When Edward Steichen took his iconic photograph of the Flatiron Building in New York in 1904, the structure itself was only two years old, one of the tallest in the city and the very epitome of modernity. So it seemed the perfect challenge for the identical-twin artists Ryan and Trevor Oakes earlier this summer, a sidelight to the retrospective of their work I curated at the Museum of Mathematics, just up the road at 11 East 26th Street, open daily through Sept. 14. The brothers, who have been engaged in a deep colloquy on the nature of bifocal vision since toddlerhood, have recently developed one of the most intriguing breakthroughs in the depiction of physical reality since the Renaissance: They have come up with a method for tracing camera-obscura-exact renderings of the world before them onto a concave grid with no other optical equipment (no lenses, no pinholes) except their own unaided eyes. Lawrence Weschler

爱德华·斯泰肯(Edward Steichen)1904年拍摄他的标志性作品——纽约熨斗大厦时，那座大厦刚建成两年，是纽约最高的建筑之一，也是现代性的象征之作。所以今年夏初，它成了双胞胎艺术家赖安和特雷弗·奥克斯(Ryan and Trevor Oakes)的绝佳挑战，也是给我在熨斗大厦北边不远处东26街11号数学博物馆(Museum of Mathematics)给他们策划的作品回顾展造势，该展览每日开放，直至9月14日。两兄弟小时就曾对双焦视觉的本质进行过深刻讨论，最近他们设计出了自文艺复兴以来在描绘物理现实方面最有趣的突破：他们想出一种方法，能以针孔相机般的精准把他们面前的世界绘制到一个凹形网格上，不借助任何光学设备（不用镜头，也不用针孔），仅凭他们自己的眼睛。
First recorded mention of principles behind pinhole camera obscura: Mozi, Chinese philosopher (470-390 B.C.)
首个提到针孔相机原理的人：中国哲学家墨子（公元前470年至公元前390年）
First description and analysis of such a camera obscura: Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazan), Arab mathematician (965-1040 A.D.)
首个描述和分析这样的针孔相机的人：阿拉伯数学家伊本·海赛姆（Ibn al-Haytham，965年至1040年）
European perfection and promulgation of camera obscura, with lenses: Giambattista della Porta’s “Magia Naturalis” (1558-1589)
欧洲人对带镜头的针孔相机的完善和普及：詹巴蒂斯塔·黛拉·波尔塔(Giambattista della Porta)的《自然魔术》(Magia Naturalis, 1558-1589)