Summary

Untitled examines the horizon of the luminous world, the liminal regions of sound and vibration, and the experiential dimension of light — radiant yet intangible. Employing custom-built lasers, photocells (light sensitive sensors), sound, Pure Data programming environments, and a light controlled room, Untitled questions the boundaries of our physical perception of reality and evokes the possibility of passing through walls via the imagination and the flight of our dreams. Six lasers in the shape of five luminous planes are projected against the walls of a room and divide the space at different angles. Further, by moving and walking, one stimulates and affects sound?s amplitude through interference of photocells hidden in the pattern of the lasers planes.

Project Description

The room that houses Untitled measures 12' x 16' and is 12' tall. It is a specially prepared environment painted white and highly reflective with a 3' floor to ceiling gap that lets one laser plane escape and traverse it. Unlike all other planes made each with one laser, this uses two-coplanar, opposing lasers. As the plane reaches the adjacent, outer space against the ceiling, the wall and the floor, it projects an intangible seal that forms the door to the piece. It is a luminous gate that appears to be opening and closing around the people as they pass through it and intersect it.

The piece is further interactive at the aural level. Amplitudes of low frequencies sounds generated by a computer programming environment, resonate with the walls and make them vibrate. Sound fluctuates as people move and project their shadows onto photocells hidden in the walls along the lines of the laser planes. Periodically a bell sounds and confirms the traffic of people intersecting and bypassing the planes. As consciousness of the audience turns within, one listens closely to the sound resonate with one?s own vibrations.

Untitled explores the possibility to overcome the apparent mode of sensory perception that shapes our understanding of reality, as in the vision of a world that emerges from the depth of consciousness. The physicist David Bohm refers to this as the implicate state. "For instance, thinking in the implicate state would mean intuiting the implications behind thoughts and words, and what we imply behind what we explain outwardly." [Pir Valayat Inayat Kahan, Thinking Like The Universe p. 58]. The idea of the world that is in part shaped by human consciousness is instructive, poetic and inspiring. Similarly, Michael Talbot in his book The Holographic Universe, expands on the subject and paraphrasing Bohm he says: "because everything in the cosmos is made out of the seamless holographic fabric of the implicate order, [Bohm] believes it is as meaningless to view the universe as composed of "parts," as it is to view the different geysers in a fountain as separate from the water out of which they flow. An electron is not an "elementary particle." it is just a name given to a certain aspect of the holomovement? [p. 48]. Untitled taps into a circulating idea that cosmos and matter are part of a single energy field. The human mind is in its way responsible from creating what is real.

With past projects I have investigated ideas concerning space and people?s perception of space. Notions of distributed body, multiple-self, transmigration of presence, to mention a few, have emerged through these investigations. Through this project, We intend to merge these ideas with an awareness of the nature of reality in general and of consciousness as a coherent whole which is never static. Unlike past projects Untitled is envisioned as a laboratory and it will change with new distribution of light, sound, computer programming as well as performance throughout the three-month residency program.