Optical instruments as images of vision from the Renaissance to the digital image
Prerequisites:
  • Background in the history of visual culture
  • Knowledge of principles of image analysis
Objectives:
  • Taking a first step in the study of image making: optical instruments
  • Relating the history of optical technology to the history of the philosophy of mind
Description: A study of optical instruments and toys and their figurative uses, emphasising their interaction with modes of vision, and relating the perception of still images to the perception of movement

Questions
THE HISTORY OF OPTICAL TRICKS
Optical tricks and perception in history

 

 

 
  • Sources for the study of optical tricks

A study of the museums and websites where the history of optical instruments may be documented

  • Early optical instruments and the perception of motion

An account of early optical instruments such as the camera obscura, showing their relation to the perception of movement: image-making processes and motion have been linked in various ways; they transform shapes

 
OPTICAL INSTRUMENTS, FROM OPTICAL AIDS TO MODES OF VISION: INTERPRETATION

How to tools interact with visual effects, how are they related to aesthetic perception?

A study of the various present-day approaches to the history of optical instruments
  • Issues on the history of visual technology

Optical instruments can be contextualised in intellectual history in various ways, suggesting numerous issues

  • Philosophical interpretation - Visual culture

How far can we see such tools as analogues of perception? vision and interpretation

Table of contents