CH-1060

Shared Intentionality - January 2025 (final piece)

This description is taken directly from my A-level coursework project sketchbook. This piece includes a 3D 'please-touch' element which I (unfortunately) cannot replicate through your computer screen, but it is important to note before reading the original accompanying text.

[CH-1060] in His Essence is reaching out to you with a hesitant paw. Before you read this, I recommend that you go touch his palm to yours and look in his eyes until you feel something (anything). Shared intentionality, a limiting factor in how people understand and empathise with the cognitive states of others. For example, to describe your feelings about being made to touch my painting, you might say you are 'confused'. The issue is that you can never confirm whether my understanding of confusion is anything like yours — so, what's the point?

He is vulnerable. It is so loud, neon, blaring. He guards himself with his armoured tail, tears welling in his eyes. He is pure essence, purely me, purely [CH-1060], and what's inside is a frightened animal who has been grappling with big words for too long.

Essence, as the product of the autistic mind of [CH-1060] rationalising itself, realizes that he cannot offer you words to explain his existence. Language cannot, and will never, allow him to understand you, nor you him. This is why you are trapped in different worlds. He is two dimensional, and you have a Z-axis; your experiences are so utterly alien. What common ground could you possibly share?
And yet, here he is, tenderly extending an olive branch across dimensions.

The secret is that, even if he were a normal boy like anyone else in your life, you still could not empathise with him by words. In a world that likes to over-privilege the intellectual merits of art, it's easy to forget that one of the most intellectual things you can do is to stop thinking and start feeling.

He can't explain it to you, but he can feel it with you. He'll stick around for as long as you need him. Empathy, not spoken or written, not consciously imagined. Slip into his realm and feel his cold hand seep into yours.

This is how the problem of shared intentionality is overcome; this is how we can communicate, finally, after all these years!

In retrospect, this 'description' serves more as an accompanying text rather than an explanation. It's almost... manic sounding? It's brazenly autistic and I like that. During this time, I was clearly learning about a new and fun alien concept called 'empathy'.