For this vision machine project, I made a floral zoetrope. I drew the process of a flower growing and blooming. I put mirrors on the inner part of the zoetrope so you would see the process of the flower blooming. I also had the zoetrope on a bit of a slant so that the viewers view would be somewhat a distorted view of the flower. I opted for a stick rather then a turntable, but if I had to redo the zoetrope I would probably chose to construct it in a different way giving a whole new look and view to the flower. Some people used turntables for their vision machine and the turntables were very resistant and didn’t spin easily. You had to keep spinning it over and over if you wanted the vision machine to work properly. So I probably would not use a turntable after seeing it in person but I would definitely be interested in using other materials.
In Broekman, he touches upon human gaze. I think that when it comes to the zoetrope I made human gaze plays a role in how you interpret it. I think depending on the angle that you look in the mirrors, that tends to change the way the flower appears and how you view it. He also talks about “a human perspective, this is a blind gaze, a gaze that does not take in the complexity of a visual field and its aesthetic multidimensionality but only looks for precoded cues. “Blindness is thus very much at the heart of the coming ‘vision machine’.” Broekman also talks about how technical gaze and its way of analyzing and interpreting images is not simply different from a human way of seeing. He also talks about how it’s not all about what you see but also touch. “Here the model sense was not vision but touch, a remote touch that does not have the limitations of visual perspective, though it has of course its own medial particularities.”
Overall I had a lot of fun with this project and having the freedom to do sort of whatever I wanted. I wish I had related it more to our current reading but I’m sure I’ll find something to relate it to.
