Spatial threshold
Ask: What two places, programs, scales, or conditions does the scene connect or separate?
Best starting lens for architecture and route-like compositions.
Interpretive system
Interpretation Lenses
Six ways to read the same scene without collapsing observable composition, historical source material and personal reaction into one claim.
EXIT →Authored diagram · not documentary media
Progressive interpretation
Observation first; interpretation second.
Write what is visible before naming the mood. Then select the lens that best explains why the scene feels “between.”
Temporal threshold
Ask: What time feels suspended, missing, recently ended, or about to begin?
Useful for after-hours spaces, seasonal transitions, dated interiors and “between events” scenes.
Perceptual deviation
Ask: Which familiar pattern is nearly normal, and what small deviation makes categorization unstable?
Use carefully; research supports a link between configural deviation and uncanniness, not a universal formula for liminality.
Narrative gap
Ask: What happened just before this frame, and what does the viewer expect just beyond it?
Turns a static scene into an implied passage without adding exposition.
Memory / nostalgia
Ask: Which details feel personally or culturally familiar, and which details resist a precise memory?
A subjective lens. Label personal association as interpretation rather than history.
Medium awareness
Ask: Is the scene documentary, staged, illustrated, rendered, generated, or diagrammatic? How does that status change interpretation?
Use this lens to keep provenance visible and avoid presenting synthetic media as found reality.