Visitors are invited to sit on a bench in the middle of the room and close their eyes. They are then exposed to a flashing light, which gives rise to a quasi-hallucinatory visual experience of moving images behind their eye lids. Although those images are present only in one’s mind and imperceptible to anyone else, the experience of seeing them is shared. It communicates a fact not in evidence.
Each person’s experience differs from that of the others, and each will ascribe different dimensions to the constantly transforming space perceived by the eyes. Awareness that the perceived images have no foundation in external reality challenges one’s sense of the real as something alterable and permeable with the imaginary.
Owing to the unpredictability of visual responses to the light stimuli, participation in this art installation raises the question of subjectivity and authorship. The final “artwork” comes to life in our bodies and depends both on our experience as well as the boundary between public and intimate space.
