Oculus
Page by page walk-through with pull quotes from the preface.
– / + / related blog entries / NYFA interview / purchase / as installation
Pull quotes from the video:
The dialectic of the image is thus: Just as images can be expansive, they can become limiting as well. Just as they can point us in new directions, they can close us off to understanding the realities we must confront. Just as they can allow us to see that which was not formerly apparent or approachable, they can blind us to the truth and isolate us. They contain an implicit promise of both falsity and possibility. And it is up to each of us to decide what the image signifies, for even a single image can contain all possibilities, all at once.
Mental images function to bridge that space between perception and understanding, between what has been seen and
what can be known or thought.
We argue endlessly over images and their ultimate meaning because we place so much stock in them. After all, our world-views are tied to images. Values we hold are predicated on images we believe.
Our conceptions are metaphors composed of our ideations:
They allude to the mysteries of a reality we can only hope to approach.
We negotiate and correspond in the realm of images.
It is a dialogue between perception
and the way our perceptions
are transformed
by the images we hold.
Our mutable images, and the mutable memories they
are built upon, shift as they are woven into our
patterns of thought. Images are significant then
as thoughtful projections as much as they are
significant as artifacts evoking thought.
This is where time and memory
have brought us.
And this is where the legacy of Mnemosyne has left us:
Able to contemplate our existence against
two eternities of darkness.