Jan Evangelista Purkinje, whose work provides a framework for the conference, appears in the hindsight of almost two hundred years as perhaps the central figure in the intersection of the emergent fields of neuroscience, media technology and modern art. He studied perception and described a number of phenomena that became later key concepts and topics for the development of neuroscience. By focusing on the so-called subjective and virtual phenomena, he also paved the way for the invention of cinema and later generations of media. He also predicted the rise and flowering of abstract art, and even described such particular aesthetic concerns as those associated with kinetic art and op art. He can be considered a precursor of dromology, a discipline that studies speed and the perception of movement. His ideas and experiments represent one of the earliest explorations of six topical themes of this conference: the relationship between visual perception and optical instruments; speed and the perception of movement; the interplay among different senses in relation to our notion of reality; the looping effects of scientific discoveries and technological inventions; the exchange between art, science, and technology; and the vision of media technology.