# Vision [Wikipedia Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_perception) ( Antiquity – present ) ## Description Vision treated not as a timeless physiological given but as a historically and technologically constructed way of seeing — from classical and 19th-century optics and the modern "observer" (Crary) through entoptic, hallucinatory, and "closed-eye" vision, to avant-garde film's recurring claim that vision itself, not narrative, is cinema's proper subject and material (Brakhage, Wees). A cross-cutting umbrella for the vault's several more specific vision-adjacent pages — [[Flicker and Entoptics]], [[Phenomenology]], and [[Cinematic Apparatus]] — rather than a replacement for any of them. ## Key Tags #vision #optics #film-theory ## Essential Works - [[Metaphors on Vision]] - Brakhage's manifesto for an "untutored eye" prior to language and inherited perspectival convention - [[Light Moving in Time]] - Wees's study arguing avant-garde film treats vision itself, "purely optical" and "purely visual situations," as its central subject - Crary, Jonathan. *Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century*. MIT Press, 1990. - traces the "observer" as a historically produced, embodied subject replacing the classical Cartesian eye ## Details %% A more comprehensive personal reflection and collection of relevant notes, details, references, links %% ### Key Theorists - [[Jonathan Crary]] - historicizes vision as a produced technique rather than a timeless given (*Techniques of the Observer*); quoted in [[Illusions in Motion]] on "a perceptual transformation... epitomized by symptomatic optical instruments" - [[Akira Mizuta Lippit]] - theorizes the visual regimes and "shadow optics" opened by atomic and X-ray imaging - [[William C. Wees]] - argues avant-garde film makes vision itself, not representation or narrative, its central material - Hermann von Helmholtz - foundational physiological-optics research underlying the modern science of vision - [[Laura U. Marks]] - reworks vision as potentially haptic and tactile, an embodied alternative to the disembodied "optical" spectator ### Movements and styles * [[Op Art]] * [[Lumia]] ### Exemplary Practitioners - [[Stan Brakhage]] - pursues an "untutored eye" prior to naming and inherited perspectival convention across his body of work; see [[Metaphors on Vision]] - [[Anthony McCall]] - makes the physical, embodied act of seeing light itself the film's subject ### Related Concepts - [[Flicker and Entoptics]] - entoptic and flicker-induced hallucinatory vision as one specific mode within this broader concept - [[Phenomenology]] - phenomenology's account of embodied perception underlies much of this concept's critical vocabulary - [[Cinematic Apparatus]] - theorizes how cinema's technical apparatus produces and positions the viewing subject's vision - [[Media Archaeology]] - shares a history of optical instruments and projection technologies that condition and construct vision - [[Op Art]] - a movement that makes the physiological mechanics of vision itself its explicit subject and material ### Creative and Technical Practices %% none yet %% ### Associated Movements or Institutions %% none yet %% ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography Crary, Jonathan. *Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century*. MIT Press, 1990. Crary, Jonathan. *Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture*. MIT Press, 1999. Lippit, Akira Mizuta. *Atomic Light (Shadow Optics)*. 1st ed. University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Helmholtz, Hermann von. *Helmholtz's Treatise on Physiological Optics*. Optical Society of America, 1925. ### Secondary Sources Bibliography Balsom, Erika. "VISION QUEST: Erika Balsom on Stan Brakhage's *Metaphors on Vision*." *Artforum International* 56, no. 5 (2018): 43. Spencer, Justina. *Peeping in, Peering out: Monocularity and Early Modern Vision*. 2014. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses. [https://www.proquest.com/docview/1937387057?pq-origsite=primo](https://www.proquest.com/docview/1937387057?pq-origsite=primo). Väliaho, Pasi. *Projecting Spirits: Speculation, Providence, and Early Modern Optical Media*. 1st ed. Stanford University Press, 2022. [https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503631946](https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503631946). Petitot, Jean. *Elements of Neurogeometry: Functional Architectures of Vision*. Lecture Notes in Morphogenesis. Springer International Publishing, 2017. [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65591-8](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65591-8). Araújo, António. *Anamorphosis: Optical Games with Perspective's Playful Parent*. 2017. [https://sapientia.ualg.pt/entities/publication/decfdba8-58b6-40fb-9d0d-6dbfd455b581](https://sapientia.ualg.pt/entities/publication/decfdba8-58b6-40fb-9d0d-6dbfd455b581).