Pause: Getting Under the Skin

Beauty is only skin deep. Can video go deeper?

Can we record anything more profound than the play of light upon surfaces, or is video doomed to remain forever skin deep?

The human race has often asked similar questions of its visual arts. Is a painting, for example, only a clever deception of our eyes, an illusion which those who pursue truth should avoid? Plato seemed to think so, and stood suspicious of the arts. So did his philosophical heir, St. Augustine, who struggled against the seductions of music. Those in the Aristotle-Aquinas tradition, however, felt that one could discover truth through the appearances of things. They gave a positive philosophical foundation to …