Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06870_Field_TCUM T435.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 1KB | 16 lines

obscura , or pictures in “the little dark room,” as the Italians
had named the picture play-box of the sixteenth century. Just
at the time when mechanical writing had been achieved by
movable types, there grew up the pastime of looking at moving
images on the wall of a dark room. If there is sunshine outside
and a pinhole in one wall, then the images of the outer world
will appear on the wall opposite. This new discovery was very
exciting to painters, since it intensified the new illusion of
perspective and of the third dimension that is so closely related
to the printed word. But the early spectators of the moving
image in the sixteenth century saw those images upside down.
For this reason the lens was introduced—in order to turn the
picture right side up. Our normal vision is also upside down.
Psychically, we learn to turn our visual world right side up by
translating the retinal impression from visual into tactile and
kinetic terms. Right side up is apparently something we feel but