Ever since objects-as-seen were distinguished from objects-in-the-world, men have formulated theories of their relation. A desire to establish resemblance, structural equivalence, isomorphisin, correspondence, or some other mode of correlation between the presumedly complementary entities is evident in the writings of commentators since ancient times.

Ordinary experience of objects seems to raise no problems. The observer opens his eyes and sees his environment; he shuts them and blots out the view. He walks among objects and gains different perspectives of them. He finds that he can touch most objects that are within reach. He talks to others about these objects and shares expectations concerning them. Such common observations convince us that the familiar world of objects has a continuity in time and space which is independent of our scrutiny. The eyes provide specific images of this world; different senses make other properties accessible. The historical development of explanations of viewing focusing on the underlying logic may discover the source of their inadequacy. In ancient times for vision two polar points of view were prevalent. On the one hand, emission of the source of rays which explore the world somewhat as the fingers the objects. On the other hand, reception theorists have regarded the eye as a receiver of information from external objects. The classical theory of reception asserted that multiple eidola (copies) are attached from objects to approach and finally enter the eyes of observers. In this manner, the eye and the perceiving mind behind the eye gain knowledge of the object. The theory was not without criticism. At least one ancient critic objected to the implication that a similacrum (image) as large as that from a soldier, or even a whole army, could enter the pupil of the eye.

This theme runs through the development of the science of geometrical optics. lt has been influential in guiding research in the anatomy and physiology of the visual receptors and their projections in the brain. And it remains with us in contemporary formulations of the psychology of perception. Great progress has been made in these several sciences and has influenced formulation of the relation between the sensed object and its correlate. Yet new explanations seem always to lead to new dilemmas: Behavioural psychologists have claimed for dekades the so called bottom up view of the theory of vision. Only more recently it has become clear through new neurophysiological and modeling studies that vision is most often top down, more of an active grasp of the mind than a passive answer to visual stimuli, almost as in the above quoted theory of emission of the source of rays.

Visual science and art each is attempting to communicate mental images through patterns, structures and forms; they also change the object of interest through observation and perception In the qualitative domain of cognition and in the quantitative domain of measurements. Visual science and art can be regarded each as a mode of communication of mental imagery by pattern or structure in some selected medium. In painting the choice of objects, colour etc. follows a code of flow of imagination, which determines the whole setup. In both science and art exists a conformity between the aesthetic or the scientific object and the subject´s state of mind.

In contrast to the scientist, the artist is absorbed by the shock of the discovery itself. And his response to it is to create a form which will enable his appreciators to make the same discovery or rediscovery of a common pattern among items of experience for themselves. The fundamental way in which the aesthetic object conforms to the subject is by analogy. The subject transforms the object itself by making analogies, perceptual, imaginative, emotive and conceptual, of the object. In so doing the form, the aesthetic identity of the work of art, is translated into the appreciator. These translations or analogues of the work are the meanings of which it is significant. They exist, however, within the mind of the appreciator and reflect aspects of his own self-identity. These meanings constitute the subjective sense of the work’s self-significance. The work of art, then, is self-significant in two senses: objective and subjective. Since this relation of the aesthetic object to its meanings within the appreciator is the same as the relation of a natural symbol to its meaning, the aesthetic object is called a self significant natural symbol.

Images were first made to conjure up the appearances of something that was absent. Gradually it became evident that an image could outlast what it represented; it then allowed to see how something or somebody had once looked. Every image embodies a mode of seeing. Even a photograph or a time series of photographic pictures, a movie does this. For photographs are not, as is often assumed, a mechanical record. Every time we look at a photograph, we are aware, however slightly, of the photographer selecting that sight from an infinity of other possible sights. This is true even in the most casual snapshot. The photographer's mode of seeing is reflected in his choice. The painter's mode of seeing is reconstituted by the marks he makes on the canvas or paper. Yet, although every image embodies a mode of seeing, our perception of an image depends upon our own mode of seeing images were first made to conjure up the appearances of something that was absent. However, it became evident that an image could outlast what it represented. The specific vision of the image-maker has been recognized as part of the record since the Renaissance. From then on an image became a record of how A had seen B. This was the result of an evolving consciousness of individuality, accompanying an increasing awareness of history.

If vision is an active grasp, what does it take hold of ? lf an observer intently examines an object, he finds his eyes well equipped to see minute detail. And yet, visual perception does not operate with the mechanical faithfulness of a camera, which records everything impartially: the whole set of tiny bits of shape and color constituting the eyes and mouth of the person posing for the photograph as well as the corner of the telephone protruding accidentally behind his head. What do we see when we see? Seeing means grasping some outstanding features of objects: the blueness of the sky, the curve of the flamingo's neck, the rectangularity of the book, the straightness of the pencil. A few simple lines and dots are readily accepted as "a face," not only by civilized Westerners, who may be suspected of having agreed among one another on such "sign language," but also by babies, savages, and animals. They as we must have some internal model of what-to-look-for.

Other than movies, paintings as some - not all - photographs are static with respect to time. The uniqueness of the experience of looking at a painted or photographic picture repeatedly - over a period of days or years - is that, in the midst of flux, the image remains changeless. Of course the significance of the image may change, as a result of either historical or personal developments, but what is depicted is unchanging: the smile and the face which have not altered, the waves on the sea with exactly the same formation unbroken, the clouds above the trees still seem to move in the same direction. One might be tempted to say that these pictures preserve a moment. Yet on reflection this is obviously untrue. For the moment, that particular picture was taken or painted, never existed as such. And so a painting cannot be said to preserve it. If a painting 'stops' time, it is much less as many photographs, preserving a moment of the past from the supersession of succeeding moments.

The flood of images we are so used to, is so overwhelming that often only stills , "situative processes of frozen movements" may help us to recover these superfluous images.

How does the brain deal with all this visual hyper-information? One way of course is not to look! But if we view anything or all of this flood of images, then we may stop to follow these external pictures with our eyes; i.e. we may stop to apply our continuously generated internal models of our surrounding world for their repetitiveness and perseveration lacking real visual information. In this case the ever fast changing pictures of low to zero information do not any more "guide" our eyes and brain - as so many of us prefer to believe. This is also the point where visual communication – between the self and the picture, i.e. the selfs of viewer and artist meeting through the picture, - comes to a stand-still. Here even death as a metaphor may be evoked as the visual point of zero contact of the non-moving eye focussing on the internal model of what the viewer´s mind is ready to see.