In Judith Fegerl‘s White Light installation, red laser beams, light projections, and blinking LED’s, irritate our sight, as the artist transforms the automatic process of seeing into a definite experience, exposing light as the source of our vision.

The installation is made of three parts that represent red, green and blue light, whose different wavelengths combine to produce ‘white’ light. Each work takes as its starting point objects that alter or influence our sight, such as contact lenses or floating particles in the vitreous jelly of the eye. Reactions to these objects are then extracted and reproduced for the viewer, tangibly dissecting the process of sight.

The triptych consists of:
– Read Only Memory: the artist’s contactlenses are being scanned by moving lasersystems. The monochromatic light gets irritated by organic sedimentation combined with the deformation of the lens. An abstract self-transforming pattern is then projected. The contact lens, once a prosthetic device, turns into its opposite- a unique object with authentic optical and visual information, generated by the interaction with an organic body,
– Teardrop Floaters: the visitor’s eye movements are video tracked and algorithmically transferred onto the floater objects,
– and Will-o-the-Wisp: the light of the leds is glaring in the darkness and once it is off a shining circular mark remains on the retina. Similar pictures are additionally projected via videobeam inside the dark room.
Perceptual disturbance is produced by organic irritation and is combined with the virtual version of this characteristic.

White Light, at the Austrian Cultural Forum, London, from 5 April till 4 May, 2006
Private view: 4 April, 6 – 9pm and artist talk: 8 April, 3pm.