All our preconceptions are a faint reflection of a deeper reality, which we only know through being taught.
Plato suggests through the flickering shadows on the cave wall in his Allegory of the cave, the world in which we are all situated is the same for everyone but it can be seen and experienced differently by each individual. Each person has many preconceptions about any situation and object they come across because of what they have been taught in life,which they may not be willing to change. This points towards the impossibility of ever being able to construct a real situation or event. As something that is real for one person may not be real for another.
I use the example of a third year Fine Artists work in Leeds College of art. Oliver Sewell.
http://cargocollective.com/oliversewell
The artist uses the theme of absence in his work. And used Plato's theory in his work. The chair is something we all know and are familiar with from birth. However what makes a chair a chair? We know to sit on it, that is its purpose? But when the chair is presented in a different form, on a pole 6ft in the air where it cannot be sat upon, it then becomes something else. When a chair is printed on a page, lying on its back is it still a chair does it become something else? Or is this still a chair? Just because we can sit on it doesn't meant its a chair? When we are presented with anything in a form we are unfamiliar with, it becomes something completely different to us, we see it in a whole new light and see it for something else than what we have always known.
Just like Plato's cave, the cave was their whole life, because that is what was being presented to them, and often we become complacent and do not question what we know as normal. In terms of advertising, when we are presented with something, the thoughtful individual will be skeptical and question what is being presented to them. However when we become complacent with an idea or a concept then we loose freedom of choice and our individuality.
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