Serendipity

After much consideration and several approaches, I decided to ask a stranger to choose a book for me from a bookshelf where others freely make their books available to me. There was a brief moment of uncertainty, then she confidently took out a book and handed it over to me.
I opened the book and found a bookmark in it that marked a certain page. To the right of the bookmark was the word “distance”. I knew immediately: that is my word.

I took first pictures to get visually closer to the meaning and reflected on the meaning and context of “distance”. In the following I created a mind map.

Mindmap

Distance comes from the Latin “distare”, which means to stand out, to be distant, to be distant. By distance we understand distance today, as a linear distance, distance between the eye point and the image plane in a central perspective, distance between two objects, as well as social distance. This can also be caused, for example, by different languages and differences in cultural codes of conduct.

Distance is always associated with time, and this creates speed. Although this can be measured, it can be perceived very differently. Sometimes time flies by, sometimes it drags on like chewing gum.

On the one hand, I’m interested in the aspect of social distance, on the other, the different perception of time in relation to distance.

These are questions that concern me primarily:

What does distance feel like? And how can it be overcome? In my experiments I try to get closer to these questions.