Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is all about the Camera Obscura. A camera obscura is really just a box or room with a small hole on one side, and when light shines in through that hole, it makes an inverted projection on the opposite side of whatever's shining in. It was discovered around 1000 AD. She argues with the chapter that the camera obscura's ability to show VIRTUAL reality is what made it so popular and drive the improvements and inventions based on it.
Camera obscuras were used for things like astronomy and architecture, but not just science--they were good for parlor entertainment as well. Some painters used them for getting very accurate perspective, but it doesn't seem that lots of painters did this.
The camera obscura is both a perspective device (for the painters) and projection device--and the projection shows moving images, not still ones, which makes it all the more interesting. Perspective was in fact invented as a graphic technique two centuries before the camera obscura, so it's not as important to perspective as some say.
After all this info on the camera obscura, she writes some more about people's interpretation of its history in relation to painting and photographs. Essentially, photographs are more related to the camera obscura than painting. The part I found really interesting next was about spectators in relation to the camera obscura and virtual windows in general. Most people idealized the spectator's total detachment from the image: being able to watch something without being affected personally by it. These are the "apparatus" theorists. Others, the "surture" theorists talked about cinema's ability to bring the spectator into the image with continuity editing that brings them all around subjects in the frame.
Basically, the chapter is about the history, potential uses and effects of thr camera obscura, the original Virtual window. If you have any more specific questions about the chapter or any points, but send me an email.