Find the Cat

 

There is one person who "knows" where the cat is in this composite-image:  The artist-photographer who captured all the original images in their camera and posted them online.

 

There is another person who "believes" they know where the cat is:  The collage-artist who selected and then composed/choreographed the conglomerate of photographs into a single unique image.

 

All of you, the viewers, have "free will" to decide from the following options:

 

        1.  Play the game.  Run your eyes over the image for as long or short a duration as you desire.

                a.  Identify what you "believe" is the cat.

                        i - Think, write in an email or in the comments, or say aloud:

                                "I believe I found the cat..."

                                "I know I found the cat..."

                        ii - Do nothing further (relating to the image).

                b.  Fail to identify the cat's location.

                        i - Think, write, or say:

                                "I failed to find the cat..."

                                "There is no cat to find, this is a trick, or I give up..."

        2.  Don't play the game.  Don't scan the pixels on your screen.

                a.  Return at a later date and choose a different option.

                b.  Don't return at a later time.

 

That is it.  That is the sum of everyone's "free will" relative to this art-tickle.

 

Does an image of a cat exist in Laundromat Pantograph?  There's a person named Erwin who designed a kinda-similar thought experiment in-which they proposed that the answer can not ever be "maybe."  Erwin's thought experiment allegedly proves the answer is both yes and no (at the same time).  A person is required to play the game.  Only-then, after a person discovers the answer, does the answer exist.

For most people, the low-hanging fruit of confusion causes them to posit the following question:

Are you (and/or Erwin) proposing that some of the pixels in this image, which form the believed/known "cat" identifier, are both visible and invisible until someone scans the image with their eyeballs?

 

No.  Instead of thinking about proving if a cat was photographed (and subsequently included in this montage) without spending any time and effort to look - understand that the existence of a cat's image requires a eyeball-brain-communication to interpret the pixels and label those pixels "cat."  Just like—prior to reading that this artwork might contain a cat—you had no reason to look for one.

Everything exists because you think.  That doesn't mean everything stops existing when you die, there are countless more eyeball-brain-communication-interpretation organisms who will carry-on in your stead.

 

dig deeper:

Austin Granger's Photographs

 

There's Reasons This Wasn't Used