How can visual experience be depicted? A study of close-up double vision

Abstract

The attempt to record visual experience has been of central importance to many artists throughout the history of art. Vision itself is made up of many processes, both psychological and physiological, and is still only partially understood. This paper presents research into an aspect of visual experience descried as ‘close-up double vision’, which has been directly informed by the artwork of the Swansea born artist Evan Walters. Close-up double vision occurs when an object is seen extremely close to a viewer whose eyes are not both fused on the object concerned, creating a doubling effect in the visual field. Walters termed this doubling effect caused by lack of binocular fusion ‘double vision’ and spent much of the latter part of his career trying to record it. This paper briefly introduces Walters’ experiments in double vision and outlines current research that attempts to record this aspect of visual experience in artworks.