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determined, to a greater or lesser extent, by

our presenting needs. When our in-built

survival mechanisms are doing the job they

were meant to do, our senses will scan the

presenting world-view for elements that will

satisfy our subjective needs at that particular

moment. These needs may be physical or

emotional; if we’re walking in the high street

and our bladder is full, we’ll ignore the shops,

the restaurants, the traffic and the passers-by

and scan the totality of the presenting visual

field for the presence of an image of a public

toilet. Once found, we make a bee-line toward

it. Need satisfied, problem solved. Or, in a

crowded room, we listen to the babel of voices

around us to identify the particular sound of

the voice of a loved one. It’s an experienced

fact, then, that we isolate that which is

personally meaningful – that is, the

foreground – from the irrelevant background

from which it is drawn. You or I, in a given place

at a given time, facing in the same direction