vision machine

is a device such as a camera or a voice recorder, which, in contrast to artistic techniques which use imprecision and incompleteness to suggest possibilities beyond what is seen, precisely record all details of a body, failing to engage the body's capacity to imagine.

Vision machines precisely record all details of a body or event in a given moment, whereas artistic techniques work purposely with imprecision and incompleteness to suggest possibilities beyond what is seen. Thus, vision machines, according to Virilio, fail to engage the body's capacity to imagine.'

is a technology such as the telescope or a camera which (contra to merleau-ponty who argues that it is an extension of our body) is a full-on replacement for our capacity to see, stripping the experience from the body.

But while Merleau-Ponty does not hesitate to explore the use of prosthetics (canes, eye glasses) as extensions of our sensory organs, in contrast, Virilio posits that prosthetic devices, especially modern optical devices (for example, see the discussion of military sighting technology below), replace versus extend our capacity to see. He argues that as we increasingly rely on vision machines, we no longer regularly practise bodily techniques (phenomenological means of apprehension) (Virilio, 1994).

is a technology such as the telescope, the camera or the digital recorder which selectively records and interprets the world for us, thus leading to the degeneration of our ability to know the world. Rather than extending the reach of our bodily techniques, they replace them.

edge and imagination. His essay 'Topographical Amnesia' (1994) argues that our increasing dependence on vision machines that selectively record and interpret the world, whether telescopes, cameras, or digital recorders, has led to the degeneration of our ability to know the world as well as a decrease in our capacity for imagination. Like Merleau-Ponty (1962), for Virilio, sight with all its neurological and cognitive processes is the sense that forms the foundation of our capacity to perceive and thus know or, in more phenomenological terms, apprehend the world.

vision machine, n.All

vision machine