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        Technology has long been used to augment vision. The innovation of the telescope in the early 17th century by Galileo is an early example. After the development of the camera in the mid 19th century, many artists began using its potential to 'stop' time and analyze details of movement that had never been visible to the human eye. In the 1930s, Harold Edgerton pioneered the process of stroboscopic photography which enabled capturing the successive movements of an object with a still camera. Utilizing this technique, the photographs of Herbert Matter and L. Moholy-Nagy began to reveal a new vision, a sight unbound from time.

Herbert Matter Calder in Motion, 1939

        Digital computation has provided a medium for further extending our vision. Some of the experiments of John Maeda reveal this in an eloquent way. In his experimental Parametervision, every possible image constructed by a two dimensional parametric system can be viewed in a single image plane.

John Maeda Parametervison, 1999

        Plane Modulator combines both innovations into a system for constructing a new vision. It augments the early experiments in time and motion by providing the tools for analysis made possible through computation.