ABSTRACT
Being an extension of the eye, the movie camera presupposes the body as the ultimate referent of sensory experience. Like the body, the camera is both an object and the apparatus through which a determination of space comes to pass. Both body and camera center the world. Phenomenologically, the eye is both a fleshy organ that can be rubbed, caressed, or simply seen, and the locus of sight, a condition that gives rise to two conceptions of space. In the first, bodies act upon each other, directed by an intentionality that remains outside the arena of action. This space, which I call space of ocularity, can be defined as a realm of instrumentality. It is the space where the camera manipulates object relations and is in turn manipulated, i.e., resisted by the objects with which it shares this space. Although the distances actually covered may be great, this is, in essence, a space of proximity. Here objects are grasped in their momentary emergence into an intentional field of action organized by the interplay of time and space. The location of objects within such an intentionally organized intersection is the region.
