Arijana Kajfes: Seeing is not believing

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.