I began spending time with the writings of Bataille about the time that I began engaging technology and was soon drawn into attempts to represent not Bataille's work itself, but rather its meaning through this medium. It seemed appropriate. As Bataille spoke of metaphysical acts of consumption which transcended our normal states of being, I thought the protean nature of computationally technologies provided possibilities for both the expression and perhaps the experience of these acts. Thus "Blinded...as I stared into the heavens."

This project, which existed before this incarnation as digital images, a CD-ROM and a paper forthcoming in Leonardo, attempted to model an experience of "The Impossible:" a metaphysical action which negates product for the sake of profound experience.

I chose to attempt to model the act of staring at the sun, an act Bataille wrote of in several of this texts. My goal was to use video/imaging and 3-D modeling technologies to simulate this act, and in doing so question the nature of the act, the nature of simulation, and my personal historical placement to the act via simulation. This piece presents sketches of the process, not as a report, but as fragments of that investigation in an attempt for understanding the process itself.

Carl Francis DiSalvo 1998