Camera Obscura

reality itself. And an example of this, of course, is the photograph. Think about the difference between a photograph and the real world. Uh so, you know, we're so used to photos at this point that we take them for granted, but try again to feel the weirdness and appreciate how strange it is and how mystical it is that that

we have these objects around us. Like the physical world, you know, is this ongoing transient, always moving, always lightning and darkening, always transforming three dimensional space full of objects. But then you've got the photograph, which is a fixed two dimensional image on on a flat surface. And yet we think of the photograph as an objective or sort of semi objective. We can explore that distinction and a bit record of physical reality. It's definitely a record of something,

but it's not exactly physical reality, is it. It's physical reality interpreted through this transformation process that partially resembles and partially does not resemble animal vision. Yeah, I mean and and and this is even without getting into modern or even twentieth century. Uh, you know, photo editing techniques, just like the raw photographic image that results. Yeah, is this thing that is it's really you can't think of it

as as an approximation of of animal site of biological site. Uh, it's it's more like it's almost like a form of language in the same way that we've discussed them this and stuff to bully your mind before. How written language is like a thought that has taken and frozen so that it can retain the same form for the most part with some interpretations. And and that's sort of what we're doing with with photography. We're kind of freezing, uh, the mental image or some version of the mental image.

Except it can also be misleading because I think photography has contributed to us having a skewed idea of what mental imagery is. It's actually led to us I think, having an idea that our mental imagery is like a fixed record that has full resolution at every you know, from corner to corner of the image, which, as we'll discuss also a little bit more in this episode, is not the case at all. Our vision is something more like a an interpretive illusion based on key bits of

light data entering through the eyes. Yeah. And and yet, especially for you know, for us modern humans, we we often reinterpret our memories in the forum of photos, uh and and motion pictures. I know, I catch myself doing

this all the time. I'll think back to, say, a moment from my childhood, and what I'm kind of doing is I'm kind of picturing a photograph, a photograph that might exist, because sometimes I am referring back to actual photographs that serve as kind of like a uh, you know, a bookmark for that memory, perhaps even the source of a memory, where I'm really remembering a picture of something rather than the experience. But other times I'm kind of forming some sort of how you know, half realized, half

imaginary photo of what happened. But think about how different our memories of our childhood would be if there were no photographs whatso ever, like no even semi objective visual record of the world that we lived in. Back then, all we had was mental imagery and memory. Yeah, what if you were like most people and when a when I loved, when grew older or certainly passed away, you had no longer any real physical reminder of what they looked like. You could forget the face of your your

father in a in a very real way. So I think it's absolutely clear that photography is one of the most revolutionary technologies that's ever been created. It has probably not just changed what humans are able to do, but has fundamentally in some ways altered the way we think, in the way we envision our own lives. But there was a long time before there was photography, and it's probably pretty tempting to think, well, you know, before photography,

we just had imagination. We had drawing, we had painting. People could like look at the world around them and try to interpret it in paintings, but would be the closest thing we had to a visual, uh sort of sy my objective record of what the world looked like. But that's not exactly right, because there was a sort of stepping stone before we had photography, we had the camera obscura. That's right, and that is going to be what we're going to focus this episode on. Basically, the

the approach here is we want to devote like three episodes. Uh, first the camera obscura, and then do an episode on on the origins of photography, and then do an episode on the motion picture, so you know, basically climbing ascending the ladder to still photography, then the moving picture and talk about you know, how these changes came about, how these inventions came about, and how they changed our world. Yeah, so the camera obscura is not a camera in the

sense you're thinking of. It doesn't actually constitute photography, meaning making a fixed record of a visual scene. A camera obscura. That's literally it's Latin and it means what dark room, dark chamber, dark chamber. Yeah, which is a wonderful name. It's one of the reasons that that at times doing research on camera obscura can be so difficult because it seems like camera obscura has been the name of so many different like literary journals, horror movies, movies, bands. It's

just such a cool title. But yeah, it means dark chamber, because one of the key elements here is that that's necessary and would have been necessary in ancient times as well, is that you have to have a dark chamber to create a camera obscura. And the weird thing about camera obscure is this that they do services kind of bridge between like natural optics and photographic technology, and yet it feels magic in a way like even today as a modern user using it, like it feels magic in a

way that photography no longer feels magic. It feels magical in a way that site no longer feels magical, even though when you break down what's exactly is happening biologically and and and and neurologically during side, I mean that's it's it's a pretty fantastic process as well. But yeah, the camera obscura still has this um this this this kind of eerie feel to it. Yes, the camera obscure.

So the principle is extremely simple, but the implications are fascinating, and the way it's been processed throughout human history and in the history of optics leading up to photography is also fascinating. So the basic principle, as we say, is mechanically extremely simple. You have a darkened chamber. And this can be a room in a building or a tent,

or this could even be a small box. It could even just be like a shoe box or a can something that is a chamber that doesn't allow light in except through a single small aperture on one side, right, and and we have to stress with this aperture. More recent camera obscuras, like for instance, my my wife um Bonnie, who is a photographer in the Atlanta area, she recently made a camera obscura as part of an open house for for the studio that she has, and they used

a lens to service the aperture. But you don't need to use a lens. All you need is a hole. Yeah, now, the lens. The lens is an important development that comes to later in the history of the camera obscura. But yeah, all you need is a whole. And what you get when you have a darkened room with a small hole that's the right size and the right position away from the wall opposite it is that an inverted image from the world outside this this box or this room will

be projected onto the wall of the darkened chamber. So, just as an example, if your camera obscura is a room with the right kind of small hole in the wall facing a view of the Pyramids of Giza, you will see an image of the pyramids upside down and inverted projected against the wall opposite the whole, as if there were an upside down film slide projector shining against

a screen. Right. It's just it's it's maddening to kind of see one in action because it feels like there should be a projector there, there should be some man made mechanism that is make ing this possible, and and it's not. It's it's basically just a hole. Yeah. Now you might wonder, okay, wait a second, why does this happen? Like, why don't the windows in my house do that? Right? That my house is a closed chamber, I've got holes in the walls that light can pass through the windows.

And so there are a few reasons the windows in your house probably don't work this way. Number one, your house is not dark enough. Number two, you've got too many sources of light probably that are you know, coming from different directions. And number three, normal windows are generally too wide, letting in light from too many different angles

to actually cast an image with any resolution. So let's think about the reasons why a pinhole or a small lens projects an image of the outside world inverted on an inner wall, while a larger hole or lens does not. A few main principles here and number one, pretty much all the light in an outdoor scene is reflected sunlight, so it's the sunshines down. Light bounces off everything out there.

Number two, when reflects off of an object, the wavelength is changed unless its color has changed, so you've got different colored rays of light beaming all over the place. Number three, light is reflected off surfaces at all angles, so it's going to go in all kinds of directions. But once it's reflected, and this is number four, it travels in a straight line. And because light travels in a straight line, and because the aperture in the in

the camera obscurit is small rays. Striking the bottom of the projected image will come from the top of the original image, and raise striking the top of the projected image will come from the bottom of the original same thing goes left to right. You've got uh light rays entering in all directions through a sort of you can imagine a filtering cone that focuses the image and makes it sharp that then forms a cone of projection on the other side of the wall. I think the first

place I saw a camera scirit was the Royal Museum, Greenwich. Oh, I haven't been there. Yeah, it's it's a great place to check one out because it also has like his storical context because there's there's been a camera obscura at Greenwich from like the late seventeenth century on through the mid nineteenth century, and the current one was a believe installed in n and it shows a close up moving panorama of Greenwich and the and the Thames, the National

Maritime Museum and the Royal Naval College. So it's it's really cool. Yeah, anybody, any of our British listeners out there, or anyone who finds themselves visiting that area, it's a great place to check out the camera obscura in action. I mean, what does it look like. It's so it's projected on a wall, like a stone wall or a screen. Yeah. I mean this was over a decade ago when I when I saw it, but I remember it had kind of it has kind of a ghostly quality to it.

That's one of the striking things about my experiences with camera obscuras is that in both cases there is this this ethereal nature to it, Like you wouldn't, at least the ones I've experienced, you wouldn't like walk into it and like smack into the wall thinking it's it's reality, but like there's a feeling of the allusion to it,

and yet it yet has this magical property. Yeah, I know what you're talking about, and you can vary, you can sort of like tweak those magic feeling properties or the qualities of the projected image by changing things about the aperture that lets the light in. For example, a smaller aperture you shrink the whole, that will generally produce a sharper image on the projection with less blurring, but it will also be dimmer, of course, because less light

is getting through the hole. A wider aperture, on the other hand, will produce a brighter but blurrier picture generally. And in fact, you can imagine just taking this principle uh to the extreme, because this is how if you just keep widening the aperture more and more, eventually the picture would get brighter and brighter and blurrier and blurrier. Until eventually what you have is simply a window. Again,

you're just admitting white light with no definition in the image. Now, one other technological way to mess with this that you know, you mentioned that when Bonnie made one had a lens in it. The lens is a really wharton upgrade on the simple hole in the wall camera obscura. A lens is of course transparent and has a convex outer surface, and this allows you to get more of the best qualities of a smaller aperture combined with a larger aperture.

The convex lens gathers more light from more angles because of the way it bends, so it literally admits more light and creates a brighter picture, while at the same time it focuses that light toward a point by the refraction that the lens does, allowing you to get a sharper, more focused, and brighter image. It's a pretty impressive trick, and there are a number of really cool illustrations from

old texts illustrating this. So where you you'll see like a figure figure A, and then there's a you know, a second figure inside of the box, and that that figures upside down, and then you have the lines drawing. How the the the optical image is inverted. It's it's pretty cool. I mean focusing light like this through a lens that goes through an aperture and then projects inverted on a screen is actually similar to how our eyes work. You think about this like so the human eye, of course,

light is gathered and refracted through a lens. You've got a lens in your eye, and then its focus projected onto a light sensitive membrane at the back of the eye, and this is called the retina. These are our retinas, and the light sensing cells in the retina then transmit the image, or maybe not the image, you could say the data from the image to the brain to be

interpreted into the experience we call vision. And just like with the camera obscura, just like the projection on the wall at the back of the camera obscura, the images of the world that we see every day are projected onto our retinas in an inverted form, upside down and reverse. That's how they hit those light sensitive cells, and it's up to the brain to create the perception of the

visual field that we interpret as right side up. Now, one thing I way I've often seen this I think perhaps mis explained is that this fact is sometimes communicated by saying that our brains quote flip or quote rotate the retinal image back to the format it was in. But that's not quite right because there's nothing for the brain to flip it onto. You know. You think about

like the perception of the visual field. Uh, the image that you actually think you see in your brain is not a physical space mapping one for one from reality, but a sort of perceptual illusion created by the brain. A great example of this, if you've never tried it, you probably think you can see color in your peripheral vision, right you just assume you can see color everywhere, but you can. You can play a really fun game to

break this illusion. Have somebody whole different colored flags right at the edge of your peripheral vision where you can just see motion and you think you can see color, and then try to say what color the flags are, you will probably fail. Another good thing to use our identical markers with different colored tops, like you have a bunch of sharpie's like we have in the office, where some of green tops, some of red tops all virtually

the same looking. So get somebody to sneak up behind you with much of them and experiment with optics that way. I think I just noticed you sort of trying. Yeah, I have a green one in my hand, and I mean it's difficult to do to yourself because you, of course have so much of our vision is about like the memory and knowledge of the thing exactly. Yeah, but that's because like you're seeing with your brain as much

as you're seeing with your eyes. Your eyes, actually you know you're you're not seeing color over here, even though you strongly have the perception that you're seeing color in your periphery. So your brain creates a sensation of an image simulating a kind of one to one relationship with the outside physical world that you can prove in a number of ways does not actually, uh you know, it does not actually capture that world in a one to

one way. Another example is our complete unawareness moment to moment of the blind spot created in each eye by the optic nerve. Do you ever play that game, Oh, this is where the basically there's that that spot where you cannot see, but your vision kind of stitches everything together. Yeah, you don't notice that you have blind spots right in

front of your face. Right. That reminds me of our chat with the author or Scott Baker on Stuff to Bluw your Mind, where you talked about having an eye condition, uh that he had corrected, but it it caused him to have an extra blind spot and so if he looked at, say his dog's face, he would see like a faceless dog. Yes, but that that's the fascinating thing. The way he described it was it wasn't like he saw a like black hole there where there was nothing. Instead,

he just did not see in that area. And it's just no vision. And yet the brain stitches together a picture anyway, giving you the impression that you're seeing your surroundings in a one to one way, which we are not. Right. It's more it's less like like we are the observer and more like we're given a we're given a version

of it. We're so kind of like the head of a big company or state and somebody like gives us a memo, uh like telling us what the situation is, and we we agree with it because it seems like it's all properly a symbol. Yeah, So I think the way the brain puts together the idea of what's right

side up and upside down. Is cognitively that's going on in processing somewhere in the brain based on all kinds of sense data, visual data, but also I think, just like balance data and stuff like that, the retina senses. The brain perceives based on the senses, including this retinal data, but the perception created is not a photograph inverted from the retinas, but more like an interpretation based on it.

But anyway, it is true that the projector screen of light sensitive cells that send information to your brain, that those retinas, they receive an image inverted from its orientation

in physical space. So ironically, when we look at an image projected onto the back wall of a camera obscura upside down and reversed, it's then reflected and refracted through the lenses of our eyes projected on our retina's right side up again, and of course our brains, being doing what they do, they seamlessly correct or interpret this input,

flipping it upside down again and option. Another interesting thing about the camera obscure in the history of how people have thought about what the eyes do is that a very common view among scholars throughout the ages is that light is not an external input on the eyes, but rather the many scholars throughout history believed that the eyes would beam out some kind of retrieving ray which grabs images from the world and pulls them back in. This is,

of course extremely wrong. Eyes are input and that output. But it's funny how captivating that kind of a way of viewing the world can be. Yeah, it's easy just to sort of subconsciously think of it that way. Um, you know, think if your your eyes sort of yet reaching out and touching the world and reporting back like they're like like they're they're they're they're touching the side

of an elephant or something and reporting back. And of course, as we mentioned on the show before, our our various romantic pop songs are always getting it wrong talking about my eyes touch you physically, that sort of thing where it's like, no, don't, don't touch eyeballs lovers of the Oh, Peter Gabriel is the worst offenders. Oh yeah, what was his line from he wants to touch the light the heat in your eyes. He's literally advocating the touching of

eyeballs with you know, salty, greasy fingertips. Very bad. Yeah, there's no there's no reason for that. Uh, but but anyway, Okay, so the camera scare. We we know it was this important development in the history of optics, but it does not constitute photography because it does not fix the image it captures to be observed later. So so what did it do? I think we should take a break and then come back and look at possible in this sort of possible invention history of the camera obscure and what

it did. Alright, we're back. So this is another one of those cases where when you look at the technology that is required for the simplest version of the of the invention the camera scare, in this case, you really don't need much. You need the ability to have to build or manipulate an enclose dark space, and you need whole technology. I mean. The funny thing is a camera obscura doesn't even have to be created by humans. They

can exist totally naturally. Imagine a tree that's hollow in the middle and it's got a hole in the bark. Or imagine a cave that's got a the correctly sized hole in the wall that projects against an opposite wall. Yeah, so we have to imagine our our Gary Larsen's far side. Um prehistoric human encountering some some some form of camera obscura and reacting to it in in ancient times. Well, that's really interesting because we don't know who created the

first camera obscure on purpose. We don't know who encountered the first camera obscura. Uh. We do have some early descriptions of how it works or how people thought it worked. But once uncertain and very intriguing possibility is what you're talking about. The prehistoric people's actually discuss heard the use of the camera obscura, long before we knew anything about

optics or how this worked. One example is I was reading an interesting article about this by the science writer Jennifer Willett about a presentation by somebody named Kieran Simcox, a student at Nottingham Trent University at the Royal Astronomical Society in Britain in and the base idea here is that prehistoric megalithic tomb structures, you know, these big stone

tombs that ancient people's built. Uh, you know, before before we had any written records, with a long, narrow passage ways in these tombs would sometimes open towards the sky and would effectively function as a type of camera obscura for observing stars and astronomical objects there were otherwise too dim to see. For instance, citing a certain star rising at dawn at the beginning of spring could have been a sign for ancient hunter gatherers to migrate for the

warmer months. It's possible. We don't know, but that that's an interesting thing to consider, like ancient ancient use of camera obscura as a means of observing the cosmos, which of course it is a very even today. It's it's an effective way, one way to observe a solar eclipse.

That's exactly right, and and ancient thinkers noticed this. It's also been postulated by a number of scholars that other prehistoric structures, caves and even hollow trees maybe have the potential to become a camera obscura simply if there's a correctly sized and positioned whole or aperture UH. And thus the camera obscure could possibly even play a role in the origin of cave paintings and art. Again, we don't

know this happened, but just imagine the possibility. Imagine the transition from a three D always moving visual world to UH to a fixed two D image when a camera obscura projected an image from the outside of a cave inverted onto a cave wall, and a prehistoric common in trace to that image or was INSPI fired by the projected image to make two D images of their own. Yeah.

You know, this makes me wonder, and this is just pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if this could have influenced any early concepts of of other realms, you know, some sort of an upside down world it's more faint than our own. Yeah, yeah, uh, the the ethereal nature of the imagination coming through in that. Yeah. So it's a really interesting speculation based on some slight evidence,

but at this point it remains speculation. We we don't know for sure or have any really strong evidence that I'm aware of, that any prehistoric people's made use of a camera obscure. It's fascinating to imagine, but we don't know. However, there were important early descriptions of the principle of the camera obscure, and I think, as as far as I'm aware, the earliest one was by a fifth century b c. E. Chinese philosopher named Mosey or mo d Yeah, or just

master mode because that's what it means. Uh. And this would have been the Warring States period. So master Moe wrote on the subject of a pinhole aperture and how it could be used to understand the power of light. He wrote about how a small hole in the wall of a darkened house could cause an image of the outside world to be projected inverted or upside down on the opposite wall, and master Moe wrote, quote, the image is inverted because there is an intersection at the point.

It is because of the point that the image is formed. And this is quoted in a in a book chapter by Edwin K. Lae on the history of photographic technology in China. Yeah, I had another quote from Mow that I've found really interesting image. An illuminated person shines as

if he were emitting rays. The bottom part of the person appears at the top part of the image, and the top part appears at the bottom part, so that image is formed at the top whilst light from the head has been blocked in the upper parts, so the image is formed at the bottom. From distances far away or nearby, light enters through the point. Therefore an image is formed inside the collecting house. So this show is that Master Mo understood the optical principles about how this

image was being projected through the aperture. Yeah. Yeah, And I think that's one that's like one thing that that is perhaps lacking in in earlier accounts is you know, if you see um, like say, an accidental camera obscura in action, you might just might not have the language to even interpret what's occurring, uh, except perhaps magical descriptions that could sort of you know, become lost over time. But yeah, he clearly understands the principle at play here.

But one of the things that's interesting too is that the writings of Mo fell out of fashion, and it seems um that no one else wrote about camera obscurities in China, or at least nothing that I survived for another thousand years. So it's it's always interesting when someone kind of either happens upon an invention or sort of highlights of technology and then it perhaps it's just before it's time, or there's nothing there's no real application for it, or no one you know, grabs onto it, and so

it just kind of languishes for a millennium. Yeah, it's fascinating. You have to wonder, I don't know, if it's possible or if it's likely that this would happen. But you have to wonder are similar things happening now? Is there like somebody doing something now that a thousand years later people will look back and be like, wow, so and so did this thing that was revolutionary, but people didn't recognize it at the time and they forgot about it

for a thousand years. It's kind of hard to imagine that. But then again, I mean, we wouldn't know it. If we saw it right, that'd be the reason we weren't picking up on it. Yeah, well, I feel my gut instinct is that is that innovation takes place at such a faster pace. You know, we wouldn't be looking at a thousand years, would be looking at uh, you know, a decade or maybe five years. And I think that you do see some level of this, certainly with with

certain bits of technological innovation. You know, I think there are probably some examples and say tablet technology where you see precursors to uh, the iPhone or the iPad, etcetera. And uh, you know, the the early versions just didn't take off. But then it's like somebody gets it right and or markets that correct, markets that correctly, or manufactures it correctly like like gets something else. Some of the other boxes checked off that allow the product to really

take hold in the in the collective mindset. Yeah. I was reading a brief passage about master Most discovery in another book called Capturing the Light by Roger Watson and Helen Rapp Report, and that's also about the history of photography, but they're talking about the optical discoveries of Master mo and they write, quote, he spoke of a device for

passing sunlight through a pinhole onto a collecting plate. It's mysterious function being that of a quote locked treasure room, a kind of light proof box that would channel the power of the on in such a way that man could safely observe it and the images of the recognized world outside that it projected. And I love this mysterious imagery here, the locked treasure room, because it is sort of it's like a treasure room of insights about optics.

It would you know, Master Moe had this indispensable in counterintuitive insight to understand the power of light. You had to limit it. You can only begin to understand optics and the power of the sun and the behavior of light rays by blocking out almost all of its influence.

But anyway, I mean, from all this, it's interesting to see that the camera obscura has this whole role going way way back in Chinese history, probably before and certainly separate from its role in the history of Western optics, though certainly early Western minds did pick up on it as well. Yeah, Aristotle sort of seemed to allude to the focusing effects of an aperture on sunlight. For example,

during an eclipse. If you've ever witnessed a solar eclipse, a total solar eclipse, when the eclipse gets near totality, you will see all kinds of bizarre effects in the world around you. Just look at the way that sunlight, say, filtering through the you know, the spots in the of light that get through a tree's canopy or something, all become sickle shaped. It's just a world of little bright

sickles all around you. Yeah. Well, when the last solar eclipse occurred in North America, we had an episode of stuff to blow your mind about it. I believe we we we talked about observing it or no, maybe we gave I think it was like two parts. We gave sort of a preliminary episode in which we prepared people to view the eclipse, and then afterwards we talked about our own experiences a little bit. Yeah, I'm really glad I went out to see that. I went up to

Tennessee to observe it, and it was. It was magnificent. If you get a chance to see a total solar eclipse in your life, don't miss that chance. It's worth seeing. Yeah, it is. It is also magical feeling in the way that it reveals uh uh, you know, reveals the wonder of something we just take for granted. You know, we're just so immersed in the normal solar cycles that when you have this, you know, this, this, this, uh, this solar eclipse occur, it really makes you realize the majesty

of what is occurring every day. Yeah. Now back to

the camera obscura. There were more developments around the eleventh century, so while not fully describing a pinhole camera or camera obscura, according to Edwin Lae, some of the basic principles involved were articulated by a Chinese Song Dynasty scientist and political leader named shin Quo who lived ten thirty one to ten ninety five, who performed experiments showing that if you used a curved mirror to use sunlight to start fires like focusing, you know, doing the burning a burning an

ant thing which don't do that, um, the mirror would invert the image that it reflected. And Shin quote said this was because of quote friction. I'm not sure what that means, but maybe there is a sense to that that's that's getting lost into translation. But of course it's in the Arab world that we see some of the

other really key preliminary mentions of the camera obscurra Yes, exactly. So. The first full known description of the camera obscure, according to Watson and Rapp report, is by the eleventh century Arab physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and general polymath Ebben i'll hype Them, also known sometimes as al Hasan and i'll hythe Them, wrote a seven volume work on the science of optics between around ten eleven and ten one, and in this work he described the use of a pinhole aperture in

a darkened enclosure to observe sunlight, including using it to observe a solar eclipse, and he established through experiments performed in Cairo, that light traveled in straight lines, and he used the camera obscura to make notes about the shape of the Sun during a partial eclipse, like we were talking about now. Of course, looking directly at the sun even during a partial eclipse can severely damage your eyes.

Don't do it. You should never look directly the sun even during a solar eclipse, except during the brief period of totality. But a pinhole camera box can actually allow you to observe what happens to the shape of the Sun as it becomes a sickle of starlight before it's totally eclipse during the process. So if you don't want to damage your eyes and you want to observe the partial stages of an eclipse, a camera obscure is a great thing to build, and you can look up instructions

on the internet about how to do this. A lot of you know, a lot of people did this in elementary school. Oh yeah, this all you use a shoebox. Yeah. Now. Edwin Ly also mentions other figures in the history of Chinese optics who may have done some experiments with or referred to the camera obscura. The Yuan dynasty scholars Tao zong Ye about who lived about about fourteen o two, and Xiao yu Chen, who lived the mid twelve hundreds

to the early thirteen hundreds. They both made references to this knowledge, and Jiao did experiments to show quote how changes in the light source and in distances from the pinhole would change the final image. So he's writing about the principle. Now. Somebody who definitely had thoughts about the camera obscura was the medieval English philosopher and empiricist Roger Bacon on one of the heroes of William of Baskerville.

Oh yeah, that's right. And so Roger Bacon, having read event L. Hyatham's work in translation by the thirteenth century, wrote that optics in the study of light was quote the flower of the whole of philosophy, and that without it none of the other sciences would ever be would ever be understood. And so understanding the importance of the camera obscura in studying optical phenomena, Bacon used the principle

to observe solar eclipses in the thirteenth century. You know, it's interesting to think about the way that certainly, certainly astronomy and uh in scientific understanding of previous centuries like made its way into occult practices and alchemy. Um. I'm reminded that in reading about various recipes for creating a monk uh, there were calls for like using a totally

dark room. I don't remember any mention of of a pinhole or an aperture, but it makes me think if if to some extent, experiments by the you know, these these great thinkers in the past with cameras camera obscure as might have served to sort of cement the darkened room as some sort of you know, a magical space for spell work. Oh yeah, you could think, especially if you like saw but didn't understand what I'll hythe them

and Master Mow and Roger Bacon were doing that. They'd like take people into a darkened room and there'd be all this ooing and owing, and you're like, what's going on? Yeah, Like like Bacon has this room and there there's no light around allowed in it except for one little hole, and something spectacular happens in there, and that that it

sounds suspicious totally. I can see that now over the following centuries, the camera obscure would appear in a more portable format as a something more like what you're familiar with, probably if you've ever made one out of a shoebox. The camera obscura became often the form of a wooden box with like a ground glass lens, which could even be said over a table or other surface to project an image onto whatever screen was desired, even on the paper.

And this idea of projecting direct images of the natural world, while not a form of photography, was an interesting precursor to it, since you could use the projected image as a kind of tracing guide or to create a template for a work of art to be painted and filled in later and the Renaissance painter and inventor Leonardo da Vinci used the camera obscura for exactly this purpose, recognizing its power to help guide the artist in correctly replicating perspective.

Because Robert, I don't know if you is bad an artist design, I'm terrible at drawing in visual visual art. But I think even if you've got some natural talent for it, just think about how hard it is to recreate perspective effects of our of our point of view on an image just by eyeballing it. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I'm I can only just draw gremlins and whatnot

in the margins of of notes. But one of the things I have a friend named Kurt who is a professional artist, and one of my favorite things to do with him is get him to explain paintings to me, because you know, I have I have a lot of appreciation for art. I have a fair amount of you know, I can keep up with a fair amount of art history. But when he gets into the technical aspects of perspective and all uh, Like, he he always points out something

that I'm just completely blind to. It just really makes me appreciate even more so the talent that is executed, uh, the artistry that is executed in some of these great works of art past and present. Oh yeah, I mean that's one reason, like an actual curated museum tour with somebody who knows what they're talking about with the works of art and can show you things to look at that can be far more interesting than you'd even imagine. Um. I you know, I I enjoy art museums and all that,

but a really good guided tour is gold. Yeah. Like, I tend to end up focusing a lot on, of course, the history of the piece, who made it, win, the symbolism, uh, that you know, if there's a mythological story or a biblical story that's being told, they're like, what's its purpose? What's its message? Story? Minded? Yeah, so so that you know, that's where I often enter in and I have to be reminded of all that other stuff, um, you know,

beyond the material aspects of it as well. Though this also reminds me of the worst museum tour I ever had with There was one we went on where there was a docent who every painting we'd go to, he'd be like, what do you notice about this painting? And the group people in the group would say stuff I don't know, and they'd offer up answers, and he just keeps saying, no, what do you notice until we got the answer he wanted. We usually didn't. Then then he'd

just eventually have to tell us. You know, there's not to get off and too much of a tangent, But there is something about about seeing actually like the actual piece of art that I mean. Obviously, it's great when you realize something is even grander than you thought it was. You know, it's a much bigger piece, and you're you get to sort of interact with it and you change

your perspectives on it. But I also enjoy kind of the reverse where you're like, oh wow, this this painting is really small in real life and it feels less grand in a way presented here instead of in a book or on a computer screen. Or another one that comes to mind is Bookland's, uh the Isle of the Dead, or or one of the versions with a few different

versions of it. Bet there's one of them is hanging in the met in New York City, and it's it's kind of a disappointing experience, or I felt slightly disappointed. It's amazing to see it in real life, knowing that this is a famous painting, you know, one that you've read about and heard about. But it's a very dark image, a lot of a lot of black in it, and so it's it's it's really difficult to get a real

world like to get yourself and just right. They're just the right perspective to really look at it and take it in as a painting, or at least in my experience. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that can definitely. I've noticed sometimes I've seen I've gone to see a painting in real life, you know that I've seen represented on

maybe TV or on a computer screen before. And the weird thing I found is that seeing it in person sometimes was a less intimate feeling of relationship to that work of art than seeing it on like a screen had been. I'm not quite sure why that is. Maybe it's just that you're physically closer to a screen or that screens or where so much of your life happens. Yeah. Yeah, and it's weird. And I feel like it does vary

from artists to artists and style to style. Um. You know, like one of my my favorite artists is Irving Norman, and I really enjoy looking at his you know, magazine prints of his work, looking at images on the computer screen, but getting to see his pieces in real life really blow me away. Like there's it's it's like, you know, ten times the experience. Yeah. That, well, I'm not sure that I know Irving Norman. I'll have to look him up after. It's definitely worth looking up very you know, dark,

dark surrealist star of the century. Oh I think maybe I have seen this actually now that I've probably thrust it on you, upon you at some point, well, I appreciate the thrust, um so, but no, we were talking about like how hard it can be if you're just trying to recreate an image by eyeballing something, or even worse, trying to recreate it from memory of an image. Right, what if you want to paint something but you can't stay you know, you can't paint it while you're looking

at it. But if you had a portable camera obscura, you could maybe do kind of like a perspective sketch of it that could jog your memory later. And so using the camera obscure as a guide for drawing was an interesting stepping stone from a world where every recorded image was just necessarily a totally human interpretation to a

world of the semi objective visual records like photographs. And I say semi objective because while, of course the light recording process of photography is mechanical and pretty much I would say objective, you can always still argue that photography is subjective in that it entails choices about framing and perspective left up to the photographer. Oh yeah, you know, like you can take a picture and it looks like somebody is is pushing or pushing over or holding up

the leaning Tower of Pisa. Uh, you know, obviously that's not actually taking place. You can everybody's seen various pictures with some sort of a you know, a big animal like like a like a giant hog, that sort of thing, And yeah, there's there's room with perspective to play with the way you frame your shot to make things look different than they actually are. Right, But certainly, I mean there is still just like truly physical their rays of light coming into the lens, and that's in a way

that is an objective recording of the physical space. And so I think it's so interesting that you've got this stepping stone in the middle here, the camera obscure as a way of like flattening out physical reality onto a two D surface, allowing you to to to see what that looks like. What is it like when you put the world on a flat space, And what happens if I trace that, what happens if I try to fill that in with paint. It's almost like seeing through another's eyes.

It's like, you know, externalizing some aspect of sight and getting to step outside of it. Well, maybe we should take another break and then come back and explore a little bit more about the legacy of the camera obscura and and some more ideas about how it could have figured into Renaissance art. Alright, we're back, so we're gonna

talk a little bit about the legacy. Ultimately, the big the biggest legacy of the camera obscura is of course that it does lead to true photograph technology, to the true camera, and a lot of that we're going to say for the next episode of Invention. But there's still some other key key bits of legacy to discuss here. So I was not aware of this beforehand. But this is one thing our our friend Scott Benjamin turned up

and and let us know about. Is this idea of an actual controversial hypothesis in art history that deals with the technology of the camera obscura and optics. Yes, the Hackney Falco thesis. Uh. And I have to say I was mainly familiar with it because teller of Penn and teller Um he put together a documentary called Tim's Ramier came out into that deals with with the subject we're discussing here. Okay, so what's the deal with this hypothesis? Alright?

So it's a theory of art history proposed by artist David Hackney and physicists Charles M. Falco, and uh, the idea you know this basically this comes back to their book two thousand one books Secret Knowledge, Rediscovering the Lost

Techniques of the Old Masters. And the basic idea is that we see leaps in realism during the Renaissance and Renaissance painting that they argue was due at least in in large part to the use of optical technology by the Old Masters, optical technology that would have included mirrors, but all so the camera obscura itself. And uh, the idea here is it's really interesting to discuss because of

course artists use technology. You know, a brush is technology technolmistry. Yeah, so you know they use any artists out there, it's gonna probably they're probably using the best brushes, the best canvases, the best paints. Uh, that you know that they can find, that they can obtain or that you know, fit their purposes. And uh, on top of that, we also know that nineteenth century artists made ready use of photographs, just as many painters do today. Century painters have made use of film,

video computers. So it's not, in my mind crazy or blasphemous to consider that. Yes, painters such as Ramier may have used camera obscura or mirrors and lenses in the creation of their paintings. Maybe that's more of a taboo if you're in the art world or something that just seems to me like, well, okay, that's just a technique they were using. If if indeed I did use it, I don't want to assume here, right, And and this this theory is uh, you know, contested, it's not it's

not proven by any any any means. But we're going into some of the arguments for both sides. But yeah, it's clear that many artists certainly knew about optics. We've talked about We've already spoken about the the the the ancient history of the camera obscura. Da Vinci clearly knew, Yeah, albrec Dura apparently I wrote about the camera obscuria as well, And by fourteen thirty seven, Leon Batista Alberti is documented to have used the camera obscura in the creation of

his art. But the question is, well, what about the others, How what about Vermier and and other old masters? Did they use the camera obscura and like keep it secret or not talk about as the thing? Was it like a trade secret among artists or was it less of a secret after all? I mean, there's evidence on both sides. So so this is something we could easily do an entire episode on like this this stock it, but just to sort of highlight some of the pros and cons here.

So one pro is that, uh, you know, some charge that the level of detail in many of these masterpieces is beyond what one could simply eyeball, Like, there is just a level of detail and perspective um and and accuracy that requires more than just looking and remembering. Well, not having a talent for visual art myself, I feel like that's something I couldn't judge. I just know that some people are much better at mentally representing three D imagery onto a two D surface, and I don't know

how much better than me. They could be right, And I'll go ahead and say that. One of the cons the big arguments against this is that is that some say, well, you know, you're discounting what is truly possible uh with the in the mind of the painter, Like what is

truly possible without technological optical aids. Now, another bit of evidence that is sometimes brought up and presented is a fifteenth century painter beyond an Ike who included glass and even mirrors in his work, and it was clearly intrigued by optical properties. Like one of his most famous pieces is this portrait. Right in there, there's this uh, there's this mirror uh in the middle like behind them that centered between them, and in it you can see the

painter uh and uh. And so it's it's been argued that like, yeah, he's including this mirror because he you know, he's he was, you know, somewhat obsessed by optics and that perhaps it was part of his process to use them. Now, one thing I can see is that it's just going to be hard to decide whether or not we should listen to this hypothesis. If it's just people arguing about

what's possible for people to do without aids. I would be interested to see if there's evidence of like artifacts appearing in the painting that would only be there if people were using optical aids and technologies. Yeah, and and this is where you get into the idea that there may be evidence of optical distortion in the finish pieces that would match up with the sort of optical distortion

that you would get through using camera obscura or various mirrors. However, this too is contested, so you'll see Hackney and Falco, you know, presenting this as part of their evidence. But people who disagree with them, they're gonna argue, will know that, you know, we're not seeing this kind of optical distortion. Wait a minute, isn't is one part of this distortion

like the Rubens butts or is that just artistic style? Um, I don't recall the Rubenesque uh bodies being part of the evidence that it might have been now and and this also gets to another huge con and that is that there's far less direct or textual evidence here. So we're talking like, are you know artists having written about using these techniques? Are there being in anything beyond just merely looking at the pieces and and say and and

interpreting them, interpreting the finished piece of art itself. So so yeah, ultimately, I feel like it's difficult to really

land on, you know, one answer or the other. There is that Teller documentary, Tim's Vermier, and it follows Tim Jennison in his effort to duplicate the painting techniques of Vermier to test this theory and um, basically he ends he ends up creating this piece through uh, with the help of optical devices, and then Hackney and Falco themselves appear at the end and judge the finished work, which

they conclude supports the theory. You mean, their theory that that he couldn't do it without the help of optical devices, right, well, But I mean I also don't want to I feel like it's tricky to frame this correctly because like, for my money, again not being a visual artist, uh and largely being just you know, uh, someone who appreciates art, I'd say that, you know, it doesn't just take anything away from me, uh to consider that Vermier or any

of these other masters use this technology to create their work, like they're still it's not like if you've ever tried to trace anything and been disappointed in the work, and lord knows I did when I was younger, Like you can realize there's more than just merely projecting, you know, using the camera obscurity to project something on a wall and then tracing over it or painting over etcetera. Like you still have to have a very high degree of

of artistic talent too to to bring that painting to lie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean again, I don't know whether or not this hypothesis is true, but I mean I don't see any reason to object to it, apart from if it just has lack of evidence something like it's I believe in the superhuman power of art. But art isn't magic. I mean, art is a physical thing people do that involves technology

all the time. Technology is constantly changing art. Oh yeah, yeah, the technology changes are I mean really the main exceptions to that, of course, are going to be cases where there's some sort of cultural need to preserve the technique through which the art is created. And we do see plenty of examples of that, and it's aspect actually true in places where you're protecting those cultural practices from technology

that is brought in through colonial influence. But but even then, you guys, guess you guess you can argue, well, then you're still using technology to help preserve the culture of it. Perhaps you're using uh, you know, video to to capture the process so that others may learn it, or you're using you know, modern printing techniques to create a book that informs new members of these cultures, uh and instructs

them on how to continue the tradition. I mean, I guess that's just something that I feel like should always be that's up to the artist and is constantly negotiated between the artists and their audience, like what kind of techniques do they feel are acceptable? I'm I'm just saying I don't personally look at an artist using technology and think, wow,

they're not really doing art right. And then and I imagine you also get into a case where what technological advances are permitted in which ones don't feel appropriate when you're trying to preserve some sort of you know, culturally in frenched practice, I imagine it's always an act of negotiation where you have to you have to decide, all right, we're not going to do this, but yes we will improve.

They are brushes, are pigments, but we're still going to do it this way because this is the way that we always have done it. Personally, I think it's only art if it is painted on the side of a living pig, has to be in a cave. If it's not in a cave, it's not art. I wonder if you get people going the other way, like techno chauvinists about art, like it's only art if you use you know, this type of femtosecond laser to create it. Yeah, I

don't know, that would be interesting to consider. Hopefully we'll do more episodes in the future where we talk about the uh, the the influence of technology and invention on artistic endeavors. I mean, certainly we'll get into it in photography and motion pictures in our next two episodes. I do want to add one more thing. So obviously when we get to photography, uh, there is an erotic element that becomes evident. Oh yeah, and certainly with motion pictures

as well. But I could find no evidence that, um, the camera obscure was ever used for erotic or pornographic purposes, which I guess makes sense. But but part of me is like a little disappointed slash suspicious because I feel like somebody had to have tried it at some point, and maybe, you know, to whatever extent. Artists were toying with the technology or using the technology. I figured one of them. But Leonardo, come on, he had to have

have tried this out at some point. Well, I mean, I I can see why it wouldn't have necessarily been all that useful in that context because the benefit of using photography and and motion picture and stuff like that, is that it can just be like fixed in time, duplicated, replayed or viewed later with the camera obscure. Your subject has to be physically present, right, so you'd have Yeah, it would have to be a very particular sort of

technological fetish um. So, I don't know. But at any rate, as far as I could tell, doesn't factor into the history of erotic art in in any way other than just being mainly precursor to photography. But if I'm wrong on that, I would love to hear tales of erotic camera obscura. Just a hunk with a Ruben's but upside down on your back wall of your barn or whatever. And I think that's the mental image we should close on here, upside down Reuben's but hunk. Yes, yes, I should.

I should just actually throw in and explain a little bit. We're talking about the the art of Peter Paul reubens Um who Free you. We we discussed reuben Esque paintings. Used that term for a reason because he did have a very signature um like sort of thick naked style, and so many of his arts magnificently paintings. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,

magnificent Stocky Butts his paintings. They're just full of them, right. Uh. And and it does make me think back to an older episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, um that I did with with Julie Douglass about us Den Dall syndrome. The idea, know, you're you're in the presence of great

art and it has a physical effect on you. Uh. There is at least one variant of that that that tied into Reuben's work and the idea that, like in viewing the pieces, you would just be overcome by the erotic power of them, hypnotized by magnificent Stocky Butts, I guess yeah. And again it kind of gets into the power of the of of the two D image, you know. Uh, it's easy to take for granted just how how potent

and over and overpowering these works can be. They almost have a quality that's kind of like a pirate, pirate video transmission from another dimension where Butts are king. All right, well, we'll leave you all to to google the works of Reuben on your own, as well as these other artists

that we've mentioned here. We're gonna go and close out this episode of Invention, but certainly tune in next week in the week after as we begin to explore the camera, the motion picture and then go on from there and our continual, uh never ending exploration of human techno history. In the meantime, you want to check out old episodes of Invention, head on over to the website that is Invention pod dot com. That is where you will find all the episodes. You find links out to social media accounts.

If you want to engage with other listeners, hit on over to Facebook and search for our our our group. There it's the Stuff to Blow Your Mind discussion module, because that is where you can discuss the episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, our other podcast or episodes of Invention. UH discuss it with other listeners as well as UH as with us because we pop in fairly regularly there. Yeah, come on by, Yeah huge, Thanks as

always to our wonderful audio producer Tory Harrison. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback about this episode or any other UH to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello, tell us how you found out about the show, where you listen from all that kind of stuff, You can email us at contact at invention pod dot com. You will be every day you can do with your