Like a Bat

What is it like to be something that experiences the world in a totally different way than me? Bats have a sense that humans do not have. While their sense of sight is very limited, they perceive their environment through ultrasonic waves that they emit themselves. This enables them to detect their environment with astonishing accuracy and thus navigate. Science can develop accurate models to explain the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon, but we will never know what it is like to be a bat receiving an ultrasonic signal. At least that's what Thomas Nagel argues in his essay "What it is like to be a bat". At least as far as the signal is concerned, there is, in my opinion, a similarity to flash photography. In flash photography, you usually send out pure white light and capture it again. In between, the light has hit objects and changed its wavelength and intensity. Bats work in a very similar way to ultrasound. My video was created on the basis of these considerations.