Eyes

“Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see it.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Through the phenomenon of persistence of vision, the installation creates an illusion by exploiting how our brain processes information. The eye retains the last image it was exposed to for roughly 1/25th of a second. By displaying fragments of an image at a higher frequency, our eyes compose the fragments into a single image. It is a reminder that reality is defined by the viewer: we see only what our eyes can perceive.

Behind the black glass there is a cluster of hard disks: heartless metallic bodies that let us see only their mechanical parts. A sensor detects the distance between the installation and the viewer and changes the colour and the speed accordingly.

A tiny slice on the metallic surface of a hard disk’s platter, spun rapidly, lets us see what is hidden. As one approaches the splintered eye, the hard disk begins to spin faster, and the faster it spins, the more the illusion comes to life. Only when one stands at the perfect distance, creating the perfect speed, is the installation revealed, and there they see the eye, our instrument of vision, staring back at them.

Aesthetics is the morality of the future. With it as a tool, I try to challenge what we are all sure about: what we observe and perceive every day, but often do not understand.