The Pitfalls of Vission

Given it's prominence--and the fact that until now it was the only thing here--the title of the blog probably deserves some explanation.

The word "fovea" is Latin in origin. and it originally meant a "pit" or "pitfall." In its current use, the fovea (more precisely fovea centralis) is a small depression located at the very center and at the very back of the eye, in the macula region of the retina. It is the fovea that allows for the clearest, sharpest focus and permits us to have "central" (also called "foveal" as opposed to peripheral) vision. Anything we do that requires us to use our eyes to see in detail--such as reading this blog or watching a movie--is made possible by the fovea.

From it's origins and contemporary use, we can derive two important, contradictory points of significance for this blog. First, FOVEA is an effort to bring both vision and images into sharp focus. By reading and writing about visuality, we can hope to see and make visible its centrality to everything from our personal, everyday encounters with the world to the mediated images and visual technologies that surround us, and thus to our culture and society. But there is a second significant aspect of visuality that FOVEA will bring into focus. That is the sense in which vision is a trap. We will look at the unreliability of vision itself and the pitfalls of trusting images to mediate reality.