Parallax and the Ames Window

One, Two, or One of Two Minds?

Don Kunze

Figure 1. Master of the Apollo and Daphne Legend, active 1480–1510, “Daphne Fleeing from Apollo.”
David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago.

W
e look at the world, the world looks at us. We have a good, geometric way of de ning
the way we look at the world, it’s a combination of optics, contractions of muscles of
the eyes and lens, the somewhat mystifying overlap between two views of those with
binocular vision, and other cues that allow us to esh out what is not given directly: the depth
dimension. We corroborate visual and haptic data with other cues to judge distances, for the very
good reason that threats and attractions depend equally on our ability to gauge how far away they
are, in case we need to run away, ght, or chase. Before there was agriculture, there were
thousands and thousands of years spent hunting and gathering, and the protocols associated with
these activities became etched into the human psyche, even when it turned to plowing elds and
sitting at desks.
Parallax could be stripped down to a diagram showing how two eyes use geometry to gauge
distance, but this is a greatly simpli ed model. Nonetheless, it accords with other depth-devising
constructions, such as perspective drawing, photography, and surveying. Without some means of
measuring distance, civilization would quickly grind to a halt. e upside, that no canons or
missiles could be red, would be overwhelmed with downsides. Parallax is an essential way of
being in the world.

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 1

fi
fi
fi
fl
Th
fi
fi
 Like the parallax optical diagram, however, it’s quite easy to
settle for the apparent clarity o ered by the Euclidean model of
space as an XYZ a air. How could that not be the case? ere
seems to be no disagreement that our sense membranes and
tissues are basically two-dimensional. How else might they
mediate the world “out there” with the nervous system that
bundles and channels sensations to the brain. e complication
Figure 2. Schematic statement of the
is that the body’s chief sensor of touch, heat and cold, and
two versions of straightness (orthos). radiant warmth is a continuous surface that forms a torus, the
e circle is the concentric or means of ingestion that brings the outside inside and then,
gravitational model, the tangent line is
the “beam” theory. e concentric a er digestion has had its ll, leaves it for waste management
schema wins in tests involving falling or systems to deal with. is folding of a sense organ complicates
ying, the beam theory wins in ight
contests. Orthos was the name of the our idea of inside and outside, since what is swallowed simply
appropriately two-headed dog goes to another kind of outside.
protecting Hades. e two themes
con ict in the story of Daphne and Another complication is about what is meant by two-
Apollo, initiated by Eros’s double arrow
of Love and Hate, leading to Apollo’sdimensional. ere is clearly some penetration of sensation
chase and Daphne’s ight, then into cells, some intermingling of energy received and energy
Daphne’s paralysis at the point of her
conversion into a laurel tree. relayed. Also, while the curvature of the retinas means that no
“straight line” in nature is perceived materially as such. e
spherical relation of the viewer to the straight line must be
replaced with a concept of a straight line. What happens on the retinas must be “thought-into”
being what it will later prove to be, if we test it.
e tests for straightness varies, and proves this contradictory fact. ere are two versions.
ere is the sagittal straightness of the taught wire, the eye–beam, the look. en, there is the
spherical straightness of sea-level, water in a lake, the horizon as abstract. e two types interact
without much commentary. Imagine a large basketball court made at by the sagittal method. A
marble on its surface would roll to the center. e model for this would be a line tangent to a
circle, its ends raised above and center depressed in relation to the system of gravitational eld,
which is concentric, because the horizon system is based on distance (Fig. 2). At this exaggerated
scale, it is clear why the marble would roll to the center of the court, or the arrow would y in a
curve.
e two models of straightness provoked interest and produced poetic puzzles. In the story of
Daphne and Apollo, Eros, insulted by Apollo’s mockery of his archery skills, cra ed a bi-
directional arrow able to strike the god and nymph in a totalizing way, which is to say that one
vector charged the space in which Apollo would chase, following sagittal logic, and Daphne
would ee but be trapped by the rules of concentric gravity (Fig. 1). e story could be told in ve

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 2

Th
Th
Th
Th
fl
ft
fl
fl
Th
Th
Th
ff
fl
Th
fi
fl
ff
Th
Th
Th
Th
fl
Th
Th
Th
Th
ft
fl
fi
fi
 words: one ew, the other fell. Apollo chase cannot defeat Daphne’s chastity.1 e story is about
geometry as much as it is about mockery, and it should suggest that the equation is reversible, that
the con ict between the two types of straightness can always revert to the interpersonal con ict
provoked by insult: the intentional humiliation of one subject by a presumed equal, and the
reciprocal submission of the other to the humiliation of the one. e former is the global
condition, the latter the local application.
If humiliation is the local experience of the global condition, our “equation” linking the two
models is the unavoidable spatial-temporal contronym that is the conclusion of the Apollo-
Daphne fable. e otherwise inexplicable paralysis of Daphne, which would trap her as a human
form but give her honor as long as she metamorphs into not just any tree but a laurel, the tree
whose branches are used to decorate the brows of heroes, converts the physics of the equation
into the language of humiliation and respect, the “human side of the story.” In other words,
characters such as Daphne and Apollo chase in one system and fall in another, because the two
systems have been running in parallel all the time. It is not for nothing that the dog guarding the
gates of Hades had two heads and was named Orthos.
e logic is not hard to grasp, and not limited to the poetic consciousness of antiquity. Ted
Kooser writes, in his poem “5 p.m.,” e pigeon ies to her resting place / on a window ledge above
the tra c, / and her shadow, which cannot y, climbs / swi ly over the bricks to meet her there.2
Marcel Proust used the shadows of birds across the cathedral wall as an epiphany in À la reserche
du Temps Perdu. In other words, this idea is not isolated by history, culture, or narrative
circumstances. It is a universal, a logical construct, a component of collective consciousness and,
therefore, worth our attention.
us, it is not for nothing that in Seminar VII, e Ethics of Psychoanalysis, when Lacan
mentions architecture speci cally for the rst time, that he cites the Apollo-Daphne story and
identi es the nymph’s paralysis with the “surface of pain” that is explicitly architecture. Not
architectur-al but architecture. What poets have known about since antiquity and what modern
poets such as Kooser or Proust have readily employed for their own constructs of epiphany is also
what Lacan knows in 1959 but acknowledges o cially only in 1961, thanks to a footnote added to
a text in 1965 but possibly has forgotten that he we rst bitten by Orthos in 1935.
Lacan, Ovid, Proust, and Kooser walk into a bar … what’s the rest of the joke? e joke is that
“they cross it.” e bar separates the signi er from the signi ed and is the basis of the Symbolic in
Lacan’s RSI system, graphically rendered as a Borromeo knot, where any two rings are held
together by a third, which can be said to be either present (applying a force) or absent (not
physically connected). e thesis is related to the riddle of parallax. Is it the straight line of ight,
1Although there is no direct etymological relation between chase and chastity, the chemical process of removing
excess dye from a fabric or coloration from a metal surface before embossing suggests some overlap from the ideas of
ight and purity in the Apollo-Daphne story to more general understanding of the relations of the shot beam to the
horizonal sphere.
2 Ted Kooser, “5 p.m.,” Flying at Night: Poems 1965–1985 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2008).

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 3

Th
Th
fl
fi
ffi
fl
fl
Th
Th
Th
fi
Th
fi
fi
fl
ffi
Th
fl
fi
ft
fi
Th
Th
Th
fl
fl
 where a diagram can be drawn in a Euclidean way to show the binocular overlap, or is it a gravity-
induced fall that holds in place “she who would remain chaste not chased.” e two versions
con ict, yet it is hard to nd one without the other, as the Apollo-Daphne story suggests. ey are
a spatio-temporal contronym.3 Can we say that the Euclidean model works for us looking at the
world, while the concentric gravity model works for the world looking at us?
Lacan’s assertion that the topology of the pure projective plane is nothing less than the Real —
not a picture of the Real (pictures are impossible in projective geometry), not a model of the Real
(i. e. not a template), and not an analogy (another kind of model), but T-H-E R-E-A-L itself,
ipsum. He means this the way Vico asserted that the made was the true, and vice versa. Verum
ipsum factum. e true and the real are “convertible,” meaning that, like the language of ying and
falling, though seeming opposites, are two (antipodal) parts of the same machine of straightness.
e parallax of looking–at requires there to be another parallax, one that situates Daphne’s
paralysis in its own physics of honor. If Lacan says this is the Real, it’s the Real of projectivity that
allows both for the closed curved surface that was Daphne’s trap, assembled in the simultaneity of
the moment she thought to ee, and for the love of Apollo, in amed by Eros’s double-projectile of
lovehate.
We had better use the proper name for this messenger of antinomous passion: a one-
dimensional sub-space, which in projective geometry is a vector that passes through a single
point, with all other vectors in space. It had originally been one of a family of lines meeting at a
vanishing point; now it passes through that vanishing point to create a system of concentricities
measure by the real projective plane (Fig. 3). As perplexing as this illustration may appear at this
point, it sums up the mutual antagonism of the two systems of parallax (distance) in terms of the

Figure 3. Projective geometry converts the horizon as a limit of the visible to a point through which vectors (“two-
dimensional sub-spaces”) pass through. e point then becomes the origin of a Cartesian XYZ space, where a plane
positioned at a unit distance above the X axis will simplify the description of the vectors by describing them as two
coordinates rather than three. e role of the 1 is the same as that employed by Lacan to describe the Golden Ratio as
the in nite depth created by the powers of a in relation to the A, Autre, in his slide-rule analogy in Seminar XIV, e
Logic of Phantasy. It is the 1 that assures that the sum of a and an will “oscillate” le to right within its unary space,
approaching the value of Ø, which on the slide-rule was represented by 1/a.

3A contronym is non-oriented and self-intersecting; therefore it is a verbal counterpart to topological gures in

projective space.

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 4

Th
fl
fi
Th
Th
fi
fl
Th
fl
ft
Th
fi
Th
fl
Th
 stasis of projectivity, which none can see, and the dynamics of the chase, to which anyone can
assign motives, calculate who will win and lose the race, or be a lover or hating beloved.

Projective Geometry
Jacques Lacan was speci c. Projective geometry was nothing less than the Real, the Real itself, the
Real as that which resists the Symbolic as steadfastly as Daphne resisted Apollo’s advances. In fact,
this is why Lacan found, in Ovid’s story, a way to describe the contronymic composite of
projectivity, its “global” principle of gravity versus its “local” principle of ight, each
corresponding to its own system of parallax. e Real was neither the global nor the local, but the
bar separating the two, the bar of the horizon that converted to the hollow point that was also the
vectors passing through that bar on their way from visibility to invisibility.4
e problem for projective geometry in general has always been its relation to Euclidean
geometry. It was discovered a er Euclid had written his six books, by, coincidentally, a
mathematician who had written a commentary on those same six books, Pappus of Alexandria.
However, when Pappus devised his theorem of projective geometry, he realized that this theorem
described a geometry that was not only wholly di erent from Euclid, but logically prior. Priority
could mean only one thing: that projective geometry was embedded within the “everyday
dimensions,” the XYZ of Euclid, but as a principle of e ectiveness, a principle that allowed
Euclid’s vectors, curves, distances, and angles to “happen,” but which was also the eventual limit
where these measures could go no further: the Fi h Postulate. Euclid would be forced to invent a
ction about in nity in order to explain why parallel lines did not meet at the vanishing point.
is in nity would be based on a proof about equal angles of parallel lines intersected by a third
line cutting through both.
Of course, Euclid did not live in the real world. He lived in a world of demonstration, where
there was only one version of straightness, where the horizon was not circular, where gravity
would not pull a marble to the center of a at plane, nor where the brain would not be required to
“think of straight” where it saw, plainly before it, a curve. Euclid, it is safe to say, was thoroughly
perplexed at why Daphne should become a tree just because Apollo had insulted Eros. ere
should be no blame cast upon Euclid, however. We do not live in his space, but we enjoy it as a
“space of demonstration,” where from one false principle (straightness as axiomatic), an entire

4It is surprising to nd out that virtually no Lacanians make reference to this aspect of projective geometry,
concentrating instead on the results of this inside-out spatial inversion, toruses, cross-caps, Möbius bands, etc. But,
these are the immersions of the true projective topologies, represented more accurately by the “fundamental
polygons” that are like folding instructions. Myths follow the folding instructions, also the man and woman follow
them. Topology is not just a “pure mathematics” but the ethnological principles of motion, stillness, repetition
(hence, ritual), boundaries, death, transitions (liminal), etc. is is “lived topology,” and we can understand it by
knowing about its mathematical forms as long as we don’t think of mathematics as the only reality of projective space.
Lacan says this directly, and in many places; and it is evident even when he doesn’t, as in the ree Prisoners’
Dilemma he discovers in 1935, long before he gives the o cial date to his topological interests, 1961. is is Lacan’s
general interest in the EFQ, the ex falso from which all things may spring forth, in purity and truth. anks to Iraj
Esmaeilpour Ghoochani for bringing up the relation of truth to “the pure ow.”

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 5

Th
fi
Th
fi
fi
fi
fi
ft
fl
Th
ffi
ft
ff
Th
ff
fl
fl
Th
Th
Th
Th
 system can develop: ex falso quodlibet sequitur (“from the
acceptance of a false principle, anything is possible”). Lacan,
realizing that Euclid’s mistake was on the level of Russell’s
paradox about a set being able or not able to join itself (the same
principle as Lacan cited for all men, ∀xøx, ∃x~øx, “all those who
would call themselves men — “who would claim the honor of
being called men” — do so at the risk of being humiliated by “at
Figure 2. e force of gravitational least one” who does not obey the phallic rule). If anything
attraction (above), generalized (below) con rms Russell’s Paradox, it is this matheme. Insult impacts
is the structure of two- and three-
dimensional concentricity, by which directly on the rise or fall of sexuation, and without this Daphne
objects fall to the center when they fail would not be compelled to ee and then face the logical trap of
to resist and ee from the center when
fright compels them to run. e paralysis within the 2-space of her own specially devised
decision between ght or ight lies with parallax.
the parasympathetic nerve system,
To demonstrate as Euclid did, inventing his own operational
which at the level of physics is set at a
hypothetical trigger point that “ oats”
space at the same time, was a secularization of de-monstrare, not
or is held in orbit. e moon in its orbit
of earth could be called passive a removal of paradox as the “monster” is disassembled, but an
paralysis, since the moon neither ees
action de monstrare, about the monstrous, about the metonymy
nor falls but is held in position, de ned
by the mensual cycle, with universal of temporality projected as a composite but problematic gure
implications variously interpreted by with a head of a goat representing spring, a body of a lion
each culture.
representing summer, and the tail of the serpent to entail winter.
e Sphinx herself presented this same meroic model in her
riddle presented to Œdipus, not guessing that he would know the answer which would be
equivalent to the password gaining him entrance into ebes, but that this very password would
further extend his blindness to the prophetic logic connecting his birth, abandonment, survival,
patricide, and future incest into a single paradigm.
is is monstrosity of blindness to one thing and the totalizing perspective of Tiresias, who
a er seeing snakes copulate was, like others of his “clan,”5 the Semitic-speaking peoples who
moved from Syria into Cadmeia towards the end of the second millennium, b.c.e. Tiresias’s
principle is entirely parallaxian. e sight of the copulating serpents was an identity, a case of the
view looking back at the viewer with an extromissive power-ray that converted the viewer into

5 Chat GPT: “Tiresias was a blind prophet who lived in ebes, a city in ancient Greece. He was said to have been the
son of a shepherd named Everes and a nymph named Chariclo. Chariclo was a daughter of the god Oceanus and the
goddess Tethys, making Tiresias a grandson of two powerful deities.” Cadmus and Tiresias were both descended from
the Semitic tribes that moved up from the Syrian plains to Cadmeia in Caria. Cadmus is a Semitic word meaning
“eastern.” As Barkan notes, they were a race said to be “sewn from the earth,” harvested by the planting of dragon’s
teeth, and so Tiresias, in his encounter with copulating snakes, was in e ect transformed into the metonymy of his
own origins, a contronym that today loans its powers to the medical profession in the form of the caduceus, used by
Hermes to cross boundaries as a herald protected from prosecution to the point that he could cross the boundaries
between life and death. See Leonard Barkan, “Diana and Actaeon: e Myth as Synthesis,” English Literary
Renaissance 10, No. 3, Studies in Shakespeare (Autumn 1980): 317–359. Also: Robert Graves, “Europe and Cadmus,”
e Greek Myths 1 (New York: George Braziller, 1955), 197.

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 6

Th
Th
Th
ft
fi
Th
fl
fi
Th
fl
Th
fl
fl
fi
fl
Th
Th
Th
Th
fi
ff
 “what he was, ‘for Real’,” which in Tiresias’s case was a
man-woman, the single body in-corp-orating the
exclusionary principle of male identity and the not-all
principle of the feminine. In parallax terms this was the
“one-dimensional subspace,” the projective (extromissive)
vector becoming “what it always was,” a panoptical
(horizonal) visuality, capable of prophecy.
Tiresias points us to two main concerns in the connection
of ordinary parallax with what we come to identify as a
second parallax lying inside this rst parallax. e
Figure 4. Ouranos. Central part of a large oor theoretical issue has to do with the fact that the second
mosaic, from a Roman villa in Sentinum
(Marche, Italy), ca. 200–250 C.E. Uranos, in the parallax is actually logically primary, and even
form ofAion, the god of eternity, is standing foundational, for what we take to be the parallax of
inside a celestial sphere decorated with zodiac
signs, in between a green tree and a bare tree everyday reality. is is the way that Tiresias, in seeing the
(summer and winter, respectively). Sitting in copulating snakes (historically second to his life as a
front of him is the mother-earth goddess, Tellus
(the Roman counterpart of Gaia) with her four man), was then extromissively seen as what he was
children, who possibly represent the four primarily, as a race that sprang from the earth, which the
seasons. is is a projective space, in that
Uranos, who is outside the visible world (Gaia,
serpents presented as a composite of sexual coupling.
earth, is shown inside the zodiac belt. Tiresias became a man-woman “secondarily” because he
was a man-woman “primarily,” thanks to his being a
member of the Cadmus family. e “dragon’s seeds” were sown by the penetration of the earth
(Gaia) by the sky (Uranos). e same fate applied to projective geometry, which although it was
discovered “secondarily” to the elaboration of Euclid, it was discovered to be prior to Euclid, a
logical foundation. is retroaction is the means by which a basis, to be a basis, is concealed by its
progeny, who are “destroyed” upon the discovery of their true father (Saturn devouring his
children).6 In Vico’s account of the origins of humanity itself, this sowing of the earth by the
heavens was the lightning that ignited res, accompanied by thunder that was regarded as the
Word of Jove.
is cosmic act of sewing could mean only one thing to the rst humans: the re was the
point phenomenon of prophecy (il vero of Vico’s explanation of myth as vera narratio), and the
hearth that concentrically surrounded it was the site of divination, supervised by Hestia and her
daughters, whose allegiance was assured by the “fact” of this localization, that the re was an

6Vico: Saturn “gets his name from sati, ‘sown’ [ elds].” e famous anagram square, ROTAS/SATOR/TENET/
OPERA/AREPO, whose mystery has not been fully mastered, is evidence that the enigma of retroactive self-origins
has perplexed generations since early days. Giambattista Vico, e New Science of Giambattista Vico, trans. omas
Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1948), §3.

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 7

Th
Th
Th
Th
Th
fl
Th
fi
fi
fi
Th
Th
Th
fi
fi
fi
Th
 extromissive power that compressed the “horizonal” and panoptical truth into a single vector that
was orthographic and orthological: corrective and universally surveillant.7
ere are two or three things one can know and then know a lot of other things. e story of
Tiresias is one of those two or three things. It explains for example why the science of divination
developed by the rst human societies in awe of the thunder’s word8 required (1) a principle of
paralysis (Prometheus, chained to the rock while his liver, the preferred organ of divination, was
repeatedly devoured by the Jovian eagle then regenerated — truly a case of ha fegato! as an
expression meaning “he has guts!”); (2) a protocol by means of which the “priestesses of Hestia”
had to break their vows to marry exogamously; and (3) how and why the optical principle of the
“one eye” — meaning the eye of the forest opened up to a view of the sidereal sky — was
correlated to extromission in relation to this necessity to break with “promethean” rule of
paralysis.9 e rst humans were aware of metonymy but not metaphor. Metaphor was the
principle of suppression, by which the rst humans viewed the world as a self-image without
realizing this transposition.10 Metonymy involves the distinction of a “ gure,” a meaning or
physical shape that “stands out,” from a “ground,” details that have been “suppressed” to a level of
less signi cance, physically modeled by the visual gure-ground’s imagined plane of the
background. e key idea here is that the background is always the background. Like the visible
world’s horizon, it recedes to be the permanent limit of the observer in any position. e

7 Culture begins with the clearing of the forest that was later called the Nemean Lion, a monstrous tri-partite form
that quali ed it, also, as a dragon. e dragon’s “teeth” were the plow-shears of the rst agriculturalists, personi ed by
Cadmus, who “sewed the dragon’s teeth,” meaning that he cultivated the land with ploughs, whose triangular shape
led to this comparison. Giambattista Vico, Universal Right, trans. Giorgio Pinto and Margaret Diehl (Amsterdam and
Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2000), 478. Note also that the curved part of the plough was the urbs, connecting it to
foundation rites where the pomœrium is plowed and subsequent building on the furrow prohibited.
8 is awe is historically and ethnologically durable. See John Nance, e Gentle Tasaday: A Stone-Age People in the
Philippine Rain Forest (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975). Donald Verene has pointed out the “Vichian”
passage in this book, where the Tasaday report that they are terrorized most by the one thing in the forest that they
can’t see, the thunder. Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1981), 89–90.
9 Extromission is associated with a “line of re” that is simultaneously truthful, pure, and terrifying. Even in the 1951
lm, e Day the Earth Stood Still, this logic is obediently applied. e robotic security guard Gort can melt weapons
of the soldiers without hurting the soldiers themselves. His beam is the condensation of the circle of star-power (the
space ship represents the confederation of all the galaxies), repeating the template of the circle and the line, a
schematic of the Ames Window Illusion. In the Ames Window, the ruler balanced on the window ledge is orthogonal
to the window, serving the same function as a “cathetic line” drawn perpendicular to the at plane tangent to the
earth’s sphere. e earth, in rotating, imitates the Ames Window, the “spectacular surprise” comes when, along the
line of cathesis, we bear witness to the collision of the two logics, chiral oscillation and 360º rotation. us the second
parallax emerges from the rst.
10 e rst humans were “giants,” according to Vico, because the Greek word, γίγαντας, rst meant “children of the
earth,” i. e. the race of Cadmus, borne of dragon’s teeth, the auspices of the hearth. Vico, New Science, §13. Ignorant of
metaphor, metaphor constituted the logic of the rst human conception of reality, metonymy was the structure of the
transactions between humans and the messages divined through techniques of auspices. e ame connected the
rst families, at the locale of the hearth, to the manes, or ancestral spirits. Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, e
Ancient City: A Study of the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome, trans. Willard Small (Mineola, NY:
Dover Publications, 2006).

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 8

Th
fi
fi
Th
Th
Th
fi
fi
fi
Th
Th
Th
fi
fi
fi
Th
fi
fi
fi
fi
Th
Th
fi
fi
fi
Th
fl
fl
Th
Th
Th
Th
fi
 background cannot be visited; as each part of it is conscripted to be a part of con- gur-ation, the
background is re-supplied on a one-to-one basis as we change our positions as viewers able to
move around.
Metonymy’s e ectiveness is based on the utility of its prominent feature, as in the case where
the sails of ships or heads of cattle allow them to be more easily counted. A metonymized world
produces various kinds of utility, the most useful of which is parallax measure, where the cry of
an animal or crash of a fall allows the source to be located and estimated. A eld comprising
metonymies can be surveilled; its threats identi ed and located; its resources located and tracked.
It is Apollo’s world, the world of the chase, improved by enhancing the visibility of the prey and
invisibility of the hunter or, from the hunted’s point of view, the reverse: camou age and early
warning systems.11
e hunter-gather’s world is fundamentally metonymical because of the practical need to
divide gure from ground, the utility of parallax in both optical and indirect geometrical terms
involving triangulation, short-cuts, camou age, and tracking maneuvers. e point is not to
generalize the particulars of pre-historical perceptual practices but, rather, to show the role of the
circuit to the beam, the horizon to the central point, the rotation to the oscillation. is is the
geometry that, in projective topology, allows the circle of the visible to invert to a hollow point
through which vector that had previously aimed at points on its periphery now pass through it in
a common bundle, vectors that can be given Y and Z values as they pass through a plane
suspended as a Y unit placed at 1 above the X axis, leaving only X and Z to be accounted for.12
From this same plane, spatial forms of the cross-cap, Möbius band, torus, etc. can be described
two-dimensionally but seen only if they are “immersed” into a space that allows the two-
dimensional plane to be viewed at a distance, the Euclidean “space of demonstration.” From the
circle to the point and the point to an extromissive beam, projective gures appear before out
eyes, to dazzle us with their properties of non-orientability and self-intersection. We enjoy these

11 Where signals are all about hunting or being hunted, ampli cation is necessary. Again, the gure-ground
distinction is critical. Studies of cray sh in ponds, predator turtles are detectable because of small follicles able to use
the stochastic resonance of pond’s white noise to amplify the weak signals of the turtle’s movement. e white-noise
becomes the ground against which the signal is “pushed forward” as detectable. In the same way, perspectival gure-
ground distinction ampli es the nearness of the gure and the distance of the ground, formalizing it thanks to
“stochastic” procedures that create a perceptual blanket to generalize distant objects, melding them into a single
ground. Parallax, as anyone who has had to use a camera knows, makes focus easier for distant objects, di cult for
ones in the near eld. Anything in the distance of importance must be “ampli ed” and brought closer by
distinguishing it from a general blended eld.
12 In e ect, the 1 of Y is the “depth” of the projective plane as a whole, at (literally) the position of a unit. Depth in 3-d
is sagittal, but in 2-d it is the chase around the topological surface, such as that made by Apollo of Daphne, leading to
the two properties of projectivity, Daphne’s self-intersection (paralysis) as a laurel tree, and Apollo’s desire as
contronymic to Daphne’s hate, although they were shot contronymically at the same time, possibly by the same arrow
(non-orientation). e contronymic chase is also the theme of the “Appointment in Samarra” story group, where the
servant attempting to ee death runs straight into him, “right on time”: temporal as well as spatial coincidence. e
other aspect of the uncanny, the subject who forgets that he/she is dead, is the complementary theme of self-
intersection, as this interval is portrayed as the esean labyrinth, folds of a single passageway that equalize outside
and inside with a fractal algorithm that doesn’t change although it generates continuous change.

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 9

Th
ff
fi
ff
fi
Th
fl
fi
fi
fi
Th
fi
fl
fi
fi
fi
fi
Th
fi
fi
fl
fi
Th
Th
ffi
fi
Th
 abstractly, but we are amazed when we nd that this sequence from circle to point to line of sight
is also the protocol of stories to be found in ancient myths, where themes of paralysis,
monocularity, and vows broken through charade carry forward ancient practices that were the
basis of “cyclopean” cultures incapable of knowing that they were thinking and seeing thanks to
their denial of the metaphor by which the world had been remade in their own image. e
metonymies of the chase, elaborated in the ritualized warfare of “heroic” peoples, were no less
obedient to these three principles, principles that could and still can be “told” through simple
diagrams showing the relation of circles to points to planes to planes in perspective. From Jove to
Tiresias to the modern believer in the literal, the geometry has been the same. It is a geometry to
be witnessed more than understood, since its wonder lies at the neural level where two parallaxes
overlap, where our perception and neural processes allow us to create perspectives inside
perspectives, even at the expense of logical expectation.

The Ames Window Experiment

e orthographic has two meanings. First, it is the idea of a
correct relationship, based on the root term orthos. Second, it is
used to designate a right angle, an angle at ninety degrees, a
“cathesis line,” so it’s also about the possibility of a Z dimension
in the space created by an X and a Y, a projective vector that
connects the viewer with the viewed.13 We can hardly imagine a
condition where we could see something that we couldn’t really
see, but the Ames window experiment subtracts from what we
think we see. It is about what happens when the Z dimension is
not allowed to have its usual freedom of movement, which is the
Figure 5. Maquette used in the Ames
Window demonstration, a trapezoid
chance to see if a three D thing is really three D.
made to appear, when viewed face-
on, as a window in perspective. When
ere are two main concerns in the connection of ordinary
the at image is rotated, the parallax with what we come to identify as a second parallax lying
perspective appearance does not
inside this rst parallax. e theoretical issue has to do with the
chance, and although each edge takes
turns being in front of the viewer, it fact that the second parallax is actually logically primary, and
appears that only one edge oscillates even foundational, for what we take to be the parallax of
from le to right. us, an object
penetrating a pane of the window, everyday reality. e orthographic has two meanings. First, it is
which is perceived to revolve 360º, the idea of a correct relationship, based on the root term orthos.
seems to violate the space of the
window at each 180º position. Video Second, it is used to designate a right angle, an angle at ninety
from Dr. Deane Hutton, e Curiosity degrees, so it’s also about the possibility of a Z dimension in the
Show.

13Cathesis exists also for gures in 2-d projective space, but it is converted to the theme of the (contronymic) chase.
Just as the vanishing point seems to follow the traveler as he/she moves across the landscape, the eeing subject can
never escape the object of fear in 2-space, since the vanishing point is the product of the viewing point, both distant
and close with any attempt to escape. e desire to escape produces cathesis immediately, suggesting that metaphoric
suppression directly produces metonymic expression. In e ect, this is the space of the trap. Demonstrations of the
Ames Window Illusion abound; this is one: [Link]

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 10

Th
Th
fl
ft
fi
Th
Th
Th
fi
Th
Th
fi
ff
fl
Th
 space created by an X and a Y, a projective vector that connects the viewer with the viewed. We
can hardly imagine a condition where we could see something that we couldn’t really see, but the
Ames window experiment subtracts from what we think we see. It is about what happens when
the Z dimension is not allowed to have its usual freedom of movement, which is the chance to see
if a three D thing is really three D.
A trapezoid can be dressed up to look like window in perspective so that, when we see it from
either side, either edge looks like the edge that is closest to us. is converts a rotation of the
trapezoid appear to be a back and forth motion instead of a rotation, and we can play with this
e ect by placing an object running through one of the window-panes that will appear to revolve
rather than move back and forth. e e ect is particularly strong when we see the trapezoid end-
on, when we think we are seeing the same edge but in fact are seeing both edges in succession.
is lets us think about the issue of orthographics, because we
have a right-angle relation to the picture plane that holds our view
in place as the trapezoid plays its tricks.
Because the actual at trapezoid of the Ames window is “already
in perspective” although it’s on a at plane orthogonal to our line
of view, when we place it perspectivally, the short end will
continue to be read as the short end, and we will never think that
we are seeing the far edge, only the leading edge (Fig. 5). is
makes the rotating window appear to be oscillating side to side,
although it’s really rotating.14 An object placed at a right angle to
the window will not oscillate, however, so we will have the
uncanny experience of seeing the ruler penetrate the plane of the
Figure 6. In the classic system of four window as it continues to rotate while the window moves right to
humors, the concept of balance is le , le to right. All of this happens at a very deep place within our
“isonomic” in both the need to nd a
balance between hot-cold and wet- neural networks, a place where the brain’s cognitive functions
dry but also between the humors compete with the parasympathetic nerve system to control our
themselves, which involves nding a
point of symmetrical di erence, the
sense of what’s happening. is immediacy is what makes this
“prudence of being sanguine” illusion able to say something about the expressive function of
opposite “prudence with a touch of
sentimentality.” Melancholy, the “odd
consciousness, where we attribute motive and intentionality to the
humor out,” is, on account of the object world.
volatility of black bile, the
impossibility of fully determining the e term isonomic was rst used to describe the relation between
isonomic point. us, the Golden
the two extreme states in the theory of humors. To be healthy and
Mean idea: the point that is not a
point. Note the arrangement of the orthographically correct, you had to nd the isonomic balance
quadrated subject within the point between hot and cold and wet and dry for the three humors,
astrological signs, similar to Ouranos’
position in Figure 4. sanguine, choleric, and phlegmatic. e only problem was with

14 e Ames Window illusion was invented by Adelbert Ames Jr. (1880–1955) in 1946. Ames pioneered the study of
physiological optics at Dartmouth University. As a student at Harvard, he studied under George Santayana and
William James.

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 11

Th
Th
ff
ft
Th
ft
Th
ff
fl
fi
fi
fi
Th
fl
Th
Th
fi
ff
Th
Th
 melancholy, where even the tiniest bit of black bile was poisonous. is was the odd humor out,
but it showed how the isonomic or isomeric point in the other humors was not a balance point
but actually a combination or exchange of opposites, each tempering the other, so that, for
example, in the case of blood, wet and hot, you needed a bit of the phlegmatic humor to keep
your friendliness within bounds, so that you would be prudent while you were falling in love, for
example. e isomeric is about the complexity of balance, and the impossibility of de ning at as a
simplistic kind of division. Melancholy is the key. It teaches the other humors how to behave, but
it itself is isolated. It is the teacher who teaches because she can’t practice, and when we see her
represented, as in the engraving by Dürer (Melencolia §1), her tools lie on the ground and puzzles
of time and space are displayed all around.

Surprise, Astonishment, the REAL

e isomeric/isonomic point is critical whenever
popular culture wishes to employ projective
geometry to make something funny. In this scene
from Chaplin’s lm, the circus, a chase that begins as
linear becomes topological as soon as the tramp and
the policeman hop onto a turntable that the clowns
had been using as a part of their act. In this new
space, being further away from the policeman in the
front means being closer to him at the back, so we
have a kind of Ames window condition, where the
turntable’s rotation is like the ruler that goes three
Figure 7. In Charlie Chaplin’s 1928 comic lm, e
hundred and sixty degrees but the chase itself
Circus, the Tramp tries to escape the policeman by appears to oscillate between the values of closer and
running onto a turntable being used in an ongoing
clown act. e further away Chaplin gets from the
further away. e self-intersection of the chase
space “in front of ” the o cer, the closer he gets to his converts the linear model to an alternating current
back, to the absurd point where he uses his cane to
that is non-orientable, and with these two qualities
pull the policeman back from his “frontal” chase.
we have, e ectively, the de nition of the pure
projective plane.
Astonishment occurs, when we watch the Ames Window rotate 360º but appear to waggle from
side to side in less than its 180º range, we are convinced that we are looking at the same edge of
the window as it moves from right to le , le to right.
In certain ways, the relation between rotational movement and back-and-forth motion reveals
a secret about Lacan’s “slide-rule analogy” in Seminar XIV, e Logic of Phantasy. In his use of the
ratio of 1/a, the interval a is brought within the interval to create the remainder, a2. en, the
interval a2 “slides” le across into the a interval to create the remainder a3. at slides over to the
right again to create a4. What is the circular motion that is the Real in contrast to this Imaginary?
And, what is the element corresponding to the object protruding through the plane of the Ames

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 12

Th
Th
Th
ff
Th
fi
ffi
ft
fi
fi
Th
ft
ft
Th
Th
Th
Th
fi
 trapezoid? In Lacan’s explanation of the meaning of the 1-interval,
he explains that the unary trait is grounded in a self-intersecting
algorithm that takes the form of x = 1 + 1/x (Fig. 8). To solve the
equation, the “answer” (1+1/x) must be re-inserted into the
“question” (x — what is it?), and the results produce 2/1, 3/2, 5/3,
etc. the numbers of the Fibonacci series that, in this “folding,”
provide successively better approximations of Ø. e circularity is
in the re-insertion strategy that also involves a successive
“metonymical” re-use of each number in the series 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8
…. Self-intersection constitutes a 360º procedure, with the
equivalent happening at the level of an, which is what the viewer of
the slide-rule sees, in a face-to-face, 180º view, in studying this
analogy.
Are we justi ed in saying that Lacan’s slide-rule analogy is a
version of the Ames Window Illusion? e test would be to show
Figure 8. Lacan uses the formula of
recursion to de ne the unary trait’s
the point where the error of thinking that we see only one edge of
“Fibonacci” properties by, in e ect, the window, oscillating right to le , le to right, is confronted by
de ning 1 as a “One 1” (this is
called the audioactive property)
the presence of an object orthogonal to the plane of the
and relating that to the Fibonacci trapezoidal maquette. What is this orthogonal element? Orthos as
spiral’s origin with a rectangle 1+1.
Recursion continues to produce an
we know has several meanings. e rst is that of correctness. e
evermore precise value of Ø, the right angle is orthographic, “correct,” because it is the angle of
Fibonacci “Golden ratio.”
inspection that replicates the angle of production at every point on
the surface of demonstration. is allows the orthographic
drawing to directly represent measures of lines and angles that appear on the drawing. It is also
the factor by which, in parallax vision, allows the brain to correct the curved lines that are
actually seen, thanks to the parallax situation, to one the conforms with the “truth” of the straight
line in reality, while retaining a psychic memory marker that allows the viewer to re ect on the
complexity of the meaning of “straight” and even confront the ineluctable di erences between the
360º “gravity model” and the tensioned line model.
e 90º meaning of orthos penetrates the circular idea in the same way the line of sight
penetrates the orthographic model. It is a “gateway” that is guarded by the two-headed dog,
Orthos, because there is no way to resolve the two opposed meanings of straight. In Lacan’s slide-
rule analogy, the counterpart to the ruler sticking through the pane of the Ames Window is (1)
the frontality of the slide-rule itself and (2) the viewer of the diagram’s mathematical
demonstrations, where it seems “incredible” that a + a2 should equal 1, then equally incredible
that a – a2 should equal a3, or then that the procedure, when “waggled” from right to le and le
to right, would segregate the odd powers from the even ones. All the while, the 1 as unary trait is
“deepening” itself through the algorithm of recursion, x = 1 + 1/x. Deepening is equivalent to the
parallax perspective of the Ames Window that forces us to see (= demonstration) the “depth

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 13

Th
fi
fi
fi
ff
Th
Th
ft
fi
ft
Th
Th
Th
ff
fl
ft
ft
function” of the powers of a. e a “extends itself ” to a vanishing point on an imagined horizon
and stabilizes the space of our frontal, 180º view.
Our astonishment at Lacan’s slide-rule analogy is a convergence and troubled overlap between
two logics, the 180º depth condition, where we are fascinated as we watch the le –right powers of
a produce increasingly smaller intervals as each new remainder slides back into its source, and
the 360º (productive) rotation that is the “gravity” that produces the side-to-side experience. I
think that here it is appropriate to talk about how the lines that converge at the vanishing point on
the horizon is also a kind of fall, and how this fall relates to projective topology.

Flight in Free-fall
Figure 3 condenses the logic of projective space as an inside-out inversion. e horizon becomes
a central point. All of the lines heading for vanishing points on it, at any location, are reproduced
in the form of the vectors representing all the related families of parallel lines that meet at those
points. What had headed out to the edge of space, to points “lying at in nity,” now pass through a
point that has repackaged in nity into a single middle position, a kind of reverse “black hole,” in
that lines radiate out of it rather than disappear into it.
Would it be too colorful to say that, in projective space, every parallax view of lines
converging in the in nite distance is really about falling? We get to this point in the case of
talking about the core, the raw form of representation, what Freud called
Vorstellungsrepräzentanz. is is when a child acts out by using representation in illegitimate
ways, saying “the dog goes meow” and “the cat goes bow-wow.” e Rat Man for example called
his father “a lamp, a towel, a plate” as an insult. And, Lacan cited the phrase “Colorless green ideas
sleep furiously,” in Seminar XX, Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis. Acting out in such obvious
ways erroneously gives the impression that you have to be, as his father called the Rat Man,
“either a criminal or a genius.” Vorstellungsrepräzentanz is more basic, more universal.15 As John
Hendrix has put it, Freud cited the moment of transfer from the unconscious to the conscious
mind, calling it an act. In history, this had been represented as the necessary bond between
sensible images and words (language as necessary to perception and vice versa). e
Vorstellungsrepräzentanz is the presentation of the word in what Cassirer called its “expressive
function” (Ausdrucksfonktion), a level of pure astonishment and surprise, before intellection has
had the chance to domesticate it into something relational or cognitive.
We can experience this level at the point in the rotation of the Ames Window when we, the
viewers, mistake the edge of the thin maquette as the same edge, even though the maquette rotates
360º, showing us both of its ends. anks to its forced perspective and our neural network’s “need
to believe” in the representation of the parallax that holds it in place as a representation, the one
edge that is really two edges oscillates back and forth, le to right, right to le . is reality casts

15 John Shannon Hendrix, “ e Vorstellungsrepräzentanz,” Vestigia, International Network of Psychoanalytic Practices

3, Issue 1 (December 12, 2022). [Link]
[Link]

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 14

fi
Th
Th
fi
Th
Th
ft
Th
fi
Th
ft
Th
ft
Th
 the feature that actually seems to rotate 360º into the role of a ctional, magic object. In Rat Man
terms, the father has become the lamp, towel, or plate that is ridiculous, magical, obscene.
By switching the forced perspective magic into reality, the representation of reality becomes
magic. Our sense of stereognosis, so eager to designate the world as a matter of handedness, is so
powerful that anything standing in its way is made to appear as a miracle, and here we have the
science of divination in a nutshell. e sun does not disappear at sunset and re-appear the next
morning, it becomes a new sun with each dawn, because our sense of chirality, our parallax, has
converted 360º into 180º, rotation into a face-to-face, presentational stereognosis. e Ames
Mirror has been able to put this “mythic” state of mind directly before us because it has been able
to solicit our neural network’s preference for stereognosis, for parallax. Its demand for chiral
order throws what is ordinary reality into reverse gear, and we see the ruler passing magically
through the window panes.
What has resisted the Symbolic? In Lacan’s RSI schema,
the Real, Symbolic, Imaginary, the Real resists. e Real,
Lacan says in Seminar XIV, e Logic of Phantasy, is to
be equated with topology. What we call reality is the
order the Symbolic hastens to construct around any
unknown thing. In the 1973 lm e Sting, two
professional con-men (Robert Redford and Paul
Figure 9. Paul Newman and Robert Redford in e Newman) construct a fake gambling operation aimed to
Sting (1973). Henry Gondor (Newman) and deceive a single villain, the Irishman Doyle Lonnegan in
Johnny Hooker (Redford) are the Con and Shill
respectively. e Con (“con dence man”) is known
retribution for his murder of their kindly con-artist
to be corrupt and suspected by the Mark; the Shill, friend, Luther Coleman. A betting parlor is erected in a
however, appears to be coercible. He presents
himself as betraying his boss in order to convince
back alley; actors are hired to play both sta and
the Mark that he has revealed the “inner workings” clientele. Lonnegan is told that the parlor can give
of the Con that the Mark can now use to
advantage. Of course the reverse is true. A larger
favored clients an inside tip because a crooked
Real has been constructed around the faked accomplice at the Wells Fargo wire service delays the
“reality.”
results of races so that certain horses can be re-
broadcast to win, place, or show for the clientele who
believe that the radio broadcast is happening in real time.
ink of the sting of e Sting as reversed entropy, or (more vividly) a fallen glass of liquid
being re-assembled when the lm is run backwards. Lonnegan is made to believe in the
perspectival reality of the fake betting shop, its chiral opposition of cashier-bankers to betting
clients, thanks to the fact that Redford’s character, Johnny Hooker, has convinced him that he has
turned against his boss and, as betrayer, certi ed the authenticity of the plan to bring the Con,
Henry Gondor (Newman) down.
e Ames Window uses the structure of the con dence trick to demonstrate how, in human
perception in general, the Vorstellungsrepräzentanz is ever active, ever ready, ever in place —

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 15

Th
Th
Th
ff
fi
Th
ff
Th
fi
fi
Th
Th
Th
ff
fi
Th
fi
fi
Th
 neurally — to again stage a small demonstration of the expressive function, where what is
ordinary will appear as magical and what is fake will be held in place by parallax. What we have
theoretically in this demonstration is what Giambattista Vico called a “proof of the body,” where
by renouncing the style of Aristotelian predication a new kind of syllogism, still true to the logic
of major and minor premises connected by a middle term, engages a neural mandate simply by
silencing the middle term. e con dence trick does the same by the construct of the shill; the
Ames Window does the same by the theatrical function of the maquette at window, whose two
edges appear to be the same edge, always in front, with a further edge at the rear. Like the twins
Castor and Pollux, taking turns being alive and dead, we accept the mandate because we believe
we are on the side of the living, that what vanishes must vanish into the “death” at the point on the
distant horizon. e twins seem to be the same — a er all, this is the de nition of twins — and
the ordinary object penetrating their “window pane” appears as a miracle. is is the deal struck
with the gods of Hades, forbidding the twins to meet ever again; but when they do, as in the story
of Simonides, a miracle happens.16 e poet narrowly avoids death thanks to the “two strangers”
who call him outside — outside of what we have to ask? Outside of the chiral face–to–face
exercise of matching names to places, Simonides returns to a re-match, corpses returned to their
places and, hence, names and a orded proper burials.
e contrariwise miracles of the two intersecting parallaxes is hard-wired, neurologically, but
the circuits of that those networks is simultaneously event and word; a brain without language, a
brain without an unconscious, would not appreciate the Ames Window experiment. ere would
be no Vorstellungsrepräzentanz and no expressive function, no overlap, no stereognosis. ese
owe to the cut that is the mirror function that structures space so that when we look at the world,
the world looks back. e eye that looks back has no speci c position; it is generically orthogonal,
its two components of correction and 90º-at-all-points stare back wherever there is lack, which is
every where — human space. When Freud wrote his cryptic note in 1938, “Psyche is extended,
knows nothing of it,” he anticipated Lacan’s elaboration of the Psyche’s Real as a topology
describing that extension as non-orientation and self-intersection.17

16 Don Kunze, “Cloud Nine: A Lover’s Guide,” in Ceilings and Dreams, the Architecture of Levity, ed. Jodi LaCoe and Federica
Go (New York and London: Routledge, 2019).
17Sigmund Freud, (1938) “Findings, Ideas, Problems,” e Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of
Sigmund Freud 23: 299–300.

Kunze / Parallax and the Ames Window 16

Th
ffi
Th
Th
Th
ff
fi
Th
Th
ft
fi
fi
fl
Th
Th
Th