Panoptic Whorl
The panoptic whorl is a folly functioning as a control tower for our perceptions of scale and duration. Once again, the spiral form appears to pull us into concepts surrounding our understanding of time and space. This time, we look at the phenomena of air travel. Specifically, we try to make connections between distance and speed using macroscopic imagery. For example, we see that the farther our subject is, the slower it appears to move and the more it resembles microscopic imagery. Large-scale man-made devolpment to vast natural landscape appear to mimic small-scale cellular and minute chrystaline structures. These visual phenomena, among many others, lead us to question the reality of our own level of scale and duration, perhaps suggesting that the infinite is the only authentic connection of value to our temporal existence. We may find some resolution to Zeno’s paradox of infinite divisibility in seeing that our relation to infinite causation is merely our perception of finite moments as our relation to infinite space is merely a perception of finite levels of matter.
