Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. Today, I want to start
Speaker 1: by doing something that we often try to do on
Speaker 1: Stuff Flow Your Mind and on this show too, which
Speaker 1: is trying to make something that's familiar weird again. Yes,
Speaker 1: the thing that I want to take from your familiar
Speaker 1: world and make you face the weirdness of it again
Speaker 1: is that we live in a techno culture that has
Speaker 1: the ability to create relatively objective, fixed media records of
Speaker 1: reality itself. And an example of this, of course, is
Speaker 1: the photograph. Think about the difference between a photograph and
Speaker 1: the real world. Uh so, you know, we're so used
Speaker 1: to photos at this point that we take them for granted,
Speaker 1: but try again to feel the weirdness and appreciate how
Speaker 1: strange it is and how mystical it is that that
Speaker 1: we have these objects around us. Like the physical world,
Speaker 1: you know, is this ongoing transient, always moving, always lightning
Speaker 1: and darkening, always transforming three dimensional space full of objects.
Speaker 1: But then you've got the photograph, which is a fixed
Speaker 1: two dimensional image on on a flat surface. And yet
Speaker 1: we think of the photograph as an objective or sort
Speaker 1: of semi objective. We can explore that distinction and a
Speaker 1: bit record of physical reality. It's definitely a record of something,
Speaker 1: but it's not exactly physical reality, is it. It's physical
Speaker 1: reality interpreted through this transformation process that partially resembles and
Speaker 1: partially does not resemble animal vision. Yeah, I mean and
Speaker 1: and and this is even without getting into modern or
Speaker 1: even twentieth century. Uh, you know, photo editing techniques, just
Speaker 1: like the raw photographic image that results. Yeah, is this
Speaker 1: thing that is it's really you can't think of it
Speaker 1: as as an approximation of of animal site of biological site. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's more like it's almost like a form of
Speaker 1: language in the same way that we've discussed them this
Speaker 1: and stuff to bully your mind before. How written language
Speaker 1: is like a thought that has taken and frozen so
Speaker 1: that it can retain the same form for the most
Speaker 1: part with some interpretations. And and that's sort of what
Speaker 1: we're doing with with photography. We're kind of freezing, uh,
Speaker 1: the mental image or some version of the mental image.
Speaker 1: Except it can also be misleading because I think photography
Speaker 1: has contributed to us having a skewed idea of what
Speaker 1: mental imagery is. It's actually led to us I think,
Speaker 1: having an idea that our mental imagery is like a
Speaker 1: fixed record that has full resolution at every you know,
Speaker 1: from corner to corner of the image, which, as we'll
Speaker 1: discuss also a little bit more in this episode, is
Speaker 1: not the case at all. Our vision is something more
Speaker 1: like a an interpretive illusion based on key bits of
Speaker 1: light data entering through the eyes. Yeah. And and yet,
Speaker 1: especially for you know, for us modern humans, we we
Speaker 1: often reinterpret our memories in the forum of photos, uh
Speaker 1: and and motion pictures. I know, I catch myself doing
Speaker 1: this all the time. I'll think back to, say, a
Speaker 1: moment from my childhood, and what I'm kind of doing
Speaker 1: is I'm kind of picturing a photograph, a photograph that
Speaker 1: might exist, because sometimes I am referring back to actual
Speaker 1: photographs that serve as kind of like a uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a bookmark for that memory, perhaps even the source of
Speaker 1: a memory, where I'm really remembering a picture of something
Speaker 1: rather than the experience. But other times I'm kind of
Speaker 1: forming some sort of how you know, half realized, half
Speaker 1: imaginary photo of what happened. But think about how different
Speaker 1: our memories of our childhood would be if there were
Speaker 1: no photographs whatso ever, like no even semi objective visual
Speaker 1: record of the world that we lived in. Back then,
Speaker 1: all we had was mental imagery and memory. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: if you were like most people and when a when
Speaker 1: I loved, when grew older or certainly passed away, you
Speaker 1: had no longer any real physical reminder of what they
Speaker 1: looked like. You could forget the face of your your
Speaker 1: father in a in a very real way. So I
Speaker 1: think it's absolutely clear that photography is one of the
Speaker 1: most revolutionary technologies that's ever been created. It has probably
Speaker 1: not just changed what humans are able to do, but
Speaker 1: has fundamentally in some ways altered the way we think,
Speaker 1: in the way we envision our own lives. But there
Speaker 1: was a long time before there was photography, and it's
Speaker 1: probably pretty tempting to think, well, you know, before photography,
Speaker 1: we just had imagination. We had drawing, we had painting.
Speaker 1: People could like look at the world around them and
Speaker 1: try to interpret it in paintings, but would be the
Speaker 1: closest thing we had to a visual, uh sort of
Speaker 1: sy my objective record of what the world looked like.
Speaker 1: But that's not exactly right, because there was a sort
Speaker 1: of stepping stone before we had photography, we had the
Speaker 1: camera obscura. That's right, and that is going to be
Speaker 1: what we're going to focus this episode on. Basically, the
Speaker 1: the approach here is we want to devote like three episodes. Uh,
Speaker 1: first the camera obscura, and then do an episode on
Speaker 1: on the origins of photography, and then do an episode
Speaker 1: on the motion picture, so you know, basically climbing ascending
Speaker 1: the ladder to still photography, then the moving picture and
Speaker 1: talk about you know, how these changes came about, how
Speaker 1: these inventions came about, and how they changed our world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the camera obscura is not a camera in the
Speaker 1: sense you're thinking of. It doesn't actually constitute photography, meaning
Speaker 1: making a fixed record of a visual scene. A camera obscura.
Speaker 1: That's literally it's Latin and it means what dark room,
Speaker 1: dark chamber, dark chamber. Yeah, which is a wonderful name.
Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons that that at times doing
Speaker 1: research on camera obscura can be so difficult because it
Speaker 1: seems like camera obscura has been the name of so
Speaker 1: many different like literary journals, horror movies, movies, bands. It's
Speaker 1: just such a cool title. But yeah, it means dark chamber,
Speaker 1: because one of the key elements here is that that's
Speaker 1: necessary and would have been necessary in ancient times as well,
Speaker 1: is that you have to have a dark chamber to
Speaker 1: create a camera obscura. And the weird thing about camera
Speaker 1: obscure is this that they do services kind of bridge
Speaker 1: between like natural optics and photographic technology, and yet it
Speaker 1: feels magic in a way like even today as a
Speaker 1: modern user using it, like it feels magic in a
Speaker 1: way that photography no longer feels magic. It feels magical
Speaker 1: in a way that site no longer feels magical, even
Speaker 1: though when you break down what's exactly is happening biologically
Speaker 1: and and and and neurologically during side, I mean that's
Speaker 1: it's it's a pretty fantastic process as well. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the camera obscura still has this um this this this
Speaker 1: kind of eerie feel to it. Yes, the camera obscure.
Speaker 1: So the principle is extremely simple, but the implications are fascinating,
Speaker 1: and the way it's been processed throughout human history and
Speaker 1: in the history of optics leading up to photography is
Speaker 1: also fascinating. So the basic principle, as we say, is
Speaker 1: mechanically extremely simple. You have a darkened chamber. And this
Speaker 1: can be a room in a building or a tent,
Speaker 1: or this could even be a small box. It could
Speaker 1: even just be like a shoe box or a can
Speaker 1: something that is a chamber that doesn't allow light in
Speaker 1: except through a single small aperture on one side, right,
Speaker 1: and and we have to stress with this aperture. More
Speaker 1: recent camera obscuras, like for instance, my my wife um Bonnie,
Speaker 1: who is a photographer in the Atlanta area, she recently
Speaker 1: made a camera obscura as part of an open house
Speaker 1: for for the studio that she has, and they used
Speaker 1: a lens to service the aperture. But you don't need
Speaker 1: to use a lens. All you need is a hole. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: the lens. The lens is an important development that comes
Speaker 1: to later in the history of the camera obscura. But yeah,
Speaker 1: all you need is a whole. And what you get
Speaker 1: when you have a darkened room with a small hole
Speaker 1: that's the right size and the right position away from
Speaker 1: the wall opposite it is that an inverted image from
Speaker 1: the world outside this this box or this room will
Speaker 1: be projected onto the wall of the darkened chamber. So,
Speaker 1: just as an example, if your camera obscura is a
Speaker 1: room with the right kind of small hole in the
Speaker 1: wall facing a view of the Pyramids of Giza, you
Speaker 1: will see an image of the pyramids upside down and
Speaker 1: inverted projected against the wall opposite the whole, as if
Speaker 1: there were an upside down film slide projector shining against
Speaker 1: a screen. Right. It's just it's it's maddening to kind
Speaker 1: of see one in action because it feels like there
Speaker 1: should be a projector there, there should be some man
Speaker 1: made mechanism that is make ing this possible, and and
Speaker 1: it's not. It's it's basically just a hole. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: you might wonder, okay, wait a second, why does this happen? Like,
Speaker 1: why don't the windows in my house do that? Right?
Speaker 1: That my house is a closed chamber, I've got holes
Speaker 1: in the walls that light can pass through the windows.
Speaker 1: And so there are a few reasons the windows in
Speaker 1: your house probably don't work this way. Number one, your
Speaker 1: house is not dark enough. Number two, you've got too
Speaker 1: many sources of light probably that are you know, coming
Speaker 1: from different directions. And number three, normal windows are generally
Speaker 1: too wide, letting in light from too many different angles
Speaker 1: to actually cast an image with any resolution. So let's
Speaker 1: think about the reasons why a pinhole or a small
Speaker 1: lens projects an image of the outside world inverted on
Speaker 1: an inner wall, while a larger hole or lens does not.
Speaker 1: A few main principles here and number one, pretty much
Speaker 1: all the light in an outdoor scene is reflected sunlight,
Speaker 1: so it's the sunshines down. Light bounces off everything out there.
Speaker 1: Number two, when reflects off of an object, the wavelength
Speaker 1: is changed unless its color has changed, so you've got
Speaker 1: different colored rays of light beaming all over the place.
Speaker 1: Number three, light is reflected off surfaces at all angles,
Speaker 1: so it's going to go in all kinds of directions.
Speaker 1: But once it's reflected, and this is number four, it
Speaker 1: travels in a straight line. And because light travels in
Speaker 1: a straight line, and because the aperture in the in
Speaker 1: the camera obscurit is small rays. Striking the bottom of
Speaker 1: the projected image will come from the top of the
Speaker 1: original image, and raise striking the top of the projected
Speaker 1: image will come from the bottom of the original same
Speaker 1: thing goes left to right. You've got uh light rays
Speaker 1: entering in all directions through a sort of you can
Speaker 1: imagine a filtering cone that focuses the image and makes
Speaker 1: it sharp that then forms a cone of projection on
Speaker 1: the other side of the wall. I think the first
Speaker 1: place I saw a camera scirit was the Royal Museum, Greenwich. Oh,
Speaker 1: I haven't been there. Yeah, it's it's a great place
Speaker 1: to check one out because it also has like his
Speaker 1: storical context because there's there's been a camera obscura at
Speaker 1: Greenwich from like the late seventeenth century on through the
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century, and the current one was a believe
Speaker 1: installed in n and it shows a close up moving
Speaker 1: panorama of Greenwich and the and the Thames, the National
Speaker 1: Maritime Museum and the Royal Naval College. So it's it's
Speaker 1: really cool. Yeah, anybody, any of our British listeners out there,
Speaker 1: or anyone who finds themselves visiting that area, it's a
Speaker 1: great place to check out the camera obscura in action.
Speaker 1: I mean, what does it look like. It's so it's
Speaker 1: projected on a wall, like a stone wall or a screen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean this was over a decade ago when I
Speaker 1: when I saw it, but I remember it had kind
Speaker 1: of it has kind of a ghostly quality to it.
Speaker 1: That's one of the striking things about my experiences with
Speaker 1: camera obscuras is that in both cases there is this
Speaker 1: this ethereal nature to it, Like you wouldn't, at least
Speaker 1: the ones I've experienced, you wouldn't like walk into it
Speaker 1: and like smack into the wall thinking it's it's reality,
Speaker 1: but like there's a feeling of the allusion to it,
Speaker 1: and yet it yet has this magical property. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about, and you can vary, you
Speaker 1: can sort of like tweak those magic feeling properties or
Speaker 1: the qualities of the projected image by changing things about
Speaker 1: the aperture that lets the light in. For example, a
Speaker 1: smaller aperture you shrink the whole, that will generally produce
Speaker 1: a sharper image on the projection with less blurring, but
Speaker 1: it will also be dimmer, of course, because less light
Speaker 1: is getting through the hole. A wider aperture, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, will produce a brighter but blurrier picture generally.
Speaker 1: And in fact, you can imagine just taking this principle
Speaker 1: uh to the extreme, because this is how if you
Speaker 1: just keep widening the aperture more and more, eventually the
Speaker 1: picture would get brighter and brighter and blurrier and blurrier.
Speaker 1: Until eventually what you have is simply a window. Again,
Speaker 1: you're just admitting white light with no definition in the image. Now,
Speaker 1: one other technological way to mess with this that you know,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that when Bonnie made one had a lens
Speaker 1: in it. The lens is a really wharton upgrade on
Speaker 1: the simple hole in the wall camera obscura. A lens
Speaker 1: is of course transparent and has a convex outer surface,
Speaker 1: and this allows you to get more of the best
Speaker 1: qualities of a smaller aperture combined with a larger aperture.
Speaker 1: The convex lens gathers more light from more angles because
Speaker 1: of the way it bends, so it literally admits more
Speaker 1: light and creates a brighter picture, while at the same
Speaker 1: time it focuses that light toward a point by the
Speaker 1: refraction that the lens does, allowing you to get a sharper,
Speaker 1: more focused, and brighter image. It's a pretty impressive trick,
Speaker 1: and there are a number of really cool illustrations from
Speaker 1: old texts illustrating this. So where you you'll see like
Speaker 1: a figure figure A, and then there's a you know,
Speaker 1: a second figure inside of the box, and that that
Speaker 1: figures upside down, and then you have the lines drawing.
Speaker 1: How the the the optical image is inverted. It's it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. I mean focusing light like this through a
Speaker 1: lens that goes through an aperture and then projects inverted
Speaker 1: on a screen is actually similar to how our eyes work.
Speaker 1: You think about this like so the human eye, of course,
Speaker 1: light is gathered and refracted through a lens. You've got
Speaker 1: a lens in your eye, and then its focus projected
Speaker 1: onto a light sensitive membrane at the back of the eye,
Speaker 1: and this is called the retina. These are our retinas,
Speaker 1: and the light sensing cells in the retina then transmit
Speaker 1: the image, or maybe not the image, you could say
Speaker 1: the data from the image to the brain to be
Speaker 1: interpreted into the experience we call vision. And just like
Speaker 1: with the camera obscura, just like the projection on the
Speaker 1: wall at the back of the camera obscura, the images
Speaker 1: of the world that we see every day are projected
Speaker 1: onto our retinas in an inverted form, upside down and reverse.
Speaker 1: That's how they hit those light sensitive cells, and it's
Speaker 1: up to the brain to create the perception of the
Speaker 1: visual field that we interpret as right side up. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing I way I've often seen this I think
Speaker 1: perhaps mis explained is that this fact is sometimes communicated
Speaker 1: by saying that our brains quote flip or quote rotate
Speaker 1: the retinal image back to the format it was in.
Speaker 1: But that's not quite right because there's nothing for the
Speaker 1: brain to flip it onto. You know. You think about
Speaker 1: like the perception of the visual field. Uh, the image
Speaker 1: that you actually think you see in your brain is
Speaker 1: not a physical space mapping one for one from reality,
Speaker 1: but a sort of perceptual illusion created by the brain.
Speaker 1: A great example of this, if you've never tried it,
Speaker 1: you probably think you can see color in your peripheral vision,
Speaker 1: right you just assume you can see color everywhere, but
Speaker 1: you can. You can play a really fun game to
Speaker 1: break this illusion. Have somebody whole different colored flags right
Speaker 1: at the edge of your peripheral vision where you can
Speaker 1: just see motion and you think you can see color,
Speaker 1: and then try to say what color the flags are,
Speaker 1: you will probably fail. Another good thing to use our
Speaker 1: identical markers with different colored tops, like you have a
Speaker 1: bunch of sharpie's like we have in the office, where
Speaker 1: some of green tops, some of red tops all virtually
Speaker 1: the same looking. So get somebody to sneak up behind
Speaker 1: you with much of them and experiment with optics that way.
Speaker 1: I think I just noticed you sort of trying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a green one in my hand, and I
Speaker 1: mean it's difficult to do to yourself because you, of
Speaker 1: course have so much of our vision is about like
Speaker 1: the memory and knowledge of the thing exactly. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's because like you're seeing with your brain as much
Speaker 1: as you're seeing with your eyes. Your eyes, actually you
Speaker 1: know you're you're not seeing color over here, even though
Speaker 1: you strongly have the perception that you're seeing color in
Speaker 1: your periphery. So your brain creates a sensation of an
Speaker 1: image simulating a kind of one to one relationship with
Speaker 1: the outside physical world that you can prove in a
Speaker 1: number of ways does not actually, uh you know, it
Speaker 1: does not actually capture that world in a one to
Speaker 1: one way. Another example is our complete unawareness moment to
Speaker 1: moment of the blind spot created in each eye by
Speaker 1: the optic nerve. Do you ever play that game, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is where the basically there's that that spot where
Speaker 1: you cannot see, but your vision kind of stitches everything together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't notice that you have blind spots right in
Speaker 1: front of your face. Right. That reminds me of our
Speaker 1: chat with the author or Scott Baker on Stuff to
Speaker 1: Bluw your Mind, where you talked about having an eye condition,
Speaker 1: uh that he had corrected, but it it caused him
Speaker 1: to have an extra blind spot and so if he
Speaker 1: looked at, say his dog's face, he would see like
Speaker 1: a faceless dog. Yes, but that that's the fascinating thing.
Speaker 1: The way he described it was it wasn't like he
Speaker 1: saw a like black hole there where there was nothing. Instead,
Speaker 1: he just did not see in that area. And it's
Speaker 1: just no vision. And yet the brain stitches together a
Speaker 1: picture anyway, giving you the impression that you're seeing your
Speaker 1: surroundings in a one to one way, which we are not. Right.
Speaker 1: It's more it's less like like we are the observer
Speaker 1: and more like we're given a we're given a version
Speaker 1: of it. We're so kind of like the head of
Speaker 1: a big company or state and somebody like gives us
Speaker 1: a memo, uh like telling us what the situation is,
Speaker 1: and we we agree with it because it seems like
Speaker 1: it's all properly a symbol. Yeah, So I think the
Speaker 1: way the brain puts together the idea of what's right
Speaker 1: side up and upside down. Is cognitively that's going on
Speaker 1: in processing somewhere in the brain based on all kinds
Speaker 1: of sense data, visual data, but also I think, just
Speaker 1: like balance data and stuff like that, the retina senses.
Speaker 1: The brain perceives based on the senses, including this retinal data,
Speaker 1: but the perception created is not a photograph inverted from
Speaker 1: the retinas, but more like an interpretation based on it.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it is true that the projector screen of
Speaker 1: light sensitive cells that send information to your brain, that
Speaker 1: those retinas, they receive an image inverted from its orientation
Speaker 1: in physical space. So ironically, when we look at an
Speaker 1: image projected onto the back wall of a camera obscura
Speaker 1: upside down and reversed, it's then reflected and refracted through
Speaker 1: the lenses of our eyes projected on our retina's right
Speaker 1: side up again, and of course our brains, being doing
Speaker 1: what they do, they seamlessly correct or interpret this input,
Speaker 1: flipping it upside down again and option. Another interesting thing
Speaker 1: about the camera obscure in the history of how people
Speaker 1: have thought about what the eyes do is that a
Speaker 1: very common view among scholars throughout the ages is that
Speaker 1: light is not an external input on the eyes, but
Speaker 1: rather the many scholars throughout history believed that the eyes
Speaker 1: would beam out some kind of retrieving ray which grabs
Speaker 1: images from the world and pulls them back in. This is,
Speaker 1: of course extremely wrong. Eyes are input and that output.
Speaker 1: But it's funny how captivating that kind of a way
Speaker 1: of viewing the world can be. Yeah, it's easy just
Speaker 1: to sort of subconsciously think of it that way. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, think if your your eyes sort of yet
Speaker 1: reaching out and touching the world and reporting back like
Speaker 1: they're like like they're they're they're they're touching the side
Speaker 1: of an elephant or something and reporting back. And of course,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned on the show before, our our various
Speaker 1: romantic pop songs are always getting it wrong talking about
Speaker 1: my eyes touch you physically, that sort of thing where
Speaker 1: it's like, no, don't, don't touch eyeballs lovers of the Oh,
Speaker 1: Peter Gabriel is the worst offenders. Oh yeah, what was
Speaker 1: his line from he wants to touch the light the
Speaker 1: heat in your eyes. He's literally advocating the touching of
Speaker 1: eyeballs with you know, salty, greasy fingertips. Very bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no reason for that. Uh, but but anyway, Okay,
Speaker 1: so the camera scare. We we know it was this
Speaker 1: important development in the history of optics, but it does
Speaker 1: not constitute photography because it does not fix the image
Speaker 1: it captures to be observed later. So so what did
Speaker 1: it do? I think we should take a break and
Speaker 1: then come back and look at possible in this sort
Speaker 1: of possible invention history of the camera obscure and what
Speaker 1: it did. Alright, we're back. So this is another one
Speaker 1: of those cases where when you look at the technology
Speaker 1: that is required for the simplest version of the of
Speaker 1: the invention the camera scare, in this case, you really
Speaker 1: don't need much. You need the ability to have to
Speaker 1: build or manipulate an enclose dark space, and you need
Speaker 1: whole technology. I mean. The funny thing is a camera
Speaker 1: obscura doesn't even have to be created by humans. They
Speaker 1: can exist totally naturally. Imagine a tree that's hollow in
Speaker 1: the middle and it's got a hole in the bark.
Speaker 1: Or imagine a cave that's got a the correctly sized
Speaker 1: hole in the wall that projects against an opposite wall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we have to imagine our our Gary Larsen's far side.
Speaker 1: Um prehistoric human encountering some some some form of camera
Speaker 1: obscura and reacting to it in in ancient times. Well,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting because we don't know who created the
Speaker 1: first camera obscure on purpose. We don't know who encountered
Speaker 1: the first camera obscura. Uh. We do have some early
Speaker 1: descriptions of how it works or how people thought it worked.
Speaker 1: But once uncertain and very intriguing possibility is what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. The prehistoric people's actually discuss heard the use
Speaker 1: of the camera obscura, long before we knew anything about
Speaker 1: optics or how this worked. One example is I was
Speaker 1: reading an interesting article about this by the science writer
Speaker 1: Jennifer Willett about a presentation by somebody named Kieran Simcox,
Speaker 1: a student at Nottingham Trent University at the Royal Astronomical
Speaker 1: Society in Britain in and the base idea here is
Speaker 1: that prehistoric megalithic tomb structures, you know, these big stone
Speaker 1: tombs that ancient people's built. Uh, you know, before before
Speaker 1: we had any written records, with a long, narrow passage
Speaker 1: ways in these tombs would sometimes open towards the sky
Speaker 1: and would effectively function as a type of camera obscura
Speaker 1: for observing stars and astronomical objects there were otherwise too
Speaker 1: dim to see. For instance, citing a certain star rising
Speaker 1: at dawn at the beginning of spring could have been
Speaker 1: a sign for ancient hunter gatherers to migrate for the
Speaker 1: warmer months. It's possible. We don't know, but that that's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing to consider, like ancient ancient use of
Speaker 1: camera obscura as a means of observing the cosmos, which
Speaker 1: of course it is a very even today. It's it's
Speaker 1: an effective way, one way to observe a solar eclipse.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, and and ancient thinkers noticed this. It's
Speaker 1: also been postulated by a number of scholars that other
Speaker 1: prehistoric structures, caves and even hollow trees maybe have the
Speaker 1: potential to become a camera obscura simply if there's a
Speaker 1: correctly sized and positioned whole or aperture UH. And thus
Speaker 1: the camera obscure could possibly even play a role in
Speaker 1: the origin of cave paintings and art. Again, we don't
Speaker 1: know this happened, but just imagine the possibility. Imagine the
Speaker 1: transition from a three D always moving visual world to
Speaker 1: UH to a fixed two D image when a camera
Speaker 1: obscura projected an image from the outside of a cave
Speaker 1: inverted onto a cave wall, and a prehistoric common in
Speaker 1: trace to that image or was INSPI fired by the
Speaker 1: projected image to make two D images of their own. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, this makes me wonder, and this is just
Speaker 1: pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if this
Speaker 1: could have influenced any early concepts of of other realms,
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of an upside down world it's
Speaker 1: more faint than our own. Yeah, yeah, uh, the the
Speaker 1: ethereal nature of the imagination coming through in that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's a really interesting speculation based on some slight evidence,
Speaker 1: but at this point it remains speculation. We we don't
Speaker 1: know for sure or have any really strong evidence that
Speaker 1: I'm aware of, that any prehistoric people's made use of
Speaker 1: a camera obscure. It's fascinating to imagine, but we don't know. However,
Speaker 1: there were important early descriptions of the principle of the
Speaker 1: camera obscure, and I think, as as far as I'm aware,
Speaker 1: the earliest one was by a fifth century b c. E.
Speaker 1: Chinese philosopher named Mosey or mo d Yeah, or just
Speaker 1: master mode because that's what it means. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: would have been the Warring States period. So master Moe
Speaker 1: wrote on the subject of a pinhole aperture and how
Speaker 1: it could be used to understand the power of light.
Speaker 1: He wrote about how a small hole in the wall
Speaker 1: of a darkened house could cause an image of the
Speaker 1: outside world to be projected inverted or upside down on
Speaker 1: the opposite wall, and master Moe wrote, quote, the image
Speaker 1: is inverted because there is an intersection at the point.
Speaker 1: It is because of the point that the image is formed.
Speaker 1: And this is quoted in a in a book chapter
Speaker 1: by Edwin K. Lae on the history of photographic technology
Speaker 1: in China. Yeah, I had another quote from Mow that
Speaker 1: I've found really interesting image. An illuminated person shines as
Speaker 1: if he were emitting rays. The bottom part of the
Speaker 1: person appears at the top part of the image, and
Speaker 1: the top part appears at the bottom part, so that
Speaker 1: image is formed at the top whilst light from the
Speaker 1: head has been blocked in the upper parts, so the
Speaker 1: image is formed at the bottom. From distances far away
Speaker 1: or nearby, light enters through the point. Therefore an image
Speaker 1: is formed inside the collecting house. So this show is
Speaker 1: that Master Mo understood the optical principles about how this
Speaker 1: image was being projected through the aperture. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think that's one that's like one thing that that
Speaker 1: is perhaps lacking in in earlier accounts is you know,
Speaker 1: if you see um, like say, an accidental camera obscura
Speaker 1: in action, you might just might not have the language
Speaker 1: to even interpret what's occurring, uh, except perhaps magical descriptions
Speaker 1: that could sort of you know, become lost over time.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he clearly understands the principle at play here.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that's interesting too is that
Speaker 1: the writings of Mo fell out of fashion, and it
Speaker 1: seems um that no one else wrote about camera obscurities
Speaker 1: in China, or at least nothing that I survived for
Speaker 1: another thousand years. So it's it's always interesting when someone
Speaker 1: kind of either happens upon an invention or sort of
Speaker 1: highlights of technology and then it perhaps it's just before
Speaker 1: it's time, or there's nothing there's no real application for it,
Speaker 1: or no one you know, grabs onto it, and so
Speaker 1: it just kind of languishes for a millennium. Yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker 1: You have to wonder, I don't know, if it's possible
Speaker 1: or if it's likely that this would happen. But you
Speaker 1: have to wonder are similar things happening now? Is there
Speaker 1: like somebody doing something now that a thousand years later
Speaker 1: people will look back and be like, wow, so and
Speaker 1: so did this thing that was revolutionary, but people didn't
Speaker 1: recognize it at the time and they forgot about it
Speaker 1: for a thousand years. It's kind of hard to imagine that.
Speaker 1: But then again, I mean, we wouldn't know it. If
Speaker 1: we saw it right, that'd be the reason we weren't
Speaker 1: picking up on it. Yeah, well, I feel my gut
Speaker 1: instinct is that is that innovation takes place at such
Speaker 1: a faster pace. You know, we wouldn't be looking at
Speaker 1: a thousand years, would be looking at uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a decade or maybe five years. And I think that
Speaker 1: you do see some level of this, certainly with with
Speaker 1: certain bits of technological innovation. You know, I think there
Speaker 1: are probably some examples and say tablet technology where you
Speaker 1: see precursors to uh, the iPhone or the iPad, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, the the early versions just didn't
Speaker 1: take off. But then it's like somebody gets it right
Speaker 1: and or markets that correct, markets that correctly, or manufactures
Speaker 1: it correctly like like gets something else. Some of the
Speaker 1: other boxes checked off that allow the product to really
Speaker 1: take hold in the in the collective mindset. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was reading a brief passage about master Most discovery in
Speaker 1: another book called Capturing the Light by Roger Watson and
Speaker 1: Helen Rapp Report, and that's also about the history of photography,
Speaker 1: but they're talking about the optical discoveries of Master mo
Speaker 1: and they write, quote, he spoke of a device for
Speaker 1: passing sunlight through a pinhole onto a collecting plate. It's
Speaker 1: mysterious function being that of a quote locked treasure room,
Speaker 1: a kind of light proof box that would channel the
Speaker 1: power of the on in such a way that man
Speaker 1: could safely observe it and the images of the recognized
Speaker 1: world outside that it projected. And I love this mysterious
Speaker 1: imagery here, the locked treasure room, because it is sort
Speaker 1: of it's like a treasure room of insights about optics.
Speaker 1: It would you know, Master Moe had this indispensable in
Speaker 1: counterintuitive insight to understand the power of light. You had
Speaker 1: to limit it. You can only begin to understand optics
Speaker 1: and the power of the sun and the behavior of
Speaker 1: light rays by blocking out almost all of its influence.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I mean, from all this, it's interesting to
Speaker 1: see that the camera obscura has this whole role going
Speaker 1: way way back in Chinese history, probably before and certainly
Speaker 1: separate from its role in the history of Western optics,
Speaker 1: though certainly early Western minds did pick up on it
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, Aristotle sort of seemed to allude to
Speaker 1: the focusing effects of an aperture on sunlight. For example,
Speaker 1: during an eclipse. If you've ever witnessed a solar eclipse,
Speaker 1: a total solar eclipse, when the eclipse gets near totality,
Speaker 1: you will see all kinds of bizarre effects in the
Speaker 1: world around you. Just look at the way that sunlight, say,
Speaker 1: filtering through the you know, the spots in the of
Speaker 1: light that get through a tree's canopy or something, all
Speaker 1: become sickle shaped. It's just a world of little bright
Speaker 1: sickles all around you. Yeah. Well, when the last solar
Speaker 1: eclipse occurred in North America, we had an episode of
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind about it. I believe we
Speaker 1: we we talked about observing it or no, maybe we
Speaker 1: gave I think it was like two parts. We gave
Speaker 1: sort of a preliminary episode in which we prepared people
Speaker 1: to view the eclipse, and then afterwards we talked about
Speaker 1: our own experiences a little bit. Yeah, I'm really glad
Speaker 1: I went out to see that. I went up to
Speaker 1: Tennessee to observe it, and it was. It was magnificent.
Speaker 1: If you get a chance to see a total solar
Speaker 1: eclipse in your life, don't miss that chance. It's worth seeing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It is also magical feeling in the way
Speaker 1: that it reveals uh uh, you know, reveals the wonder
Speaker 1: of something we just take for granted. You know, we're
Speaker 1: just so immersed in the normal solar cycles that when
Speaker 1: you have this, you know, this, this, this, uh, this
Speaker 1: solar eclipse occur, it really makes you realize the majesty
Speaker 1: of what is occurring every day. Yeah. Now back to
Speaker 1: the camera obscura. There were more developments around the eleventh century,
Speaker 1: so while not fully describing a pinhole camera or camera obscura,
Speaker 1: according to Edwin Lae, some of the basic principles involved
Speaker 1: were articulated by a Chinese Song Dynasty scientist and political
Speaker 1: leader named shin Quo who lived ten thirty one to
Speaker 1: ten ninety five, who performed experiments showing that if you
Speaker 1: used a curved mirror to use sunlight to start fires
Speaker 1: like focusing, you know, doing the burning a burning an
Speaker 1: ant thing which don't do that, um, the mirror would
Speaker 1: invert the image that it reflected. And Shin quote said
Speaker 1: this was because of quote friction. I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: that means, but maybe there is a sense to that
Speaker 1: that's that's getting lost into translation. But of course it's
Speaker 1: in the Arab world that we see some of the
Speaker 1: other really key preliminary mentions of the camera obscurra Yes, exactly. So.
Speaker 1: The first full known description of the camera obscure, according
Speaker 1: to Watson and Rapp report, is by the eleventh century
Speaker 1: Arab physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and general polymath Ebben i'll hype Them,
Speaker 1: also known sometimes as al Hasan and i'll hythe Them,
Speaker 1: wrote a seven volume work on the science of optics
Speaker 1: between around ten eleven and ten one, and in this
Speaker 1: work he described the use of a pinhole aperture in
Speaker 1: a darkened enclosure to observe sunlight, including using it to
Speaker 1: observe a solar eclipse, and he established through experiments performed
Speaker 1: in Cairo, that light traveled in straight lines, and he
Speaker 1: used the camera obscura to make notes about the shape
Speaker 1: of the Sun during a partial eclipse, like we were
Speaker 1: talking about now. Of course, looking directly at the sun
Speaker 1: even during a partial eclipse can severely damage your eyes.
Speaker 1: Don't do it. You should never look directly the sun
Speaker 1: even during a solar eclipse, except during the brief period
Speaker 1: of totality. But a pinhole camera box can actually allow
Speaker 1: you to observe what happens to the shape of the
Speaker 1: Sun as it becomes a sickle of starlight before it's
Speaker 1: totally eclipse during the process. So if you don't want
Speaker 1: to damage your eyes and you want to observe the
Speaker 1: partial stages of an eclipse, a camera obscure is a
Speaker 1: great thing to build, and you can look up instructions
Speaker 1: on the internet about how to do this. A lot
Speaker 1: of you know, a lot of people did this in
Speaker 1: elementary school. Oh yeah, this all you use a shoebox. Yeah. Now.
Speaker 1: Edwin Ly also mentions other figures in the history of
Speaker 1: Chinese optics who may have done some experiments with or
Speaker 1: referred to the camera obscura. The Yuan dynasty scholars Tao
Speaker 1: zong Ye about who lived about about fourteen o two,
Speaker 1: and Xiao yu Chen, who lived the mid twelve hundreds
Speaker 1: to the early thirteen hundreds. They both made references to
Speaker 1: this knowledge, and Jiao did experiments to show quote how
Speaker 1: changes in the light source and in distances from the
Speaker 1: pinhole would change the final image. So he's writing about
Speaker 1: the principle. Now. Somebody who definitely had thoughts about the
Speaker 1: camera obscura was the medieval English philosopher and empiricist Roger
Speaker 1: Bacon on one of the heroes of William of Baskerville.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right. And so Roger Bacon, having read
Speaker 1: event L. Hyatham's work in translation by the thirteenth century,
Speaker 1: wrote that optics in the study of light was quote
Speaker 1: the flower of the whole of philosophy, and that without
Speaker 1: it none of the other sciences would ever be would
Speaker 1: ever be understood. And so understanding the importance of the
Speaker 1: camera obscura in studying optical phenomena, Bacon used the principle
Speaker 1: to observe solar eclipses in the thirteenth century. You know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think about the way that certainly, certainly
Speaker 1: astronomy and uh in scientific understanding of previous centuries like
Speaker 1: made its way into occult practices and alchemy. Um. I'm
Speaker 1: reminded that in reading about various recipes for creating a
Speaker 1: monk uh, there were calls for like using a totally
Speaker 1: dark room. I don't remember any mention of of a
Speaker 1: pinhole or an aperture, but it makes me think if
Speaker 1: if to some extent, experiments by the you know, these
Speaker 1: these great thinkers in the past with cameras camera obscure
Speaker 1: as might have served to sort of cement the darkened
Speaker 1: room as some sort of you know, a magical space
Speaker 1: for spell work. Oh yeah, you could think, especially if
Speaker 1: you like saw but didn't understand what I'll hythe them
Speaker 1: and Master Mow and Roger Bacon were doing that. They'd
Speaker 1: like take people into a darkened room and there'd be
Speaker 1: all this ooing and owing, and you're like, what's going on? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like like Bacon has this room and there there's no
Speaker 1: light around allowed in it except for one little hole,
Speaker 1: and something spectacular happens in there, and that that it
Speaker 1: sounds suspicious totally. I can see that now over the
Speaker 1: following centuries, the camera obscure would appear in a more
Speaker 1: portable format as a something more like what you're familiar with,
Speaker 1: probably if you've ever made one out of a shoebox.
Speaker 1: The camera obscura became often the form of a wooden
Speaker 1: box with like a ground glass lens, which could even
Speaker 1: be said over a table or other surface to project
Speaker 1: an image onto whatever screen was desired, even on the paper.
Speaker 1: And this idea of projecting direct images of the natural world,
Speaker 1: while not a form of photography, was an interesting precursor
Speaker 1: to it, since you could use the projected image as
Speaker 1: a kind of tracing guide or to create a template
Speaker 1: for a work of art to be painted and filled
Speaker 1: in later and the Renaissance painter and inventor Leonardo da
Speaker 1: Vinci used the camera obscura for exactly this purpose, recognizing
Speaker 1: its power to help guide the artist in correctly replicating perspective.
Speaker 1: Because Robert, I don't know if you is bad an
Speaker 1: artist design, I'm terrible at drawing in visual visual art.
Speaker 1: But I think even if you've got some natural talent
Speaker 1: for it, just think about how hard it is to
Speaker 1: recreate perspective effects of our of our point of view
Speaker 1: on an image just by eyeballing it. Yeah. Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: mean I'm I can only just draw gremlins and whatnot
Speaker 1: in the margins of of notes. But one of the
Speaker 1: things I have a friend named Kurt who is a
Speaker 1: professional artist, and one of my favorite things to do
Speaker 1: with him is get him to explain paintings to me,
Speaker 1: because you know, I have I have a lot of
Speaker 1: appreciation for art. I have a fair amount of you know,
Speaker 1: I can keep up with a fair amount of art history.
Speaker 1: But when he gets into the technical aspects of perspective
Speaker 1: and all uh, Like, he he always points out something
Speaker 1: that I'm just completely blind to. It just really makes
Speaker 1: me appreciate even more so the talent that is executed, uh,
Speaker 1: the artistry that is executed in some of these great
Speaker 1: works of art past and present. Oh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's one reason, like an actual curated museum tour with
Speaker 1: somebody who knows what they're talking about with the works
Speaker 1: of art and can show you things to look at
Speaker 1: that can be far more interesting than you'd even imagine. Um.
Speaker 1: I you know, I I enjoy art museums and all that,
Speaker 1: but a really good guided tour is gold. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: I tend to end up focusing a lot on, of course,
Speaker 1: the history of the piece, who made it, win, the symbolism, uh,
Speaker 1: that you know, if there's a mythological story or a
Speaker 1: biblical story that's being told, they're like, what's its purpose?
Speaker 1: What's its message? Story? Minded? Yeah, so so that you know,
Speaker 1: that's where I often enter in and I have to
Speaker 1: be reminded of all that other stuff, um, you know,
Speaker 1: beyond the material aspects of it as well. Though this
Speaker 1: also reminds me of the worst museum tour I ever
Speaker 1: had with There was one we went on where there
Speaker 1: was a docent who every painting we'd go to, he'd
Speaker 1: be like, what do you notice about this painting? And
Speaker 1: the group people in the group would say stuff I
Speaker 1: don't know, and they'd offer up answers, and he just
Speaker 1: keeps saying, no, what do you notice until we got
Speaker 1: the answer he wanted. We usually didn't. Then then he'd
Speaker 1: just eventually have to tell us. You know, there's not
Speaker 1: to get off and too much of a tangent, But
Speaker 1: there is something about about seeing actually like the actual
Speaker 1: piece of art that I mean. Obviously, it's great when
Speaker 1: you realize something is even grander than you thought it was.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a much bigger piece, and you're you
Speaker 1: get to sort of interact with it and you change
Speaker 1: your perspectives on it. But I also enjoy kind of
Speaker 1: the reverse where you're like, oh wow, this this painting
Speaker 1: is really small in real life and it feels less
Speaker 1: grand in a way presented here instead of in a
Speaker 1: book or on a computer screen. Or another one that
Speaker 1: comes to mind is Bookland's, uh the Isle of the Dead,
Speaker 1: or or one of the versions with a few different
Speaker 1: versions of it. Bet there's one of them is hanging
Speaker 1: in the met in New York City, and it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a disappointing experience, or I felt slightly disappointed.
Speaker 1: It's amazing to see it in real life, knowing that
Speaker 1: this is a famous painting, you know, one that you've
Speaker 1: read about and heard about. But it's a very dark image,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of black in it, and
Speaker 1: so it's it's it's really difficult to get a real
Speaker 1: world like to get yourself and just right. They're just
Speaker 1: the right perspective to really look at it and take
Speaker 1: it in as a painting, or at least in my experience.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that can definitely. I've
Speaker 1: noticed sometimes I've seen I've gone to see a painting
Speaker 1: in real life, you know that I've seen represented on
Speaker 1: maybe TV or on a computer screen before. And the
Speaker 1: weird thing I found is that seeing it in person
Speaker 1: sometimes was a less intimate feeling of relationship to that
Speaker 1: work of art than seeing it on like a screen
Speaker 1: had been. I'm not quite sure why that is. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's just that you're physically closer to a screen or
Speaker 1: that screens or where so much of your life happens. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's weird. And I feel like it does vary
Speaker 1: from artists to artists and style to style. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: like one of my my favorite artists is Irving Norman,
Speaker 1: and I really enjoy looking at his you know, magazine
Speaker 1: prints of his work, looking at images on the computer screen,
Speaker 1: but getting to see his pieces in real life really
Speaker 1: blow me away. Like there's it's it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: ten times the experience. Yeah. That, well, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that I know Irving Norman. I'll have to look him
Speaker 1: up after. It's definitely worth looking up very you know, dark,
Speaker 1: dark surrealist star of the century. Oh I think maybe
Speaker 1: I have seen this actually now that I've probably thrust
Speaker 1: it on you, upon you at some point, well, I
Speaker 1: appreciate the thrust, um so, but no, we were talking
Speaker 1: about like how hard it can be if you're just
Speaker 1: trying to recreate an image by eyeballing something, or even worse,
Speaker 1: trying to recreate it from memory of an image. Right,
Speaker 1: what if you want to paint something but you can't
Speaker 1: stay you know, you can't paint it while you're looking
Speaker 1: at it. But if you had a portable camera obscura,
Speaker 1: you could maybe do kind of like a perspective sketch
Speaker 1: of it that could jog your memory later. And so
Speaker 1: using the camera obscure as a guide for drawing was
Speaker 1: an interesting stepping stone from a world where every recorded
Speaker 1: image was just necessarily a totally human interpretation to a
Speaker 1: world of the semi objective visual records like photographs. And
Speaker 1: I say semi objective because while, of course the light
Speaker 1: recording process of photography is mechanical and pretty much I
Speaker 1: would say objective, you can always still argue that photography
Speaker 1: is subjective in that it entails choices about framing and
Speaker 1: perspective left up to the photographer. Oh yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: like you can take a picture and it looks like
Speaker 1: somebody is is pushing or pushing over or holding up
Speaker 1: the leaning Tower of Pisa. Uh, you know, obviously that's
Speaker 1: not actually taking place. You can everybody's seen various pictures
Speaker 1: with some sort of a you know, a big animal
Speaker 1: like like a like a giant hog, that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: And yeah, there's there's room with perspective to play with
Speaker 1: the way you frame your shot to make things look
Speaker 1: different than they actually are. Right, But certainly, I mean
Speaker 1: there is still just like truly physical their rays of
Speaker 1: light coming into the lens, and that's in a way
Speaker 1: that is an objective recording of the physical space. And
Speaker 1: so I think it's so interesting that you've got this
Speaker 1: stepping stone in the middle here, the camera obscure as
Speaker 1: a way of like flattening out physical reality onto a
Speaker 1: two D surface, allowing you to to to see what
Speaker 1: that looks like. What is it like when you put
Speaker 1: the world on a flat space, And what happens if
Speaker 1: I trace that, what happens if I try to fill
Speaker 1: that in with paint. It's almost like seeing through another's eyes.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, externalizing some aspect of sight and
Speaker 1: getting to step outside of it. Well, maybe we should
Speaker 1: take another break and then come back and explore a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the legacy of the camera obscura
Speaker 1: and and some more ideas about how it could have
Speaker 1: figured into Renaissance art. Alright, we're back, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the legacy. Ultimately, the big
Speaker 1: the biggest legacy of the camera obscura is of course
Speaker 1: that it does lead to true photograph technology, to the
Speaker 1: true camera, and a lot of that we're going to
Speaker 1: say for the next episode of Invention. But there's still
Speaker 1: some other key key bits of legacy to discuss here.
Speaker 1: So I was not aware of this beforehand. But this
Speaker 1: is one thing our our friend Scott Benjamin turned up
Speaker 1: and and let us know about. Is this idea of
Speaker 1: an actual controversial hypothesis in art history that deals with
Speaker 1: the technology of the camera obscura and optics. Yes, the
Speaker 1: Hackney Falco thesis. Uh. And I have to say I
Speaker 1: was mainly familiar with it because teller of Penn and
Speaker 1: teller Um he put together a documentary called Tim's Ramier
Speaker 1: came out into that deals with with the subject we're
Speaker 1: discussing here. Okay, so what's the deal with this hypothesis? Alright?
Speaker 1: So it's a theory of art history proposed by artist
Speaker 1: David Hackney and physicists Charles M. Falco, and uh, the
Speaker 1: idea you know this basically this comes back to their
Speaker 1: book two thousand one books Secret Knowledge, Rediscovering the Lost
Speaker 1: Techniques of the Old Masters. And the basic idea is
Speaker 1: that we see leaps in realism during the Renaissance and
Speaker 1: Renaissance painting that they argue was due at least in
Speaker 1: in large part to the use of optical technology by
Speaker 1: the Old Masters, optical technology that would have included mirrors,
Speaker 1: but all so the camera obscura itself. And uh, the
Speaker 1: idea here is it's really interesting to discuss because of
Speaker 1: course artists use technology. You know, a brush is technology technolmistry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know they use any artists out there, it's
Speaker 1: gonna probably they're probably using the best brushes, the best canvases,
Speaker 1: the best paints. Uh, that you know that they can find,
Speaker 1: that they can obtain or that you know, fit their purposes.
Speaker 1: And uh, on top of that, we also know that
Speaker 1: nineteenth century artists made ready use of photographs, just as
Speaker 1: many painters do today. Century painters have made use of film,
Speaker 1: video computers. So it's not, in my mind crazy or
Speaker 1: blasphemous to consider that. Yes, painters such as Ramier may
Speaker 1: have used camera obscura or mirrors and lenses in the
Speaker 1: creation of their paintings. Maybe that's more of a taboo
Speaker 1: if you're in the art world or something that just
Speaker 1: seems to me like, well, okay, that's just a technique
Speaker 1: they were using. If if indeed I did use it,
Speaker 1: I don't want to assume here, right, And and this
Speaker 1: this theory is uh, you know, contested, it's not it's
Speaker 1: not proven by any any any means. But we're going
Speaker 1: into some of the arguments for both sides. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's clear that many artists certainly knew about optics. We've
Speaker 1: talked about We've already spoken about the the the the
Speaker 1: ancient history of the camera obscura. Da Vinci clearly knew, Yeah,
Speaker 1: albrec Dura apparently I wrote about the camera obscuria as well,
Speaker 1: And by fourteen thirty seven, Leon Batista Alberti is documented
Speaker 1: to have used the camera obscura in the creation of
Speaker 1: his art. But the question is, well, what about the others,
Speaker 1: How what about Vermier and and other old masters? Did
Speaker 1: they use the camera obscura and like keep it secret
Speaker 1: or not talk about as the thing? Was it like
Speaker 1: a trade secret among artists or was it less of
Speaker 1: a secret after all? I mean, there's evidence on both sides.
Speaker 1: So so this is something we could easily do an
Speaker 1: entire episode on like this this stock it, but just
Speaker 1: to sort of highlight some of the pros and cons here.
Speaker 1: So one pro is that, uh, you know, some charge
Speaker 1: that the level of detail in many of these masterpieces
Speaker 1: is beyond what one could simply eyeball, Like, there is
Speaker 1: just a level of detail and perspective um and and
Speaker 1: accuracy that requires more than just looking and remembering. Well,
Speaker 1: not having a talent for visual art myself, I feel
Speaker 1: like that's something I couldn't judge. I just know that
Speaker 1: some people are much better at mentally representing three D
Speaker 1: imagery onto a two D surface, and I don't know
Speaker 1: how much better than me. They could be right, And
Speaker 1: I'll go ahead and say that. One of the cons
Speaker 1: the big arguments against this is that is that some say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, you're discounting what is truly possible uh with
Speaker 1: the in the mind of the painter, Like what is
Speaker 1: truly possible without technological optical aids. Now, another bit of
Speaker 1: evidence that is sometimes brought up and presented is a
Speaker 1: fifteenth century painter beyond an Ike who included glass and
Speaker 1: even mirrors in his work, and it was clearly intrigued
Speaker 1: by optical properties. Like one of his most famous pieces
Speaker 1: is this portrait. Right in there, there's this uh, there's
Speaker 1: this mirror uh in the middle like behind them that
Speaker 1: centered between them, and in it you can see the
Speaker 1: painter uh and uh. And so it's it's been argued
Speaker 1: that like, yeah, he's including this mirror because he you know,
Speaker 1: he's he was, you know, somewhat obsessed by optics and
Speaker 1: that perhaps it was part of his process to use them. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing I can see is that it's just going
Speaker 1: to be hard to decide whether or not we should
Speaker 1: listen to this hypothesis. If it's just people arguing about
Speaker 1: what's possible for people to do without aids. I would
Speaker 1: be interested to see if there's evidence of like artifacts
Speaker 1: appearing in the painting that would only be there if
Speaker 1: people were using optical aids and technologies. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: this is where you get into the idea that there
Speaker 1: may be evidence of optical distortion in the finish pieces
Speaker 1: that would match up with the sort of optical distortion
Speaker 1: that you would get through using camera obscura or various mirrors. However,
Speaker 1: this too is contested, so you'll see Hackney and Falco,
Speaker 1: you know, presenting this as part of their evidence. But
Speaker 1: people who disagree with them, they're gonna argue, will know that,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not seeing this kind of optical distortion.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, isn't is one part of this distortion
Speaker 1: like the Rubens butts or is that just artistic style? Um,
Speaker 1: I don't recall the Rubenesque uh bodies being part of
Speaker 1: the evidence that it might have been now and and
Speaker 1: this also gets to another huge con and that is
Speaker 1: that there's far less direct or textual evidence here. So
Speaker 1: we're talking like, are you know artists having written about
Speaker 1: using these techniques? Are there being in anything beyond just
Speaker 1: merely looking at the pieces and and say and and
Speaker 1: interpreting them, interpreting the finished piece of art itself. So
Speaker 1: so yeah, ultimately, I feel like it's difficult to really
Speaker 1: land on, you know, one answer or the other. There
Speaker 1: is that Teller documentary, Tim's Vermier, and it follows Tim
Speaker 1: Jennison in his effort to duplicate the painting techniques of
Speaker 1: Vermier to test this theory and um, basically he ends
Speaker 1: he ends up creating this piece through uh, with the
Speaker 1: help of optical devices, and then Hackney and Falco themselves
Speaker 1: appear at the end and judge the finished work, which
Speaker 1: they conclude supports the theory. You mean, their theory that
Speaker 1: that he couldn't do it without the help of optical devices, right, well,
Speaker 1: But I mean I also don't want to I feel
Speaker 1: like it's tricky to frame this correctly because like, for
Speaker 1: my money, again not being a visual artist, uh and
Speaker 1: largely being just you know, uh, someone who appreciates art,
Speaker 1: I'd say that, you know, it doesn't just take anything
Speaker 1: away from me, uh to consider that Vermier or any
Speaker 1: of these other masters use this technology to create their work,
Speaker 1: like they're still it's not like if you've ever tried
Speaker 1: to trace anything and been disappointed in the work, and
Speaker 1: lord knows I did when I was younger, Like you
Speaker 1: can realize there's more than just merely projecting, you know,
Speaker 1: using the camera obscurity to project something on a wall
Speaker 1: and then tracing over it or painting over etcetera. Like
Speaker 1: you still have to have a very high degree of
Speaker 1: of artistic talent too to to bring that painting to lie. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean again, I don't know whether or not this
Speaker 1: hypothesis is true, but I mean I don't see any
Speaker 1: reason to object to it, apart from if it just
Speaker 1: has lack of evidence something like it's I believe in
Speaker 1: the superhuman power of art. But art isn't magic. I mean,
Speaker 1: art is a physical thing people do that involves technology
Speaker 1: all the time. Technology is constantly changing art. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the technology changes are I mean really the main exceptions
Speaker 1: to that, of course, are going to be cases where
Speaker 1: there's some sort of cultural need to preserve the technique
Speaker 1: through which the art is created. And we do see
Speaker 1: plenty of examples of that, and it's aspect actually true
Speaker 1: in places where you're protecting those cultural practices from technology
Speaker 1: that is brought in through colonial influence. But but even then,
Speaker 1: you guys, guess you guess you can argue, well, then
Speaker 1: you're still using technology to help preserve the culture of it.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you're using uh, you know, video to to capture
Speaker 1: the process so that others may learn it, or you're
Speaker 1: using you know, modern printing techniques to create a book
Speaker 1: that informs new members of these cultures, uh and instructs
Speaker 1: them on how to continue the tradition. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess that's just something that I feel like should always
Speaker 1: be that's up to the artist and is constantly negotiated
Speaker 1: between the artists and their audience, like what kind of
Speaker 1: techniques do they feel are acceptable? I'm I'm just saying
Speaker 1: I don't personally look at an artist using technology and think, wow,
Speaker 1: they're not really doing art right. And then and I
Speaker 1: imagine you also get into a case where what technological
Speaker 1: advances are permitted in which ones don't feel appropriate when
Speaker 1: you're trying to preserve some sort of you know, culturally
Speaker 1: in frenched practice, I imagine it's always an act of
Speaker 1: negotiation where you have to you have to decide, all right,
Speaker 1: we're not going to do this, but yes we will improve.
Speaker 1: They are brushes, are pigments, but we're still going to
Speaker 1: do it this way because this is the way that
Speaker 1: we always have done it. Personally, I think it's only
Speaker 1: art if it is painted on the side of a
Speaker 1: living pig, has to be in a cave. If it's
Speaker 1: not in a cave, it's not art. I wonder if
Speaker 1: you get people going the other way, like techno chauvinists
Speaker 1: about art, like it's only art if you use you know,
Speaker 1: this type of femtosecond laser to create it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, that would be interesting to consider. Hopefully we'll
Speaker 1: do more episodes in the future where we talk about
Speaker 1: the uh, the the influence of technology and invention on
Speaker 1: artistic endeavors. I mean, certainly we'll get into it in
Speaker 1: photography and motion pictures in our next two episodes. I
Speaker 1: do want to add one more thing. So obviously when
Speaker 1: we get to photography, uh, there is an erotic element
Speaker 1: that becomes evident. Oh yeah, and certainly with motion pictures
Speaker 1: as well. But I could find no evidence that, um,
Speaker 1: the camera obscure was ever used for erotic or pornographic purposes,
Speaker 1: which I guess makes sense. But but part of me
Speaker 1: is like a little disappointed slash suspicious because I feel
Speaker 1: like somebody had to have tried it at some point,
Speaker 1: and maybe, you know, to whatever extent. Artists were toying
Speaker 1: with the technology or using the technology. I figured one
Speaker 1: of them. But Leonardo, come on, he had to have
Speaker 1: have tried this out at some point. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I I can see why it wouldn't have necessarily been
Speaker 1: all that useful in that context because the benefit of
Speaker 1: using photography and and motion picture and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: is that it can just be like fixed in time, duplicated,
Speaker 1: replayed or viewed later with the camera obscure. Your subject
Speaker 1: has to be physically present, right, so you'd have Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would have to be a very particular sort of
Speaker 1: technological fetish um. So, I don't know. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: as far as I could tell, doesn't factor into the
Speaker 1: history of erotic art in in any way other than
Speaker 1: just being mainly precursor to photography. But if I'm wrong
Speaker 1: on that, I would love to hear tales of erotic
Speaker 1: camera obscura. Just a hunk with a Ruben's but upside
Speaker 1: down on your back wall of your barn or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the mental image we should close
Speaker 1: on here, upside down Reuben's but hunk. Yes, yes, I should.
Speaker 1: I should just actually throw in and explain a little bit.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the the art of Peter Paul reubens
Speaker 1: Um who Free you. We we discussed reuben Esque paintings.
Speaker 1: Used that term for a reason because he did have
Speaker 1: a very signature um like sort of thick naked style,
Speaker 1: and so many of his arts magnificently paintings. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: magnificent Stocky Butts his paintings. They're just full of them, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and it does make me think back to an
Speaker 1: older episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, um that
Speaker 1: I did with with Julie Douglass about us Den Dall syndrome.
Speaker 1: The idea, know, you're you're in the presence of great
Speaker 1: art and it has a physical effect on you. Uh.
Speaker 1: There is at least one variant of that that that
Speaker 1: tied into Reuben's work and the idea that, like in
Speaker 1: viewing the pieces, you would just be overcome by the
Speaker 1: erotic power of them, hypnotized by magnificent Stocky Butts, I
Speaker 1: guess yeah. And again it kind of gets into the
Speaker 1: power of the of of the two D image, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's easy to take for granted just how how potent
Speaker 1: and over and overpowering these works can be. They almost
Speaker 1: have a quality that's kind of like a pirate, pirate
Speaker 1: video transmission from another dimension where Butts are king. All right, well,
Speaker 1: we'll leave you all to to google the works of
Speaker 1: Reuben on your own, as well as these other artists
Speaker 1: that we've mentioned here. We're gonna go and close out
Speaker 1: this episode of Invention, but certainly tune in next week
Speaker 1: in the week after as we begin to explore the camera,
Speaker 1: the motion picture and then go on from there and
Speaker 1: our continual, uh never ending exploration of human techno history.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, you want to check out old episodes
Speaker 1: of Invention, head on over to the website that is
Speaker 1: Invention pod dot com. That is where you will find
Speaker 1: all the episodes. You find links out to social media accounts.
Speaker 1: If you want to engage with other listeners, hit on
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Speaker 1: There it's the Stuff to Blow Your Mind discussion module,
Speaker 1: because that is where you can discuss the episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind, our other podcast or episodes
Speaker 1: of Invention. UH discuss it with other listeners as well
Speaker 1: as UH as with us because we pop in fairly
Speaker 1: regularly there. Yeah, come on by, Yeah huge, Thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our wonderful audio producer Tory Harrison. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: about this episode or any other UH to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, just to say hello, tell us
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