Sitting here on Alaskan Airlines flight 97 bound for Anchorage, I can’t resist but be drawn to the colored patches of farmland passing underneath. I realize that my upcoming trip will be an exercise in vision. I will be using my eyes to visually devour glacier vistas, and then to position my camera to sear those images into digital posterity. In the near future, when I am back in my featureless cubicle, these images will be a trigger for the vast network of neurons that preserve my visual memory.

This anticipation of my future desire to view the photos I capture begs the question: why do we enjoy vast open visuals? Why are we attracted to visual scenes with dimensions of depth and breadth?

I am no expert on visual aesthetics, and am without access to google onboard my flight. In the spirit of speculation however, let me postulate a few theories.

The ‘To Stay Alive’ Theory

Perhaps our visual greediness for space hearkens back to our natural desire for freedom and movement. Accordingly with our impulse to survive, we are repulsed by claustrophobic environments, and hence seek the opposite — open space, which is synonymous with freedom of movement if a predator were to approach. Many grazing animals have eyes on the sides of the head, thus to provide >180 degree vision so to easily spot predators. Thus, their depth perception is constructed from only monocular cues (shadow, light reflections, etc.). After all, who cares if a tiger is 10 meters or 12 meters away? — You Run.

Predators, on the other hand, have forward-facing eyes that provide higher fidelity depth perception to accurately gauge pounces (Darwin will not look kindly upon you missing your target by 2 meters and sinking your claws into nothing but dirt). Ironic that the visual system that allows me to enjoy the textures on the earth from 10,000 feet originally evolved to hunt game.

This theory is plausible, albeit an unromantic explanation if a future date, sharing a picnic lunch in the Shenandoah Mountains, were to ask me this same question.

The ‘Change, Yes We Can’ Theory

Or, perhaps I enjoy scenes with great depth, breadth, and feature, simply because I enjoy change, and as a city-dweller, mountainous landscapes are rarely seen. At the micro-level, our retina is literally primed for change. The rods and cones that populate our retina can only detect changes in luminescence. Partly to generate this ‘change’, our eye constantly makes short terse movements, called saccades, about 50 times a second, even when you staring lovestruck at your future soulmate. In fact, some adventurous researchers back in the 70′s injected their eye muscles with a paralyzing toxin to temporarily stop these saccades, such that their eye was staring straight ahead. After a few seconds they saw nothing but gray.

At the macro-level, the neurons in our brains are constantly strengthening new connections with new experiences. Our visual system — how we see, identify, and catalog objects in the world — is constantly changing with every stimuli. Because optimizing our neural connections, and ‘learning’ new visual scenes, is of evolutionary interest, we naturally enjoy something out-of-the-ordinary.

Although like the previous theory, the explanation is eventually sourced in a Darwinian desire for fitness, here the emphasis is on ‘learning’, and not physically staying alive. Slightly less unromantic, but again not altogether appealing.

The ‘Romantic’ Theory

This is what I would say, if prodded in the Shenandoah Mountains. Let’s dispense with talk of neurons and rods, of stimuli and saccades, and get to the heart of it (pun intended). Our imagination is strongest when we can visualize it within what we currently see. I realized this at work one day, when I found it much easier to daydream about soaring through the mountains when I was actually looking at my desktop photo of the Swiss mountains. The cognitive load of having to envision an environment first makes imagining so much harder.

Thus, looking at breathtaking landscapes cues our innate imaginative self to begin fanciful forays into the fantasy world. The breadth and depth of the scene provides the physical space with which our mind plays. When our fovea, the super high-resolution part of our retina, follows the smooth curves of desert sand dunes, we imagine riding camel-back, solitary and solemnly, across those Arabian dunes. When I focus on the wisps of clouds passing below my airplane, I imagine flying among them, feeling the puffiness breeze by my face. It is this engagement of imagination, whether consciously or subconsciously, that heightens the visual scene.

So there you have it, three not neccessarily exclusive theories of varying stripes, all stated with far more certainty than the author believes is due. Any truth to these theories, concoted by the author who is slightly intoxicated by the lower air pressure in an airplane cabin, should not be assumed, but only imagined.

Advertisement