The Hart of London (1970)

Perhaps it was ten years ago that the artists Arakawa and Madeline Gins told me of a scientist researching optical physiology. He had determined that cats would be his living subjects. To this end he had constructed a three-story-high narrow cylinder. Along its interior vivid images were pasted, illuminated. Photographs within these cylinder walls depicted elements interesting to cats: brightly colored birds, bowls of food, shimmering fishes, wild animals, human faces. The experiment was contrived to photograph the last retinal image mirrored on the pupils of the cats immediately after their death–killed from the impact of being thrown down the narrow cylinder.

If there could be a retinal analysis of imprinted filmic imagery, expanded in time by description, compressed as memory, as an intensity of linked recognitions – this optical imprint on my inner vision would be inscribed with fragments from the films of Jack Chambers. – Carolee Schneemann