Blinking is some way of tabulating—a kind of carriage return, click, or save to disk—that helps the process of “Okay, now change the subject.” Every time you move your eyes, there’s an interruption in the visual field—you go momentarily blind when your eyeballs are moving. In order not to freak us out, the brain, almost condescendingly, inserts the last thing that we looked at, which has been stored in a sort of cache. The motion of the eyes is the fastest motion in the body. The displacement of the eye has the most rapid acceleration and rapid deceleration. No other muscle can do it like the eye can. Ninety-nine percent of the time we’re dealing with somebody, we’re looking at their eyes.
Fascinating interview with artist Josh Melnick, who used a scientific research camera to film portraits of NYC subway riders in ultra-slow-motion to an effect reminiscent of looking through a high-powered microscope, revealing a degree of temporal detail inaccessible to the naked eye. (via curiositycounts)
(via curiositycounts)
