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I ZOOM It has happened just twice in the recorded history of mankind. Both times to me. The first time was about twelve years ago. I was starting a new project and had been thinking about camera movement and how it corresponds to our actual visual experience. For examples: pan shot - looking left and right. And then there is the zoom - a continuing optical magnification of a scene - of which there is no visual corollary. Or is there? Might not a zoom serve to indicate the "paying attention" aspect of visual experience? After all isn't "paying attention" akin to a narrowing, a winnowing down,of the visual field? A common cinematic technique is to slowly zoom in on static subjects since movement no matter how subtle triggers an innate attention response hard wired in our brains. So I thought, maybe the eye itself actually does "zoom" when we focus attention and maybe that zooming was so slight as to be imperceptible, or perhaps blocked from consciousness?; I began a series of informal experiments to test the hypothesis. I tried staring, defocusing, squinting, meditating, every hair-brain thing I could think of to bring the zoom to consciousness. Nothing happened other than mild headache. After a few days of this and with "eye-zooming" far from mind I went for a walk and found myself standing at a street corner waiting for the light to change. And then without thought or willful act of my own - it happened. I saw what looked eerily similar to that of zooming with a camera lense. In about two seconds my field of view was completely filled with the license plate of a nearby bus. The image held for another second or so and then it was over. The entire experience lasting three to four seconds. There was no pain nor after effect of any kind. It was not something I had imagined nor hallucinated, nor consciously willed, but a totally unpredicted spontaneous experience. I was at once exhilarated and horrified (what if I had been driving a car)? I had experienced a phenomena that to my knowledge was unique in the annals of human history. Six years passed without another incident. The eye-zoom had been something admittedly both unbelievable and unprovable and for those reasons I had told no one. But I felt the time had come to put facts on paper- let the raised eyebrows be damned! I spent the afternoon gathering my thoughts then laid down on the couch to take a nap. I woke around midnight refreshed and ready to write. And then it happened (again). Like the first time some six years hence there was a smooth two second zoom- this time my field of view filled by a lighted exit sign on the wall. The image held for about another second and then it was over, the experience even more terrifying for me than the first. There been no thought nor willful act nor "preparatory exercises" just a little prior ruminating had seemingly been enough to activate the phenomena. I put pen and paper away. Another six years has passed again without incident. My eye-zooms now a dim memory, I submit for your perusal one last summary of those strange events: I experienced a spontaneous and uncontrolled "eye-zoom" twice. Once about twelve years ago, and again about six years ago. Both eye-zooms lasted about four seconds. The first time occurred in broad daylight with other people present, the second time at night in a dimly lit room with no one else present. The first time I zoomed on a license plate to my lower left as I turned, the second time on an exit sign as I looked up toward the right. Interestingly both objects were rectangular, of about the same size and contained letters. Neither object had any significance to me and were just random objects in my visual field at the time. The experience was totally uncontrolled, unpredicted, painless, and without after effects. I have no desire to repeat it nor any clue how to do so. From what I know of zoom lense optics I do not believe the eye is physically capable of optical zooming. But there is another type of zoom in the photographic world - the digital zoom. Could the eye-zoom have been something analogous to a digital zoom? Once a scene has been perceived by the eye and the information sent to the brain could it not then be manipulated in any number of ways? This would mean that anything seen could be zoomed since all the necessary raw data would be present. Was the eye-zoom part of a now dormant survival mechanism? What other undiscovered effects might the eye-mind be capable of producing? bONGO bongo January 5, 2005 bongo@studiobongo.com copyright 2005 by bongo all rights reserved Scenes From A Small Planet and Outerbonglia are trademarks of bongo |