A View From Above Vertical Perspective in the Age of Total Images

Abstract

Thanks to the technological dislocation of the eye of the beholder, the mechanical eye or both of them together, along recent decades the view from above has become a widespread, somehow trivial way to experience the world, imposing a new scopic regime. Deeply enmeshed and dependent upon technologies of surveillance, vertical perspective does not only democratize the point of view of the power: it provides us with an inhuman gaze on the world, liberating images from the constraints of naked human vision and erasing the distinction between images and maps, producing what Peraica has called total images. These topics are explored through a number of case studies from the visual arts.