Practices of Knowledge. Images in the History of Experimental and Applied Life Sciences
The project examined the use of images in psychophysics and psychotechnics from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. This international and interdisciplinary trading zone, where experimental physiology and psychology came together, was responsible for producing an abundance of images and imaging processes. This wealth of material can be seen as the basis for today’s neuronal or empirical aesthetics and is connected with concepts like the graphic method, test patterns, stimulus images, model images, and the documentary image. From a historical perspective, we explored to what extent the use of images was integral in establishing these disciplines in the first place. This question relates to a broader interest in a certain type of knowledge that is concealed within these images, knowledge that is then decisive when it comes to a critical reflection on the very methods of empirical research.
- Margarete Vöhringer concentrated on vision in the laboratory and its expansion towards applied fields in her project Vision and Color Tests in Ophthalmology, Pedagogy, and Psychotechnique.
- Jana August’s research examined Color-Legends: Interferences between the History of Knowledge for Color Vision and Coloring Practices in the Life Sciences.
Subproject(s)
Ophthalmoscopic Images of the Eye. On Making Vision Visible
This project is conceptually guided by its focus on the material culture of research on perception. Hermann von Helmholtz’s invention of the ophthalmoscope is the centerpiece of the investigation, alongside which I examine its use in ophthalmology as well as its impact on other fields of science, the arts, and art history. A wealth of source material for the project can be found in the personal archives of the ophthalmologist Albrecht von Graefe, held at the Berlin Museum of Medical History.
The project looks closely at the different images created using the ophthalmoscope. This visual history of the eye’s inside can be traced from the science laboratory and the first ophthalmoscope atlas developed by Helmoltz’s assistant Richard Liebreich to the National Gallery in London and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. My goal in studying these images is to rethink the relationship between theory and praxis, specifically as it pertains to theories of perception, ophthalmology, and art.
Fig.: Watercolor of the retina by ophthalmologist Otto Becker (from the Albrecht von Graefe Collection of the German Ophthalmological Society, on permanent loan at the Berlin Museum of Medical History at the Charité)
Publications
Margarete Vöhringer
- Der Augenspiegel. Sehen und Gesehen werden im 19. Jahrhundert, in: Beate Ochsner, Robert Stock (eds.): senseAbility – Mediale Praktiken des Sehens und Hörens. Bielefeld: transcript 2016, 45–58
- “Fakty w tysjatschi raz waschnee slow.” Fiksatsija Eksperimentow w Fiziologii, Literature i Fotografii, in: Georgii Vekshin (ed.): Wtoroj Brikowski Sbornik. Metodologija i Praktika Russkogo Formalizma. Moscow 2014, 265–279
- Praktiken, in: Roland Borgards, Harald Neumeyer, Nicolas Pethes, Yvonne Wübben (eds.): Literatur und Wissen. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler 2013, 45–49
Events
Abb. oben: Augenspiegel-Untersuchung im umgekehrten Bild, ca. 1860 (aus: Hundert Jahre Augenspiegel, Leipzig 1951, S. 19)