the theatre with my house atop the hill. I feel the whole shape at once in my head. But there's no weather or time of year. It's an architectural blueprint.
@kevinakwok @KevinSimler @backus @nayafia It's very distinct from visualization. The most obvious sense it connects with isn't touch (which would again be more textural) but proprioception. It feels like my knowledge of how my hometown is shaped is similar to reaching over to turn on a familiar lightswitch in the dark.💡
@kevinakwok @KevinSimler @backus @nayafia Propriozation? Hmm 🤔 The next closest sense seems like echolocation, which we think of as being like sight but consider that sound bounces around corners in ways that light totally doesn't, and there's no color or visual-texture (you can tell how soft things are tho probably)
@kevinakwok @KevinSimler @backus @nayafia Would love to hear from others who resonate with this internal sense, particularly if it feels more dominant than visualization for you. If you consider "what is my house like from the outside?" is your simulation more like a sculpture or more like a painting?
@kevinakwok @KevinSimler @backus @nayafia Tagging the aphantasics in the thread to see if any answered "sculpture", because that would be meaningful I suppose! @kevinakwok @backus @KevinSimler
