NOVA: Mystery of the Senses - Vision

List Price: $19.95 Buy For: $17.99
Usually ships in 24 hours


Add to Cart


Compare New & Used Prices From All Available Merchants:

Starring: Nova
Rated: NR (Not Rated)
Type: DVD
Directed By: Nova
Studio: WGBH BOSTON
Release Date: 2007-01-09
Inspired by the bestseller A Natural History of the Senses by poet author adventurer and sensory epicure Diane Ackerman MYSTERY OF THE SENSES is a vivid blend of science and imagery literature and folklore history and personal advneture. This one-hour program celebrates the sense of vision through Ackerman's unique perspective.System Requirements:Running Time 60 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 783421265691 Manufacturer No: WG41609

Unfocused
Nova's Vision DVD is not focused. It has a short section on the actual topic and then digresses to the Art World and a Navajo sand-painting adventure.

Vision was somewhat interesting as it described how we see - the eye is the lens and the cortex is the "television screen. But it is more than just the image projected on the cortex. About a third of the brain is devoted to processing what we see. The images we see are a prodigious medium of communication, in which everything is in a halo of meaning. Perception and vision go hand in hand.

However, although vision is well described in the first 15-20 minutes, Ackerman causes confusion and digresses to how long it takes to do a Navajo sand-painting (and the spiritual meaning of the painting). We also meet a pop artist who uses comic book "dots" for his paintings. A stroke patient who can see, but does not recognize faces, is given a short feature in Vision as a large part of his cortex was damaged between the artists and methods of painting.

This DVD was way too long for the information on vision it provided. When finished, I was not sure if it was about Navajo sand-paintings or how we see. The artists featured took away from the point of the DVD.

This DVD is mostly NOT what it seems.
I was excited about this dvd given the quality of other Nova productions but that faded fast once I started watching it. The dvd spends most of the hour on a native Indian and how he uses the art of sand painting to express his view of the world. This was not what I expected. There were parts however, that did get into how the eye works and how there are 4 sections of the brain used for seeing (the 4 parts are form, shape, color, and movement) and somehow the brain presents us with a unified experience of all these processes. Also, how the same neuro-pathways we use for imagining an object and actually seeing it are the same. I really enjoyed those parts yet so much time was spent on the subjective evaluations of how this Indian sees the world that I considered it a waste of time. The ratio was about 20 minutes on vision / brain activity and 40 minutes on this Indian's view of the world. Very disappointing indeed.