Seeing Anew (1916, 1926, 2016)

One of the obvious things that people don't usually do is use a device (or instrument) in an unintended way. The assumption in 1916 was that photography was simply a form of fast painting, but artists began to see other uses for the technology--which then lead to a new way of seeing, based on enhanced perception.

From Alvin Langdon Coburn's 1916 article "The Future of Pictorial Photography":

"Why should not the camera also throw off the shackles of conventional representation and attempt something fresh and untried? Why should not it's settled rapidity be realized to study movement? Why not repeated successive exposures of an object in motion on the same plate? Why should not perspective be studied from angles hitherto neglected or unobserved? Why, I ask you earnestly, did we go on making commonplace little exposures of subjects that may be sorted into groups of landscapes, portraits and figure studies? Think of the joy of doing something which it would be impossible to classify."

Exploring the limits of something is an interesting way to see what might be usable in a more controlled context. (Audio distortion is a good example). It's usually the happy accidents that inspire innovative thinking.

Once you see something occurring in a new medium, it presents a whole new way of seeing.

From Fernand Leger's 1926 essay, "A New Realism – The Object (Its Plastic and Cinematic Graphic Value)":

"Let us consider these things for what they can contribute to the screen just as they are—in isolation—their value enhanced by every known means. In this enumeration I have purposely included parts of the human body in order to emphasize the fact that in the new realism the human being, the personality, is interesting only in these fragments and that these fragments should not be considered of any more importance than any of the other objects listed. The technique emphasized is to isolate the object or the fragment of an object and to present it on the screen in close-ups of the largest possible scale. Enormous enlargements of an object or a fragment give it a personality it never had before and in this way it can become a vehicle of entirely new lyric and plastic power."

The new "realities" on the horizon are all the virtual ones: virtual, augmented and mixed.