Robert Bean

Hindsight

The work Hindsight presents three images of spherical objects suspended in a black field:

• Epimetheus, the fifth moon of Saturn.
• An IBM Selectric typewriter ball for the font Courier.
• A retinal scan of the back of my left eyeball.

Epimetheus, the Greek word for "hindsight" or "afterthought", is the son of Iapetus and Clymene, and was the foolish brother of the demi-god Prometheus. Failing to heed the warnings of his brother not to take any gifts from Zeus, Epimetheus accepted the disguised gift of Pandora as his wife who consequently unleashed the woes of sorrows of the world.

This work visually reconsiders the allegory and name of Epimetheus in the context of technology, language and the physiology of perception.