avid Hockney famously assured, “Optical devices certainly don’t paint pictures…the use of them diminishes no great artist” while proposing his hotly debated Hockney-Falco thesis. The theory, crafted with physicist Charles M. Falco, uprooted our understanding of art history by examining the Old Masters’ usage of camera technology. Caravaggio, Velázquez, Da Vinci, Vermeer, and Rembrandt were all put under a microscope for their probable use of early optical instruments such as the camera obscura and/or curved mirrors—technological advances that fundamentally altered the course of art history, allowing artists to, in effect, trace their subjects. Centuries later, use of these technologies was ubiquitous. Technology had entered the creative process, dictating the practices of Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and James Turrell. The tools we use to create
