I've long been fascinated by the experience of having one's eyes opened for the first time and seeing or somehow perceiving the world in a new way -- and it sounds like you are too. You called this experience a "heightened visual acuity," I believe. Perhaps my background in psychology can shed some new light onto this wonderful phenomenon.
Our brains are predicting the future constantly. They are finely tuned machines to take in input and guess as to what might happen soon -- we've evolved this way so that we don't get eaten, so we can successfully interact with each other, and so we don't get lost in the world. But there's far more information in the world than a mere brain can process, so it takes shortcuts in the interest of efficiency. One type of shortcut is the reliance on a "schema". A schema is a set of information that we know about something. This is vague, so I'll use a concrete example. When we drive down a road every day and pass a large oak tree, our brains are processing huge amounts of data to help us not crash the car. And anything seen as non-essential to survival in that moment takes a back seat in our attention, and we fill in the blanks with a schema. So, we pay lots of attention to the road, the car in front, our own car, our movement etc., and the general world around us gets summed up in as little information as possible so that we don't have to waste cognition interpreting it. As a result, we'll throw a passing glance at the oak tree, then we'll look at the road and focus on driving. Instead of looking back at the tree later, we'll fill it in with a schema, which is a vague memory composite of all times we've seen trees by the road.
What does this mean? That we rarely ever actually see what's around us.
How does it pertain to "heightened visual acuity"? You're rewriting peoples' schemas.
When you light a tree with a giant swirl, all of a sudden the schema doesn't fit perception. The brian has never encountered a "tree by the road" that looked like this. So, for the first time in a long time, we're actually seeing the tree instead of a memory of the tree.
What happens the next time you see the tree? Your brain doesn't know what to expect -- even if the tree no longer has a giant swirl on it, your brain knows that the schema it used before is invalid in predicting the world. As a result, your brain pays more attention to the tree than ever before, because it's trying to re-encode a valid schema for it (given that the old one was proved invalid). This can feel like you are seeing it better, experiencing it more fully, or seeing it with new eyes. Your actual visual acuity isn't increasing at all -- you have a finite acuity that decreases with age -- but the subjective experience of perceiving has been changed when the schema was abused.
This is one way to look at your new nooks and crannies project too. You're showing people that their schemas are wrong -- that the cracks in between buildings are actually interesting because they're brighter than the facades! The schemas get thrown out or adjusted, and the next time the people see the buildings, even if they're unlit, they'll notice the nooks and crannies because they'll have a new schema that says "those bit are interesting too".
There are a bunch of psychological processes occurring here, but I think the notion of schemas is particularly relevant. I am an impishly curious person, and have found in psychology many answers to life's most puzzling questions, and that is why I love it so. Some people hate knowing the answers, and prefer to exist in a state of confused appreciation -- I find that an equally valid ideal to ascribe to! It just doesn't work for me. I want to know why.
One last note is that despite all I know about psychology, I find it difficult to work from there up to a piece that is fascinating and compelling. I can readily use psych to deconstruct and explain something I do or see, but it seems to be a one way road -- i can't do or see something based on what I know it will achieve. I'm not sure this is a bad thing -- because I'm not sure that I'd be compelled by a piece that I'd invented purely out of psychological processes to trigger the exact response I desired. There's something wonderful about a little bit of mystery that is crucial to art. So, I hope this explanation hasn't ruined the wonder of your nooks and crannies project for you, but rather opened your eyes to a wholly different way of conceptualizing it!
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