Indexing the archive…
Your Universe of Digital Possibilities
Close one eye and fix a cross: a dot drifting outward vanishes. There is a hole in your sight you have never seen. Match a card to the screen, mark where the dot vanishes and where it returns, and the instrument maps the hole — and from it, how far you sit and how many pixels make a degree, which every other Iris instrument then uses. At the end, all ten percepts become one portrait: your iris.
An object of size s at distance d fills the angle θ at the eye — the unit every Iris stimulus is specified in. At 60 cm a CSS pixel of 0.26 mm is about 1/40 of a degree; the same picture on a phone held at 30 cm is twice as large in the eye.
The dot vanishes at the blind spot’s entry, a distance s from the fixation cross on the screen (in mm, from the card match). Taking that entry at α ≈ 13.5° gives the viewing distance d, and d gives the pixels in a degree. Measure d with a ruler instead and α becomes a measurement of your own.
The tenth percept is the hole in the instrument itself — and the edition closes its ring here. Walk it back: The Tritone found the pitch class your ear calls high; The Tally, the ratio your gut can tell; The Glance, the four things one look holds; The Stripe, the light you subtracted from a dress; The Waterfall, the motion that runs on after it stops; The Crater, the sun you assume; The Lag, where you place a flash beside a moving ring; The Band, the stripes you see on a smooth edge — and back to The Checker, where two equal greys first looked different, and the eye was right. Ten inferences, one observer: you.