The Third Eye
“The Third Eye” is a body sculpture piece that is put on the head. Its main component is a glass ball device attached in front of the eye. Due to the refraction of light rays, when the person looks at the world through the glass ball, the images are turned upside down. This is exactly what happens when we look at the world with our eyes. The images are refracted by the lens of the eyeball and projected upside down onto the retina. People perceive the world and construct reality through the inverted images on the retina.
By means of this bodily device, “The Third Eye” enables me to experience an unusual visual perception. However, if one wishes to turn one’s perceptual experience into an expression of art, one still has to rely on imagery, material and media as its presentation. “The Third Eye” consists of two photos, one in an upright position (positive) and the other upside down (negative), showing that when I put on the device and look at the “other”. Red lines are also applied onto the photos to explain how the light rays refract to my (two “I”s) eyeballs through the glass ball. By employing photography as the medium of representation, I can express how this device inverts the images on the retina again (become upright). This is a query on the inertia of sensory perception and the world perceived by the inertia of sensory perception. Thus, “The Third Eye” changes my personal perceptual experience to a material representation of a concept and also an expression of art.
In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty refers to the ‘experience of space’. He cited “Some preliminary studies on the vision of images on the retina that are not upside down”.[1] A person was required to put on a pair of spectacles that turned the images on the retina into the positive. At first, the images seen were turned upside down and looked unreal. However, after two or three days, the images were no longer perceived as turned upside down. The person felt that their body was in an abnormal position. They also had to correct their bodily movements intentionally. On the seventh day, the person was able to “see” a world that was “not turned upside down” without making any effort. The Book of Genesis in the Bible says that God completed His wonderful act of creation on the seventh day. Of course, seven days is only a coincidence. However, visual perception really can change our experience of the world. More accurately we can say that it creates a perceived world. This demonstrates the artificiality of our perception of the world.
The conception of “The Third Eye” originated from these studies quoted by Merleau-Ponty. However, the intent of the work is not to imitate a scientific experiment. Visual presentation resembling scientific experiment is only a metaphor representing the objectivity of science. It is an analogy to some of my personal views on the perceptual world and the uncertainty of the phenomenal field.
