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Media Files
Abstract
The scale and absolute dimensions of art can be traced historically to technological and social determinants, but the limitations of seeing are largely shaped by biological factors regulating the time domain of visual events. If we tend to think of non-cinematic images only in terms of an art of space, but not of time, we omit cognizance of biological reality. Vision operates effectively only in a large series of temporal frames, and if the eyes and head are immobilized we quickly can detect little more than luminance. We examine our world through saccadic eye movements and enduring blinks, and have only succeeded in overcoming the blurring effect of after-images and the disappearance of stabilized images through the development of "shutter" devices that have enabled visualization of the unseen. Technological advances in controlling the duration of image exposure on the retina and in the production of photosensitive emulsions and spatially distributed digital detector devices, has reshaped the degrees of freedom accessible for imaginative expression and consequently has become a key determinant of the course of modern art history. This presentation will address the basic biology of multiple frame imaging, examine the impact of early measurements of fast physiological processes (e.g. Helmholtz and Marey), and how the scientific world interacted with key developments in the birth of photography (e.g. Daguerre and Fox Talbot). The early photographic artists (e.g. Muybridge and the Lumieres) and the inventive spirit of technology (e.g. Edison, the Skladanowskys, Edgerton and the digital revolution) have sequentially refashioned how humans have learned to examine and display their visual world.
Artists / Authors
- Lawrence Kruger, Forschungsprofessur für Neurobiologie, School of Medicine des UCLA Medical Centers, Los Angeles
Date(s)
- May 17, 2002
Organizer
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles und Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
Location
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin, Germany
Submission
, May 22, 2003
Category
- Lecture
Keywords
- Topics:
- perception
Additions to Keyword List
- Wahrnehmungsphysiologie