ABSTRACT
Once the camera is regarded as an optical model of vision, it seems only a small step to investigate it as a model of the mind. What happens when a model of perception becomes a model of consciousness? As we have seen in Chapter Two, there is a material irony in Descartes’s rationalization of vision. While the geometric conceptualization of vision is modeled on the camera obscura, it ultimately obliterates the material, technological and ecological aspects of the medium. Vision in this process of rationalization runs the risk of becoming abstract and independent of the body, medium and environment. Does the mind’s eye duplicate the act of perception only to replace it? Is cinematography a form of writing with things that acts upon the world? Or, is it at a remove from this world, perceiving the same as mental images?
