Glissmann
Inspired by Dr. Reinhard Brauns’s 1903 description of the Polarisationsapparat in Das Mineralreich, this work reflects on the long history of scientific instruments and their role in shaping what—and how—we see. In mineralogy, the device was used to examine thin sections of rocks, yet its presence also revealed a deeper truth: the tools of the observer are as culturally and historically situated as the specimens they claim to measure.
This (archival—-and still growing) publication reinterprets Brauns’s apparatus through a chain of analog–digital–analog transformations, translating light, bits, and energy across media. While the instruments of observation have become ubiquitous—smartphones, scanners, LEDs—the visual recordings in this edition intentionally retain traces of the observer: dust, fingerprints, minor distortions. These marks echo the individuality embedded in scientific practices of the past, when Brauns himself inscribed his own presence into the images produced by his Polarisationsapparat.