Cordelia Erickson-Davis (Stanford University)
In the computational theory of vision, the world consists of patterns of light that reflect onto the retina and provoke neural activity that the individual must then reconstruct into an image-based percept (Marr 1979). “Seeing” turns into an optimization problem, with the goal of maximizing the amount of visual information represented per unit of neural spikes. Visual prostheses - which endeavor to translate visual information like light into electrical information that the brain can understand, and thus restore function to certain individuals who have lost their sight - are the literal construal of computational theories of perception. Theories that scholars of cybernetic studies have taught us were born from data not of man but of machine (Dupuy 2000).
So what happens when we implant these theories into the human body? What do subjects “see” when a visual prosthesis is turned on for the first time? That is, what is the visual phenomenology of artificial vision, and how might these reports inform our theories of perception and embodiment more generally? This poster will discuss insights gathered from ethnographic work conducted over the past two years with developers and users of an artificial retina device, and will elaborate on a method that brings together institutional ethnography and critical phenomenology as way to elucidate the relationship between the political and the perceptual.
