The unorthodox eye

Of my camera. I still don't quite understand how my camera views things and space, especially at night.  Currently I am relying on the prowess of a digital camera. I remain, however, terribly curious about film. The idea of light pressing itself upon matter to create texture, lines, and color leads me to romanticize about film endlessly. At the same time, I continue to ponder about the substance of digital. Can we talk about such a thing? Does digital bear a tangible substance? Lucretius would say yes.

“Have you ever experienced anything that completely took possession of your heart and mind and thoughts to the utter exclusion of everything else—All was seething and boiling within you; your blood, heated to a fever pitch, leaped through your veins and inflamed your cheeks. . . . Yet every word and everything that partook of the nature of communication by intelligible sounds seemed to be colorless, cold, and dead. Then you try and try again, and stutter and stammer.”

E. T. A. Hoffmann, Nachtstücke (Berlin: O. Mieth, 1925), p. 23; trans. in The Best Tales of Hoffmann, ed. E. F. Bleiler (New York: Dover, 1967), pp. 194–95.

“I could not find any words which seemed fitted to reflect in even the feeblest degree the brightness of the colors of my mental vision. I determined not to begin at all.”

(The Best Tales of Hoffmann, p. 196.)