Tamás Waliczky (photo: Ludwigmuseum.hu)

Over the past two centuries, the invention of various picture-recording devices has shaped our way of seeing, manipulating our image of the world, in much the same way that computers manipulate ways of seeing.

Waliczky’s “Imaginary Cameras” exhibition reverses this relationship, demonstrating how, when an inventor creates a new device, his or her worldview often predetermines the mechanism of the apparatus and the character of the images the device can create.

Waliczky’s 23 precisely constructed fantasy machines (cameras, projectors, viewers) reveal with their analogue mechanisms alternative renderings of reality, while at the same time dissolving the opposition between seeing and knowing, computer vision and human vision.

The exhibition runs between May 11 and November 24 in Venice, Italy.