Chapter five focuses upon scenes of revels in which Dionysos is surrounded by the musical and danced performances of satyrs and maenads, the mythical beings who accompany him. Dionysos exhibits a distinct kind of musicality: unlike the other gods, Dionysos rarely plays an instrument himself. Rather, he acts as the source of inspiration for satyrs and maenads, prompting them to play their instruments, dance to the wild music they produce, and lose themselves, collectively, to the ecstatic sounds that envelop them. The movements of the satyrs and maenads also communicate to the external viewers how they might experience Dionysos’ presence. Within the symposium, ancient viewers created the opportunity for Dionysos to manifest when they consumed wine from the vases, looked at the representations of mythical revels, listened to music performed on similar instruments, and moved their bodies in response to the music they both saw and heard. Such immersive and imaginative seeing and hearing thus allowed the symposiasts to join in the divine revel, where, under the influence of Dionysos, they played instruments and danced with satyrs and maenads.

Early Christian theologians regarded the sense of sight, along with the other bodily senses, as an essential aid for comprehending invisible and transcendent realities. Although Christ’s incarnation was regarded as divine condescension to the human need for eyewitnesses, a profound and complex theory, partly influenced by ancient and contemporary philosophical sources, judged visual perception of the external, material world as playing a key role in judging, retaining, and transmitting knowledge about the immaterial realm. The essential connections between physical sight and spiritual cognition were seen as pathways that engendered appreciation both for the divine presence and for the human potential for enlightenment, in this life and in the age to come. Such cognition thus depended not only on words read or heard, insofar as the action of seeing became an equally dynamic and effective means for attaining knowledge of the nature and purposes of God.

This chapter is centered on the scientific conceptualization of the term “photography” and its relationship with the photographer, the photographed, and the viewer, including that which is existent between the photographer and the camera, especially the chemistry between both lenses — biological and technological — the synergy and the differences. Photographs, according to the chapter, are representations of the reality of a particular timeframe. By answering certain expedient questions, the author engages his collections (with pictorial evidence) to illustrate the nature of photography vis-à-vis other factors that contribute to the shot, such as the camera and how it is received by the people. Moreover, the chapter views photography as a “social contract” between the photographer and the photographed, and “construction” as the process of taking the shot and reproducing the image. As for the interpretation of the picture by the viewer, it is believed that the pictures themselves dictate how they are to be interpreted or engaged, although this is also highly dependent on the viewer’s understanding. In addition, the chapter explores the effect of photography at its dawn and what its exclusion of African peculiarity, color-wise, meant.

Chapter 2 is a meditation on the general conditions of our intercourse with the past, especially as engaged by its material forms, whether in buildings, artworks, literary works or musical works. Distinctions between the forms are of course necessary but, it is argued, continuities remain: the mute testimony of the material object concerning the agents of its creation; the role of the viewer or reader in realising the work; the hand of the editor-conservator; and the role of time in its successive forms of existence.

Lydia Goehr’s history of the work-concept in music is pushed further and the dilemma of conservation, witnessed by the restored Teatro La Fenice (Phoenix Theatre) in Venice, is explored. The work-concept emerges as a regulative idea rather than a transcendent ideal form.