A small video camera is slowly destroyed by focused sunlight, reenacting / interpreting one of Isaac Newton’s early investigations into the nature of light and visual perception.
Isaac Newton – in an undated letter to John Locke:
The manner was this. I looked a very little while upon ye sun in a looking glass wth my right eye & then turned my eyes into a dark corner of my chamber & winked to observe the impression made & the circles of colours wch encompassed it & how they decayed by degrees & at last vanished. in a few hours time I had brought my eys to such a pass that I could look upon no bright object with either eye but I saw ye sun before me, so that I durst neither write nor read but to recover ye use of my eyes shut myself up in my chamber made dark for three days together & used all means to divert my imagination from ye Sun. But now I have been very well for many years, tho I am apt to think that if I durst venture my eyes I could still make ye phantasm return by the power of my fansy. –TD