Posted on 04/02/2008 10:57:55 AM PDT by Stoat
See the amazing picture by an autistic artist who drew London from memory after a single helicopter trip
Stephen Wiltshire, who was diagnosed with autism at the age of three, memorised the appearance and position of hundreds of London's buildings in exact scale during a helicopter ride along the Thames.
Over the next five days, the 33-year-old drew the seven-square mile panorama, including landmarks such as the Swiss Re tower, and Canary Wharf, on a 13ft curving canvas.
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Gifted: Stephen Wiltshire, who is autistic, developed language skills by picking up words related to his twin obsessions - drawing and buildings
He did not refer to notes, preliminary sketches or photographs and his drawing includes the precise number of skyscraper floors.
Mr Wiltshire, who was set the challenge by Channel Five for its documentary, Extraordinary People: The Human Camera, said he was 'thrilled' with the result.
The artist, who received an MBE for his services to art in 2006, has a gallery in Pall Mall.
The challenge marks another chapter in his remarkable life, 30 years after being diagnosed as autistic.
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Wiltshire was set the challenge by Channel Five for its documentary
As a child, he was unable to speak and threw tantrums in frustration at not being able to make himself understood.
His family say that the only thing that seemed to comfort him was being given a pencil and paper.
Aged six, he shocked a family friend by drawing an accurate sketch of the facade of the department store Selfridges in a style well beyond his years.
At eight he sold his first drawing, of Salisbury Cathedral, which motivated him to communicate with others and gave him the ability to lead an independent life.
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Human camera: Stephen sketches the capital in one of the Millennium Wheel's pods. His drawings now sell for thousands
Graphic detail: A close-up of the canvas, which shows Canary Wharf and surrounding buildings. The drawing has been made exactly to scale
Teachers at Queensmill, a school in Fulham for special needs children, first got him to speak by taking away his materials, forcing him to shout 'Paper!'.
He developed language skills by picking up words related to his twin obsessions - drawing and buildings.
Prof Simon Baron-Cohen, director of Cambridge University's Autism Research Centre, said: 'We can speculate as to why Stephen chose buildings as his first topic of drawing in that buildings stay the same every time you look at them.
'People with autism like sameness, they like repetition, they like patterns in the environment.'
Amazing.
Curious how something like autism unlocks such savant capability. Makes you wonder if things like this could be somehow unlocked for everyone.
“Makes you wonder if things like this could be somehow unlocked for everyone.”
...We can then cure the liberalism brain disroder. Just unlock the common sense part of the brain anyway.
WOW!!
The pertinent question is whether “unlocking” that ability would necessarily suppress “normalicy”. From what I’ve gleaned, it’s a matter of different perceptual filtering: our senses produce an enormous amount of information, from which a fantastically larger range of associations can be made ... but to not be overwhelmed by the sheer gargantuan totality of it all, we filter out most of the information, and the nature of the filtering leads to behavior which can be “normal” or dramatically & impressively abnormal.
Put another way: if you perceived the world in as much crystal-clear, totally memorable detail as he does, you’d probably have trouble carrying on a normal conversation.
Most impressive.
OMG!!! What a FABULOUS TALENT GOD GAVE HIM!
Check out this pianist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kwjDLHX92w
Blind since birth, and can’t tell his right from his left, and has trouble counting to ten.
I think they said he “sees” musical notes like we see colors.
Autism holds the key to producing human genius. There should be a crash program to understand its causes and perceptual amplifications.
That’s amazing. I will show this to my daughter later.
pretty impressive.
Misplaced your TV Guide, huh?
;-)
Had a distant cousin who lived across the road in the country. No language at all, just grunts, whines, cries and laughs. He came over one day and stood looking at our huge old farmhouse for about 15 mintues. His dad came back the next day with a pencil drawing of our house to scale, with every piece of wood siding exact in number. We’re talking a huge house with double bay windows,lots of fancy work. It was amazing! He also came over and looked at dad’s old threshing machine rusting in the pasture and came back with a scale drawing with every nut and bolt in place.
EXTREMELY TALENTED!
He was probably in his sixties when I was a teenager at home.
The Stephen Wiltshire Gallery - Drawings, paintings and prints
Stephen Wiltshire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
YouTube - Stephen Wiltshire The Human Camera
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kwjDLHX92w
Blind since birth, and can’t tell his right from his left, and has trouble counting to ten.
I think they said he “sees” musical notes like we see colors.
A fascinating and informative video, thanks very much for posting.
It's particularly interesting, in my view, to note that Derek's blindness as well as his brain damage were due to the hospital not having the proper equipment at the time of his premature birth and during his formative weeks ....another real-world example of Socialized medicine, something that a Hillary! or a Hussein-Obama Presidency would usher in.
You have a good point here but I wouldn't place too much hope in it. Many of these people can't even dress themselves or talk. Examinations of their brains show profound irregularities, even deformaties. It seems the autistic brain concentrates its attention to some particular activity to the exclusion of everthing else. I wouldn't want any child to be born with this condition.
Do you mean that I could be smart and just don’t know it?
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