Student 39

This book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, was gifted to me in the first grade and was one of the first long-form books I had ever read. Before this book, the stories I read all had large, colorful drawings that helped me visualize the stories in the book. However, this book was a drastic change in how much information was given to me through pictures, offering only a few, tiny pictures.

This book is particularly interesting for this exhibition because it forced me to come up with my own information. While many other books had clear depictions of the character, this book’s tiny drawing of Harry Potter did not fully get processed by my mind. I, therefore, used imagination in order to create my one depiction of Harry Potter, which was vastly different from that of other people. This was not a conscious choice made by me but whenever I imagined Harry Potter, I saw a boy of my race and age. Even when the book itself contradicted my image of Harry Potter, I still saw him in this way, because I was already connected to this version of Harry Potter

This book enriches this exhibition because it shows that imagination can warp the information we have in order to be seen in the way we want it to be seen. My younger self desired to see a boy like him as the main character of a famous series so that is what he saw. Additionally, this book shows that imagination can even override the concrete information that we have. This shows that imagination can sometimes be used as a replacement for knowledge, rather than just as an aiding tool.

The second object is my 6th-grade yearbook with several pictures of me with a group of boys. For many years, I used it to remind myself of my childhood friends and my relationship with them when we were younger. However, this picture is one of the only pictures I have of them, and as time goes by I become more and more reliant on it in order to remember what they were like.

That said, this picture does not give me all the information about my childhood friends, so I am forced to use my imagination in order to create the full picture. For many years, I saw these kids as my closest friends at the time, but upon finding more pictures from that time, I finally remember that I spent more time with another group of friends. However, due to my constant exposure to this yearbook, I subconsciously attributed them as my closest friends, when in reality the yearbook only showed a few instances of me with them.

This object is included in this exhibition because it shows how imagination can create a skewed view of reality, based on limited knowledge. Not having the full picture made me extrapolate all my information from one singular source, using my imagination to do so. This is similar to how many people use the information they have in order to imagine more knowledge, assuming that this imagined information will simply fill the cracks of their knowledge when in reality, the use of imagination is warping it.

This pair of glasses was the pair that I wore this past year. This pair of glasses was unique because it was the first time I stopped wearing my glasses. For around 6 months, I did not see peoples’ faces clearly because I was not wearing my glasses frequently and therefore used my imagination in order to create details about their faces. In this way, my glasses drastically changed my relationship with imagination and helped me understand its role in producing knowledge about the world.

Despite knowing that I wouldn’t be able to truly see the small details in the world around me, I made the decision to stop wearing my glasses because I did not believe that I would be losing much value because of it. I also enjoyed not having to worry as much about my own personal appearances, since I was able to use my imagination to ignore the things that I could not with clear vision. However, once I started wearing them again, I realized just how different people and even I looked when I could see clearly.

This shows how people can purposely choose to rely on their imagination to supplement their knowledge, even when they know that it may not be accurate. This is tied to the perceived amount of value gained from seeing information as it is, rather than imagining it. It also shows how imagination can be used as a coping mechanism from reality. Therefore, this object of imagination has a role in aiding people from avoiding knowledge about things that they do not care about or want to think about.