forgive me for being un-sourced but some time in the past couple of years i heard about a theory that said the optical nerve is very close to a nerve involved in sneezing and that in some people, a bright light can "overload" the optic nerve to the point where it leaks a little, affecting the other nerve.
How could this not be influenced by Cory's Yellow Chair by Arthur Ganson? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFG-Lk9c2CI. You can't throw a stick at kinetic art without hitting his influence.
it's also a standard trick in the discipline of cigar box manipulation. with cigar boxes the whole stack usually gets balanced on the chin. http://www.dube.com/cigarbox/stacking.php