Re:Vision offered viewers an invitation to look beyond human perception - to open their minds and imagine the sensory worlds of other beings, and to consider how their actions, especially through light, might impact the experience others.
Supported by forma lighting | Date 2025 |
Photographer Natalie Martinez, Olivia Ross, Speirs Major | Project Team Benz Roos, Kit Thavaseelan, Tom Hartshorne, Iain Ruxton |
In 1909, zoologist Jakob von Uexküll introduced the concept of the Umwelt—the unique sensory world each species inhabits. For humans, light and vision dominate our reality. For other beings sharing this planet, their Umwelten—their perceptual worlds—are profoundly different.
Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
Re:Vision offered viewers an invitation to look beyond human perception - to open their minds and imagine the sensory worlds of other beings, and to consider how their actions, especially through light, might impact the experience others.
Approach
We cannot replicate another species’ perceptual world. Even within the realm of sight, differences abound—field of view, depth, focus, brightness, and sensitivity to parts of the spectrum vary wildly. Some species see ultraviolet; others perceive discrete colours; and many inhabit visual realms that are entirely inaccessible to us - given the limits of our human visual system.
While we might imagine such brightness, we can scarcely conceive of having eight eyes and 360° vision. So, rather than attempt the impossible, Re:Vision embraced this limitation, choosing to focus on one accessible simple, beautiful, and accessible aspect of vision —colour.
Using research into the vision of selected animals, we shaped a series of immersive environment using only the wavelengths of light they can see.
By placing Ishihara colour charts within the space, we offered tangible insight into how the physiology of each species creates its own distinct visual reality. Traditionally used to diagnose colour blindness in humans, the Ishihara plates feature an array of coloured dots arranged to form numbers or shapes, that become legible – or disappear - depending on the colour spectrum at play. As the spectral conditions shifted to reflect each animal’s profile; so too the appearance of the plates changed, giving insight into just how different their visual lived experience might be.
Food for Thought
Humans are the only species that needs artificial light—a need we created to extend our days. Other creatures adapt to natural cycles, produce their own light, or live without it. Yet our illumination reshapes their lives: birds stay awake longer, insects lose their way, ecosystems shift. As lighting designers, our work begins with human needs—but our installation asked us to look beyond them.
Prof. Nate Morehouse, Vision Ecologist
Re:Vision was a reminder us that perception varies—not only across species, but among humans too. Physiology, age and ability shape what each of us sees. Inclusive, empathetic design begins with awareness that no two beings see the world alike. As philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote, we can never fully know what it is like to be another creature. But through imagination and empathy, we can glimpse the edges of the worlds of others and design with greater care for them.