Synopses & Reviews
Vision is not just a simple recognition of what passes through our field of sight, the reflection and observation of light and shape. Even before Freud posited dreams as a way of andldquo;seeingandrdquo; even as we sleep, the writings of philosophers, artists, and scientists from Goethe to Candeacute;zanne have argued that to understand vision as a mere mirroring of the outside world is to overlook a more important cognitive act of seeing that is dependent on time.
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Bringing together a renowned international group of contributors, Vision in Motion explores one of the most vexing problems in the study of vision and cognition: To make sense of the sensations we experience when we see something, we must configure many moments into a synchronous image. This volume offers a critical reexamination of seeing that restores a concept of andldquo;vision in motionandrdquo; that avoids reducing the sensations we experience to narrative chronological sequencing. The contributors draw on Hume, Bergson, and Deleuze, among others, to establish a nuanced idea of how we perceive.
Synopsis
Vision is not mere registration of what enters, via the gateway of our eyes, from the outside world into our inner consciousness. Understanding the act of seeing as mirroring the outside world in mental images overlooks its temporal aspect. From Berkeley to Helmholtz, from Goethe to Cand#233;zanne, new discourses based on the physiology of the sense organs lead to new conceptions of vision not only conceived of as a mental process, but as a cognitive activity. Even before Freud interpreted dreams, seeing was conceived of as accompanying our life even when we sleep. However, to understand even the stream of the sensations, we have to configure them in pictures. Since the 19th century, the media reflect about the confrontation of seeing as a diachronic activity and of perception as coded in synchronic images. The contributions to the volume investigate the opposition of the stream of sensations and the configuration of time and#8211; from early illustrations of plants to the avant-gardes, from gesture to cinema, from decapitation to dance, from David Hume to Bergson and Deleuze. The main objective is a critical examination of images rendering vision in motion, without reducing them to the temporality of narrative.
About the Author
Michael F. Zimmerman is an art historian and chair of the Department of Art History at the Catholic University Eichstätt-Inglstadt, Germany. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Art Historian: National Traditions and Institutional Practices and Seurat and the Art Theory of His Time Seurat and the Art Theory of His Time.