The visual Umwelt of a mythic, chimerical bird-snake.
Imagine what the world looks like through the eyes of the plumed serpent.
What would happen if you add up the optical sensitivities of a bird that can see into the ultraviolet and a snake that can sense infrared. You could get something as in this animated time-lapse shot in full-spectrum, a peek into more-than-human sight.
The panorama shows the North Sea, dunes and an ominous but beautiful - technological sublime- landscape. These are the blast furnaces of Tata Steel IJmuiden that slowly turn in unsettling false colors. Most people know false color photography from NASA/ESA satellite imagery. It is normally used to detect forest fires, deforestation, floods or monitor crop health and earth’s carbon cycle from spacecraft. Colors are assigned to different wavelengths that human eyes cannot normally see, invoking a sort of extraterrestrial, alien viewpoint.
The winged snake is a powerful mythological creature in human imagination all over the world. From Mesoamerica (Mayan Quetzalcoatl), Middle East (Hebrew Seraph) to China (Tengshe flying dragon). Even Nietzsche’s Zarathustra was accompanied by the inseparable serpent-and-eagle. In one all-encompassing embrace from earth to sky, in search of a liberating view, beyond God’s eye.
Remarkable fact: The first bullsnake (cincuate in Mexico) in Holland was spotted in the dunes of IJmuiden in 2012, not far from Tata Steel, probably released from captivity.
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