Persistence of vision, this is the amazing phenomenon of the eye by which an afterimage is thought to persist for approximately one twenty-fifth of a second on the retina. Because of this retaining image we can piece many images together to make motion, thus allowing us to see movies in motion, flipbooks move, and cartoons exist. This means that everything we see is a subtle blend of what is happening now and what happened a fraction of a second in the past. Meaning that the images ‘seamlessly animate’ together creating movement. In film and video, this phenomenon is often claimed to account for our ability to perceive a sequence of frames as a continuous moving picture. This however explains why the black spaces that come between each “real” movie frame are not perceived. While the image is within the minds eye, the next image comes onto the screen creating the movement that looks so real. Motion pictures, flipbooks and even in home videos, we record and view in a series of images that are recorded so fast we perceive it as one fluid film. This amazing phenomenon is the reason we can watch so many shows and have so many cartoons, and motion pictures. The afterimage has changed the way we view the world, literally. The phenomenon of an afterimage in our retina allows us to view motion in one fluid action.
by Christopher Jones
