ABSTRACT
The history of vision oscillates between the high points of radiant insight and controlling mastery and the low points of being overwhelmed and suffering. In the genealogy of the human senses, the sense of sight has become the central sense. The ambivalence and ambiguity of cultural-historical processes are reflected in its history. The sense of sight allows the expansion of the human body; according to a formulation by Herder, it flings us “great distances far beyond ourselves” (1891, p. 64). Objects and people outside the body can be captured by the eye and brought into the interior of the body. In vision, the foreign is experienced “on the sensing areas of one’s own body” (Plessner). The sense of sight enables a sort of “intermediate corporeality.” The world is “captured by the eye.” Vision is directed at an object or another person, and makes a selection from the visual environment. Vision is a movement of attention and focus and simultaneously one of turning away and exclusion. The affinity of the sense of sight for abstraction lies in this peculiarity of the sense of sight bridging the distance between humans and things while nevertheless maintaining the distance in one’s perception, thus creating a “distant proximity.” The hypertrophic “transformation” of the world into image contributes to the abstraction of life processes. In the excessiveness of image production, images today often lose the relationship to that which is outside of the image; their representational character disappears. Images increasingly relate to other images, and quote them or excerpts from them. They create reference frames themselves, in regard to which they demand validity. Images, simulacra, and simulations generate new image worlds at great speed and with rigorous editing. These extreme developments, which have been induced first and foremost by the new media and their virtual image worlds, have an influence on perception; for the time being, the extent of their effects can only be gradually assessed ( Baudrillard 1983, Mc Luhan 2001, Virilio 1994, Wulf 2013).
