Eye Burn Kaleidoscope
2024
All vertebrates lack photoreceptor cells in the location of the blind spot. The brain automatically fills this area with surrounding images. There is no direct conscious awareness of this area. They are simply regions of reduced information within the visual field. I was intrigued by this unconscious moment of void which is omnipresent in our visual field and perspectives. I planned to create these minor influences by regenerating the sphere of mutual experience of the blindspot.
I started to create an artificial blind spot by flashing light into my eyes to make an eye burn and drew it immediately before the image vanished. This image stayed and disappeared in approximately 30 seconds. After it disappeared, I had to finish it by relying on a faintly remembered image. I believe this is a mix of real experience and imagination which is similar to how our memory works.
The work has been finalized as a rotating clear screen, vacuum formed based on the eye burn drawings. The projector shows a short animation of those drawings, casting its warped images onto the wall. My goal was to build an environment where an experience that is truly shared as the input (my eye burn) mirrors the output ( viewer’s perspective), regardless of the translation process.