A visual experiment: how to make anything look guilty
The strange power of the black rectangle
In my art series ‘Anonymous Animal Haiku Confessions’ - I used a black rectangle to censor animals’ eyes, like this:
During the development process, I censored hundreds of different animals’ eyes. I became enamoured with how instantly guilty that shape can make animals appear. What did they do?!
So in the name of research - I conducted a visual experiment. How far can the black bar’s power be pushed? What meaning can it give to other types of images?
The Experiment
I took royalty-free images of totally innocent people, and superimposed the black bar.
Below are the results, and my reactions:
Conclusion
Whatever that black bar touches - even if it isn’t human - it projects an air of guilt and suspicion. Myself included:
