Aurora Borealis (unseen) documents a failed attempt to witness the northern lights. In 2006 a journey was made to the Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory, located 120km north of the Arctic Circle in the far north of Finland. In the two weeks spent there, no northern lights were visible to the naked eye as every night the sky clouded over. Any magnetic storms that did occur were only witnessed by the scientific equipment of this specialised aurora research station.
The ‘failed’ journey resulted in a two-screen film. The first screen shows a circular-shaped film made entirely from the reflection as seen in the artist’s iris. Seen obliquely through the wobbling, liquid reflection of a waiting eye – the footage documents the strange location and the machines that the scientists used to successfully observe the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights hiding behind the clouds. The second screen shows footage of a dramatic Aurora storm – as seen by the aurora observatories ‘All-Sky-Camera’.
