Zoom vs. Depth

(Also interesting to contrast Powers of 10 with Cosmic Voyage - the faint panic, hysteria of the "gee whiz" ["a proton in the nucleus of a carbon atom beneath the skin on the hand of the sleeping man at the picnic"] vs. the impressive and ultimately coddling "wow" [as if the universe needs strings and horns! It begins with a move to avoid getting lost, to domesticate the cosmos - the paramecia like dogs, the quarks like little birds. "The only thing stopping my mind being blown all over the room, was the soothing sound of Morgan Freeman's voice" - this really says it all]. Also contrast Sagan's approach: Incredible how he brings everything back to people - notice the synths of the first approach meld with the orchestra of the second [and notice the music begins with the piano - human sounds - and how the synth fuses with the male chorus] - humans in and with the universe. Another point: Powers' and Sagan's empty universe vs. Cosmic Voyage's full, reassuring universe. "Notice", "think" - what incredibly powerful words!

Hell I could do a whole article on this. Everything is so fucking infinitely dense with information I can't take it! How do I know when to stop, and where!? Everything overflows with exceptions, intricacies - I'm stuck on infinite zoom.)

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Regarding depth as in depth psychology, depth of understanding, hidden depths, intellectual depth, depths as opposed to surfaces:

Not a framework of depths and surfaces but degrees of zoom, and scale. Not "more or less true" but "differently true" - different perspectives on the same thing. Recognising you can miss the forest for the trees - taking in the forest, the trees, the bark, the cellulose, molecules, atoms at your option. Zoom out and zoom in - refocus. Examine the leaves, the woodlice, the birds' nest, the roots and the soil. See how different they are. Zoom out til you can see them interacting, then til they become indistinct. Zoom in til everything breaks apart, becomes the medium for the next smallest thing. Dissolve and combine.

Zoom reveals the complexity of surfaces - uniform white painted walls reveal an infinity of brushstrokes. Zoom further in, you can see the action of each bristle, arm hairs trapped in the paint, semi-visible dents, cracks and blemishes. You lose awareness of the wall as "Wall" - it becomes taken for granted, loses its environment and so becomes an environment - the invisible condition of seeing. Depth rips away the surface and discards it, asserts the bare wall is truer than the paint, the poster. Depth asserts the skeleton is truer than the flesh.

Zoom favours interweaving, contingency, co-evolution - nothing is privileged. Depth favours layering, hierarchy, transcendence - chain of command. Zoom is plural, bottomless, occurring from infinite angles - Depth is singular, presenting a consistent object to be gotten to the bottom of. Zoom moves around, in, through - Depth dives, excavates - Depth underlies its surface, which conceals it always.

Depth is up and down, Zoom is in and out. Depth is thought for an Earthbound culture, Zoom is thought for globes.

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"18. The Kino-Eye, then, can be understood as a cyborg combination of human and movie camera, which both creates and depends upon multiple perspectives for its interpretation and communication. In taking the spectator from the position of passive consumer to active producer of cinematic meaning, the Kino-Eye functions as a contagious "virus," contained in the film text. Once infected by it the viewer becomes Kino-Eye, "challenging the human eye's visual representation of the world and offering its own 'I see"