Jess Johnson

Umwelt

Simon Ward, Jess Johnson

In the film "The Truman Show", Truman lives in a world completely constructed around him by an intrepid television producer. At one point an interviewer asks the producer "Why do you think Truman has never come close to discovering the true nature of his world?" The producer replies "We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented." "Umwelt" denotes an organism’s unique sensory world. In a self-centred world, organisms experience the same ecosystem in completely different ways according to what they can perceive. A blind and deaf worm experiences the world via vibrations in the earth. And presumably, each organism assumes its small sensorium to be the entire objective reality. How do we find our way beyond the limits of what we can sense?