"There is a fundamental difference between you and me. I can not fully know your world or your perceptions of the world, and you can not fully know mine. Adelbert Ames Jr. observed: “My awareness of your awareness of perceptual significances cannot include the essential characteristics of your first-person’s point of view.” (Imagining the Present: Context, Content and the role of the critic pg. 119) Perceptions, experiences, and even reactions to those experiences vary from person to person. These perceptual differences both separate and individualize us. Through this separation we create mental barriers through which we organize and structure both our physical and mental experiences. I am interested in the way in which those barriers are created or structured and how that influences an individual’s understanding of our world.

Barriers are the indication of a power structure and the separation that necessarily happens, and therefore a power struggle. In order for one group to possess power that necessarily negates the power of the other. With this in mind, the barrier between the two power sources, whether a physical one or not, becomes the arbitrator between the two parties."