I can see a kind of a framework. If I imagine a wooden cottage in a mountain scenery, what I see is just metadata. I "see" the following:
- The concept of a mountain scenery
- The concept of wooden cottage exists within the said mountain scenery (its location is not defined, though).
Then I can take a look at the mountain scenery. I "see":
- The concept of there being a valley
- The concept of a river flowing in the valley
Next, let's take a look at the valley. I "see" for example:
- There is a concept of another mountain beyond the valley.
- There is a forest growing on the slopes of the valley
If I "look" at the forest, I "see", among others:
- Many individual coniferous trees
Etc.
But, when I'm "looking" at the trees, I never see the actual tree, only a knowledge of "here's a tree". And while "looking" at the forest, I do not see the rest of the scenery, only the tree. I can of course go back to seeing the whole scenery with the cottage in it, but now I only "see" the information "there is a mountain scenery with a valley, and a cottage exists within the scenery". Okay, the valley has appeared in a more stable fashion now that I've taken a look at the image.
So, shortly put, I do get very precise instructions for how to draw the image, but I do not see the image. The only way I can actually see it is to take physical pencils or an image editing program and actually draw a picture according to the instructions. This is also how my memories work. Everything is just metadata. A very thorough metadata that can be used for drawing a very precise replica of what I have seen, but no real visual information.
I can even "paint" the abovementioned scenery more precisely:
- Mountain scenery
- Valley with river
- River: Water is streaming relatively fast
- White "foam" visible on top of waves
- Basically this is something between a river rapid and a wide mountain creek
- River: Slightly bending here and there
- River: Has waves
- River: Going from near the lower right corner, meeting the horizon maybe 30 % from the left side of the image.
- River: Direction of flow not clearly defined
- Valley: A slope exists on the other side of the valley
- Forest on the slope
- Consists of coniferous trees
- Spruces, maybe 70 % of trees
- About as tall as a four-floor building
- The shape is uniform, beautiful
- Branches have needles on them
- Branches have subbranches
- The branches' structure seems to be recursive
- Needles are dark green
- Individual needles are visible
- Branches have subbranches
- Branches have needles on them
- For some reason, there is one squirrel among the spruces.
- The squirrel is brown.
- Its tail is fluffy
- Reaches a bit over the top of its head
- Undefined coniferous trees, remaining 30-ish %.
- Cannot be further observed
- Spruces, maybe 70 % of trees
- Consists of coniferous trees
- Forest on the slope
- River: Water is streaming relatively fast
- Sky
- Covers a bit over a quarter of the upper part of the image
- The sun is setting or rising
- Yellowish or orangeish colour
- Seagulls or similar
- Far away, not visible very clearly
- Gliding, not flapping their wings
- Valley with river
- Cottage
- Wooden
- Made of horizontal planks, possibly logs
- The logs/planks have lines visible in them, as wood does.
- Lines are somewhat winding, calmly
- The logs/planks have lines visible in them, as wood does.
- Made of horizontal planks, possibly logs
- Has a door
- Wooden
- No window
- Planks on door are vertical
- I am apparently unable to see a handle in the door
- Has a window
- Made of four panes
- Pane is transparent
- A sofa visible through the pane.
- A flower vase is standing behind the window
- It is on a windowsill
- The flowers are roses
- Red
- Petals
- Petals are more tall than wide
- Overlapping each other
- Leaves
- Two
- Made of four panes
- Chimney
- Smoke rising from the chimney
- A person is sitting inside the cottage (okay, apparently I can "see" through the walls; hadn't really noticed this earlier that this makes very little sense)
- Male
- Old
- In a rocking chair
- Wooden
(Et cetera. I could "zoom" into different things in this "image" forever, and yet I cannot see it or anything it. Every time I zoom, I just get more information on what's visible – more "instructions for what to draw" if I ever wanted to make the image visible by bringing it physically to existence. I could also probably make the river flow to some specific direction or have the "undefined coniferous trees" defined more precisely, but those are not "visible" in the original image I got when I chose "a wooden cottage in a mountain scenery" as the image I'll be observing, so it means I'm kind of "painting over" the original image if I define them.)