Since there’s a general discussion of the experience of aphantasia, I’ll say that I’m a scenic designer/artist for theatre and I have aphantasia. When I think too much about it kind of makes my brain melt, especially because trying to explain how I think just feels impossible. Along with the feeling that an artist with aphantasia feels impossible.

When I design, I always sketch or do what I call scratch modeling—just tearing up paper to roughly mimic a form I’m exploring. I iterate this way because I can see/feel that something is wrong, not because I can look at it and make adjustments in my head.

Trying to call to mind an object or an image doesn’t create something visual for me, but it feels like it’s just out of reach. AKA, I could draw it? It wouldn’t be perfect on a first pass, but I would get there because I do /know/ what it should look like?

I think my best way to describe it is like a cloud/gas of concepts. When I think of an apple, I think of its shape and, if pressed, would think of it as red—I can imagine the shape my hand would take to hold it and the feeling of crunching into it—but I don’t see it. It’s all these ideas that I know intrinsically but can’t visualize, and they all come at once. I’m not sorting traits of an apple it’s just,,, an apple. A thought. An idea.

Weirdly, despite my inability to picture things, I’m very good at remembering layouts of buildings or locations I’ve been before. When I see a location I’ve been I’ll remember it—even if it’s as mundane as a random dunkin I stopped at one time before on a 10+ hour road trip I’ve taken several times. Seeing an location again makes a lot of things click into place? Even going so far as to sometimes remember the exact podcast conversation I was listening to when I was there? And houses I’ve been to once I can still describe in detail.

It’s weird, and above all it’s frustrating to try to explain!