A machine’s idea of sight: the technico-sensory divide in the human use of imaging devices

This study explores the human and technical limitations of looking and seeing. It proposes a model for design that expands technical sight toward harmony with our human notion. It proposes a model for design that expands technical sight toward harmony with our human notion. This study is guided by the phenomenological experience of being expressed primarily by Heidegger as well as neuro-physiological research on the mind and body relationship by Ramachandran, Sacks Nicolelis and Damasio. It examines, in two paths, the technical developments that seek to alter or enhance our ways of looking and seeing. The first path is an assessment of ways of looking with optics-based cameras that includes how cameras might be set to look, how they behave in looking and how they translate that look into an image on display. The second path is an assessment of the image in varying states of readiness which include the capture state, state of rendering (for view) and state of display. The study uncovers the various ways that images are translated to be seen, and how sight and ocular vision might be detached in the process of imprinting what is seen in the imagination. It includes key examples of modern image device capabilities, makes suggestions about how the framework of this study can be applied in specific cases and predicts the state of image devices in the future