You Saw the Whole of the Moon: the Role of Imagination in the Perceptual Construction of the Moon

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00564 by guest on 23 September 2021 N general note oo M the You Saw the Whole of the Moon: The Role of Imagination in the a b s t r a c t he author offers a short T reimagining Perceptual Construction of the Moon history of how our perceptual relationship with the Moon has changed over time. Examples of lunar imaging by Early Renais- sance painter Jan Van Eyck, Colleen Boyle Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, 19th- century photographer James Nasmyth and NASA’s Ranger and Lunar Orbiter missions of the 1960s reveal ways in which our perception of the Moon has changed. Images of the Moon produced by technology remain I wandered out in the world for years pose we now perceive the Moon—a far from “complete”—they are While you just stayed in your room presence that has been constructed akin to fragments, sketches or I saw the crescent via a potent combination of phe- models, providing information upon which the imagination You saw the whole of the Moon [1]. nomenological experience, repre- can build. How we imagine the sentation and our imaginations. Moon, the author argues, is Imagination is a highly visual symbiotically linked with our While browsing a 1950s astronomy book, I came across a lunar and constructive cognitive func- representations of it; we only topographic map with the curious title “A Complete Descrip- perceive the truly complete, tion. When I read a book, I “see” tion of the Surface of the Moon, Containing the 300-inch whole Moon in the non-localized the events unfold in my head. When Wilkins Lunar Map.” My immediate reaction was that surely zone of our imaginations. I look at an abstract painting, I “see” this description, detailed as it was for the time, was anything an image within. I conduct research but complete. After all, it contained no information about for this paper and my imagination the dark side of the Moon. Despite this obvious omission, the helps me construct a hypothesis. My imagination, whether in notion of “a complete description” truly piqued my curiosity. the service of scientific deduction or artistic creation, reaches What would constitute a “complete” description or view of further by reassembling previously obtained sense data. With- the Moon? By charting a short history of how our perceptual out previous knowledge, without preconceptions, my imagina- relationship to the Moon has changed over time, this paper tion has nothing on which to build. In the case of the Moon, explores the role our visual imagination has played in bringing my imagination has manifold perceptions on which to draw. the “complete” Moon into focus. Alien neighbor, distant friend and nearest natural satellite, the Moon remains a secret to our naked eyes, hiding half its Historical ExamplEs sphere in perpetual darkness due to its synchronous rotation The way in which we currently perceive the Moon is firmly with the Earth. Our everyday, phenomenological experience linked to how humans have viewed and represented it over of the Moon is thus “one-sided,” but when combined with our time, from the naked eye to the lens, the photograph and be- pictorial experience of the Moon, this natural occlusion, or yond. Prior to the Renaissance the Moon was seen with a pre- incomplete vision, can be circumvented by the imagination. photographic, pre-scientific, pre-ocularcentric consciousness Mikael Pettersson has recently built upon Richard Wollheim’s that perceived the external world through a complex filter concept of “seeing-in” [2] to an image by suggesting that in heavily tinted with religion, mysticism and metaphysics. Being cases where the image contains visually occluded elements, able to see, think and act outside of what Foucault would term “seeing-in” becomes non-localized, in that no particular part the episteme [5] of one’s time is remarkable; individuals who of the image’s surface sustains the experience of seeing [3]. make the inferential leap into new ways of thinking are rare. Furthermore, because this experience is due to the occlusion In the early 15th century, Dutch painter Jan van Eyck (1395– of elements, it should not be likened to “pictorial seeing,” but 1441) unveiled the Moon in spectacular, naturalistic clarity, perhaps thought of as “pictorial perceptual presence” [4]. It leaving behind the more simplified and symbolic representa- is in just the manner of this non-localized presence that I pro- tions of his predecessors. First in The Crucifixion (1420–1425) and in four subsequent paintings, van Eyck truly observed the Moon as it looks to the eye in the daylight sky: pale, white and blue, the dark plains of the surface easily visible [6]. His was an objective vision, a faithful representation that heralded a Colleen Boyle (artist, writer, academic), 176 Errol Street, North Melbourne, Victoria 3051, Australia. E-mail: <[email protected]>. new way of seeing the natural world, such as would come to See <www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/46/3> for supplemental files associated with the fore in the following century. Van Eyck’s great imaginative this issue. contribution to how we see the Moon was to see what others did not, to see it as it was and to represent it as such. His eye, which as Panofsky noted operated simultaneously as micro- scope and telescope [7], enabled him to imagine an alterna- article Frontispiece. colleen boyle, Moon-Pixel-Bubble, inkjet print, tive to the hitherto allegorical or iconographic treatments of 40 × 53 cm (top)/53 × 53 cm (bottom), 2010. (© colleen boyle) a lunar presence within established Christian scenes. © 2013 ISAST doi:10.1162/LEON_a_00564 LEONARDO, Vol. 46, No. 3, pp. 246–252, 2013 247 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00564 by guest on 23 September 2021 N Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), who naked-eye observation, and liberal use late. Although the English astronomer oo M of this analogous link between Earth Thomas Harriot made telescopic obser- was born shortly after van Eyck died, lived at a time when the world was awak- and Moon, that Leonardo came to the vations of the Moon just 4 months prior to the ening to scientific thinking. Many artists conclusion that the ghostly image of a Galileo in 1609, his drawings added little were exploring simple lenses and instru- full moon visible during a crescent moon information to what was already available mentation to aid their creative pursuits. occurred due to sunlight reflecting off to the naked eye, and they were never Leonardo, however, derided the use of the Earth’s oceans and illuminating the published. Galileo, on the other hand, reimagining these devices, claiming that artists who lunar surface. forever changed how the lunar surface made images “through glass, or other We now know that the majority of was perceived by adding to what he saw surfaces or transparent veils” could not earthshine is due to clouds, not oceans, through his rudimentary telescope with “reason about nature with their minds” but this does not diminish the fact that a combination of prior knowledge and and thus produced images that were Leonardo’s discovery is an extraordinary imagination (Fig. 1). Galileo was aware “poor and mean in every invention” [8]. example of what knowledge combined of analogous comparisons between the Leonardo seemed to sense a change in with imagination can achieve. Today, we Earth and Moon and the idea that the how these images connected with reality, value the perceived objectivity of auto- lunar topography might contain Earth- perhaps tapping into what Vilém Flusser mated imaging processes, particularly like features such as mountains, valleys has described as a shift from the obser- within the sciences. However, the role and seas [14]. Thus, when he looked vation and depiction of objects by “tra- of imagination in representing and per- through his telescope, his mind was ripe ditional” images to the computation, or ceiving the Moon has not been made with preconception on which to imagina- visualization, of concepts by “technical” redundant. Rather, as I explain below, tively build. Furthermore, it was perhaps images [9]. that role has shifted from the site of his artistic training and understanding of Leonardo’s world was whole and tangi- image production to the site of image chiaroscuro that aided his ripe mind in ble, not fractured and conceptual. Thus, consumption [12]. the revelation of a more alien lunar land- the only instruments he required to ex- scape, dramatically pocked with craters. plore it were a keen eye and mind [10]. The Moon was now blemished; Gali- The dark, volcanic plains of the Moon, pErcEption and leo’s observations and depictions of the known as maria (Latin, meaning “seas”), intErprEtation Moon had led to “a revolution in percep- are easily visible via the naked eye, and It is extremely difficult today to reverse- tion and thinking that was reflected back their nomenclature is a reminder of how engineer our knowledge of the Moon to earth and its inhabitants” and consti- early astronomers imagined the Moon’s and to fully comprehend the magnitude tuted “an irreversible historic turning terrain as analogous to that of the Earth, of the shift in perception that accompa- point” [15]. In 1969, Neil Armstrong with mountains, plains and even water. nied the introduction of technologically may have claimed that landing on the Leonardo made three drawings in his mediated vision. Prior to the publication Moon was “one small step for [a] man; notes that included these features. It of Galileo’s telescopic observations of the one giant leap for mankind,” but nearly seems, however, that he saw these dark Moon in his book Sidereus Nuncius [13], 360 years earlier, Galileo claimed the spots as landmasses, assuming the more the Moon was considered “immaculate,” Moon with his imagination, illuminat- reflective areas of the lunar surface to associated with Mary in the Christian ing its surface with his drawings and ex- be water [11].

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