Fata Morgana and Scott Johnson

A screenshot from Werner Herzog's 1972 film, Fata Morgana. Fata Morgana was shot in the Sahara Desert, with much of the footage consisting of long tracking shots. Fata Morgana was originally conceived as a sci-fi story where they would cast the shots as extraterrestrial landscapes. Herzog abandoned this concept when filming began. Temporary exhibition artist Scott Johnson was heavily influenced by this film, naming his second-floor Steiner Gallery installation after this movie (image source).

Desert mirage showing the illusion of a body of water

in the distance. The pool is a product of an inferior mirage,

a combination of temperature difference between the surface

and sky and bending light rays (image source).

For the opening of new exhibitions at the FAC, we hold Members-exclusive Previews of the show a day before they open to the public. For Places Apart, we held an artist and curator talk with local artist Scott Johnson and Museum Director Blake Milteer. In the talk, Johnson brought up the importance of elemental and earthly forms in his work. An inspiration for his play on nature and illusion is the 1972 Werner Herzog film, Fata Morgana.

A Fata Morgana is an optical phenomenon (see our blog post about optical illusions) that occurs in the very narrow horizontal space above the horizon. Fata Morgana are mirages, rather than hallucinations because they can be captured on camera; mirages have to do with bent light rays producing a displaced image. There are two types of mirages: inferior and superior. The well-known types of inferior mirage are the illusion of a faraway body of water in the desert, or an oil spill on hot tarmac -- when in fact, neither the water nor oil is actually there. It's "inferior" because the mirage image, the body of water, is under what is causing the reflection, in this case, the sky.

An example of a superior mirage. Above the perfectly

horizontal band on the horizon are the normal looking

mountains. Between the mountains and the water

is the "duct" where the superior mirage occurs

(image source).

Fata Morgana is a special type of superior mirage. They're unusual because the superior distortion that happens is such a significant difference that sometimes even results in totally unrecognizable reflections. Fata Morgana occur when light rays are bent due to the difference in temperatures through thermal inversion (when there is a layer of warmer air above a layer of much cooler air, which is the opposite of what normally happens). The thermal inversion bends the light rays so much that the curvature of the rays is stronger than the curvature of the earth.

Become a FAC Member and enjoy advance previews of new exhibitions, free gallery admission, discounted theatre tickets and MUCH more. 

James Turrell | Trace Elements: Light into Space

Scott Johnson | Places Apart

July 14 - Sept. 30