Kairotopia

This exercise demonstrates the issue of visibility when encountering ancient art objects. These famous two jumping youths, who might be portrayed twice, on two separate sides of the vase, in two slightly different moments, would have never been seen by any viewer simultaneously. Rather, the sighting of each side would have been a sequential event, and the slight diversions in details the two sides would have had to be perceived by virtue of short term visual memory. 

 

Investigating the meaning of vases such as these, and understanding their phenomenological dimension requires an intuitive understanding of its three dimensionality, which stretches beyond the traditional method of 2D photographs/slide images that give uniform spatio-temporal access to the viewer.

 

See the Boston MFA's website for details of the vase.

 

Reconstruction Video: courtesy of Dave Cortes