Impossible Gaze follows the direction and movement of the viewer's eyes as they traverse the museum and visually represents the two types of vision that the eye uses to process information: foveal and peripheral. Margaret Livingstone suggests that “foveal, or direct, vision is excellent at picking up detail but is less suited to picking up shadows.” 1 This not only affects how art is viewed but also how the viewer negotiates the layout of the museum, as they are instantly drawn to the paintings that appear brighter. Peripheral vision however, as James Elkins describes, is what happens at “the blurriest margins of the field of vision.” 2 Objects seen “peripherally are not just blurry but also differently proportioned. They are distorted and hallucinatory, and they need motion in order to exist.” 3 Whilst perceiving objects in motion, vision occurs in a stream of continuity, constantly pulled between proximity and distance, and oscillating through the gaze and the glance. This idea of motion in museums is important as it intimates the different activities of vision, as well as expresses the ephemerality of viewing. Bryson suggests the transient, and often sideways, mobile demands of the glance are opposed to the duration of an immobilized gaze, which generally occurs straight ahead, “prolonged,” and “contemplative.” 4

Ross Harley refers to the idea of visual perception while moving as a “motion landscape.” Harley describes this “mobilized vision” as a “multi-sensorial experience,” where the effects of looking while moving involve “the body in panoramic perception.” 5 This engagement of the senses enables the viewer not only to navigate the museum but also to viscerally experience the space they inhabit. For example, a viewer may feel the cold smoothness of the stone floor and sense the weight of the timber beneath the gilded frames and the softness of the velvet upholstery. They may smell and taste the mixture of scents in the age-laden air, and hear the murmuring of other viewers and their shuffling feet.

1. Professor Margaret Livingstone of Harvard University quoted in “Mona Lisa smile secrets revealed,” no author cited, BBC News Online , http://news.bbc.co.uk//2/hi/entertainment/2775817.stm , accessed 18/2/2003 .

2. James Elkins, The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1997), 99-100.

3. Ibid.

4. Bryson, 93-6.

5. Ross Rudesch Harley, Motion landscapes: a video-essay on panoramic perception (Sydney: Thesis (DCA), University of Technology, Sydney, 1999), 32, 52.