Arijana Kajfes: Seeing is not believing

Neuroaesthetics | Symposium


Symposium im ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie,
22.-24. November 2012
In Kooperation und mit Unterstützung der Gemeinnützigen
Hertie-Stiftung.


In my installation piece The Undistorted Image of…
I proceed from a short passage in Descartes’ Discourse on Method,
Optics, Geometry and Meteorology.
While explaining how the movement of light through the eye and
brain forms images, Descartes puts forth the possibility of these
images passing through
the arteries of a pregnant woman to form birthmarks on the
foetus.
Using this installation and samples of other artwork, mainly from
the project
Occular* Witness, I will present different ideas that have
evolved from working with light, vision, and meaning in a world
overflowed with information and image.


*occular: adj. (see occult and ocular) that which passes the
visual system and
simultaneously remains hidden, invisible to the observer. The
term occular is
used when the apparently real is difficult to identify,
considering reality as it is depicted through mediated layers of
electromagnetic transmissions (signal
transmission through implants, external or extrasensory
sources).
The smallest component in the occular context is usually a
photon, referring to the light energy that passes the body and
leaves traces in the flash of a moment (in: Encyclopaedia of the
Future, Glänta, 3/2008).


Arijana Kajfes is a visual artist born in Croatia, based in
Sweden. Her work has its outset in sculpture and installation.
She has worked in several interdisciplinary projects and was part
of the Smart Studio research group at the Interactive Institute
in Stockholm (1999–2004).
She often works with process-contained installations using both
objects and electronic media, conceptually moving on the
borderlines of perception and meaning, interested in
uncertainties and
what representation is in its becoming stage.