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 points at something else: 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 publication intentionally keep traces of the observer: dust, fingerprints, minor distortions.