The Fire Within the Eye

Version 1: Three channel video installation, 6,43' / 10,56' / 7,05' and text / sound video 04.06'
Version 2: Short film, 20.39'
2014

With the history of vision and representation as a point of departure, The Fire Within the Eye consists of a three -channel video piece and a sound installation in the form of a recorded text. The video takes place in the landscape surrounding the large granite formation The Enchanted Rock in Texas; a mythical place that amongs other things has been described as a portal to other worlds. In the work Bergendahl utilises a mix of contemporary and older 17th century analog projection methods, to examine issues related to perception and representation, optical illusions, virtual images and the relationship between science and magic. The French physicist Pierre Le Lorrain de Vallemont describes in -La Physique Occulte (1696) how one can look out at a beautiful garden through a camera obscura: “One sees the birds flying around and passing by, people coming and going, the flowers in all their splendid colour, and all this rendered with such a degree of exactitude. ” Nature can be copied with its own aid.