Slicing reality
Jan Winkelmann
Having fallen asleep on the beach, he wakes up and looks around in
bewilderment. The sun is no longer shining, but flickers with merciless
intensity. A deluge of flashes floods his retina. His optic nerve positively
pulsates to the rhythm of the staccato of light. Squinting only slightly
alleviates the optic pain. Snapping open his eyelids, he surrenders to the
overpowering tempest of lights that trembles through his body like electric
shocks in a measure of 7,8 hertz. In comparison to the almost shattering
penetration of his retinas, the heat produced by the nearly 2000 synchronously
flickering lights feels like an unpleasant, slightly overheated bath. His
immediate surroundings appear almost colourless, like the faded colours of old
colour photographs of his early childhood in the family album. A dazzling film
of white light seems to have half-absorbed the colours around him, drawing him
ever further into a spell, capitulating entirely to the vortex of rhythmically
flashing lights, he enters a different tunnel of reality. He knew this
physio-optic phenomenon from earlier days, when novel states of consciousness
could be attained with the aid of glass lenses equipped with light diodes. It
must have been around the late 80s and early 90s, that people would go to
mind-machine shops to subject themselves to the comforting flashing of lights,
leaving 15 minutes later, mentally stimulated, having gained peace of mind,
with heightened concentration or whatever else had been switched on. Today,
‘oxygen bars’ and lounges equipped with ‘floating
tanks’ seem to have taken over this function. For a short (paid) moment,
they allow overworked and under-relaxed people to be blessed with another
reality. The basic idea was really not that bad, although it was never fully
scientifically proven: light impulses flashing in the same frequency as the
human brain should/could/must conceivably be able to synchronize the latter,
thus enabling us to influence and guide the function of the brain externally,
i.e. artificially. Thus this was yet another phase in the course of
technology’s triumph over human physiology, but basically nothing really
different from a soluble relaxation bath tablet, to be administered as
required: rosemary ginseng for refreshment, hops camomile for sedative
purposes, eucalyptus pine for stimulation, and lavender for a general sense of
harmony. But what would happen if one were to inject ketamine, enveloped in the
scent of rosemary, sitting in a bath of salt water with a temperature of
38.5ºC, with a mind machine attached to one’s nose, and to subject
oneself via a quadraphonic stereo system to an acoustically induced 4-Indolol, 3-[2-(Dimethylamino)Ethyl], Phosphate
Ester, in other words, a psilocybin trip? Perhaps multiple-hyper-ecstatic
realities, or perhaps not. He suddenly remembered his first, and up till now,
only LSD trip more than a decade ago that resembled more of a horror trip than
opening up hitherto unknown levels of perception and consciousness within his
personality. Little, neon-coloured monsters, floating before his inner eye like
an Alexander Calder mobile, caused him to vegetate on the verge of a nervous
breakdown for almost three days on end. But when the little demons finally took
their leave almost imperceptibly, he’d had enough of such experiments
with perception, at least for the time being or indeed forever. Today, attempts
at overcoming one’s body and the processes of (self-)perception related
to them, have become a more or less widespread phenomenon. It appears to have
become increasingly attractive to plunge oneself into externally induced states
of perception often unfurling potential experiences of which actual reality
fundamentally falls short. Of course this presupposes that one does not accept
the horizons of one’s own perception as the ultima ratio, but rather that
one is always after ‘more’, ‘higher’ or
‘deeper’ sensation. Indeed, even without submitting to the incisive
power and intensity of psychoactive substances, it is occasionally possible to
access other planes of reality in a more or less controlled way. For instance,
high-speed trains offer one such splendid experience. Nothing exceeds a
civilized ride on a shin-kanzen, the Japanese version of a high-speed railway,
on which the conductor politely bows at an exact angle of 24º, each time a
passenger enters or leaves the open-plan carriage whether or not anyone is
watching. A ritualised action as can be found all over tradition oriented
Japan, a country in which the past, present and future peacefully coexist.
Japan’s history is not characterised by ruptures such as those marking
European (especially cultural) history; everything is fluid, things seem to
push themselves into a natural order. Like on board the Concorde when reaching
MACH 1, ‘300 km/h’ suddenly flashes up on the red LED display above
the door in front of which the conductor was seen bowing down just a moment
ago. The landscape outside shoots by the train window changing into a single,
elongated, variegated stripe. On the horizon, Fuji-san appears out of the
morning fog, its snow-covered peak resembling the diagonal nib of a golden
Montblanc fountain pen. If one concentrates on the pattern of coloured streaks
quivering past immediately outside the window rather than on the far distance, one
sooner or later lapses into a trance-like, meditative state induced by colour
alone. The train driver must have an even more riveting perspective, somewhat
resembling that of an observation camera forcing its way at high speed along a
subterranean sewerage canal. There is not much peripheral vision, only barely
perceptible, funnel-like walls to either side; the camera shoots – as if
sucked by a vacuum – ever further into the black hole of oblivion. The
windscreen turns into a television screen; media reality and the outside world
blend into a single entity much like the amalgam mentioned earlier of an entire
civilization’s past, present and future. A similar experience is offered
by the fitting rooms of an Italian luxury label’s flagship store that
recently opened in New York. Like entering the lift on Starship Enterprise, two
glass doors glide open, shutting as if by magic. Stepping on a large button on
the floor immediately makes the transparent glass turn opaque. Bye bye outside
world, welcome to yourself! The actual excitement does not begin when customers
try on clothes, but rather with the interplay of one’s reflections in the
surrounding mirrors. A camera concealed behind a Venetian, i.e.
semi-transparent mirror at the back of the fitting room, films the
customer’s reflection in the mirror opposite, transfers this to a plasma
screen mounted to the mirror at the front and therefore visible next to the
customer’s actual reflection. Hence, the viewer sees his/her face in the
mirror as well as on the screen next to it. The real reflection and
the reflection of a media reality are thus unsentimentally
juxtaposed. Additionally, three buttons below the hidden screen allow the
visitor to heighten this state of media-reality ecstasy by modifying the
lighting from natural light over a warm, suffuse glow, to the cold bright glare
of floodlights. This game with variously illuminated realities is further
emphasized in that the action occurring is only transmitted in real time as
long as the movements are slow enough; as soon as they speed up, the action is
screened with a given time lag, i.e. in slow motion. Different levels of
reality are thus juxtaposed, blend, and reciprocally interrelate; they become
perceptible in relation to their intrinsic conditions, to ultimately generate a
multifaceted, disjointed awareness of reality. This was one of my most exciting
experiences of a state in which parallel levels of reality and perception
seemed mutually interwoven; a hitherto unheard of drama of media-generated
images transcending the continuum of space and time. However, upon closer
consideration, this ultimately amounts to no less than the high-tech version of
a particular visual sensation caused by extreme jetlag, like I recently had
after a flight back from the United States. Due to exhaustion my visual faculty
no longer seemed to be in its accustomed position. I felt as if images were
being transmitted to my brain with a delay of a few split-seconds from a camera
located approximately 15-20cm next to my actual eyes. Everything I saw looked
as if it was occurring slightly delayed, although my body’s corresponding
movements were happening in real time. This caused a sort of double perception
as it were, perhaps best described to those not acquainted with over-exhaustion,
as the multiplication and dislocation of what is seen by crossing one’s
eyes: the doubling of reality, the reciprocal influence of imagination,
illusion and reality. Recently, I heard of a similar event in a cinema. The
lights dimmed in the auditorium until it was dark. Then, instead of the
accustomed first flash of light from the projector beaming onto the screen, it
remained totally dark – a darkness in which nothing was visible –
even the emergency exit lights, usually the last hint of visual orientation,
were switched off. Suddenly an ear-splittingly loud noise burst into the room.
It seemed as if a helicopter was going to land on the roof, its rotor blades
throttling through the air, ruthlessly slicing it up, the noise becoming almost
unbearable. And not only could one hear the noise, one could also feel the wind
it seemed to be generating. All the popcorn presently in the cinema was
literally sucked up into the air and whirled around until it seemed to snow
popcorn everywhere. Abruptly, a bright, circular cone of light lighted up the
screen. Blinded and hypnotized, the audience stared at the round disk of light.
It appeared to rotate in pulsating light waves, in sync with the
helicopter’s churning rotors, a peculiar fascination emanating from it.
Artificial fog flooded the cinema and the revolving beam of light instantly
transformed into a turning cone. Resembling a divine apparition, the light at
the tip of the cone drew the spectator into its spell. The cone’s outer
shell seemed to undulate like cigarette smoke beneath a desk lamp. Overall it
was a unique, albeit ephemeral – and thus all the more impressive –
apparition consisting of light, for ultimately, the imaginary nature of its
volume was created by light alone reflected by the fog. The viewers stood up
and – mesmerized by the light – began to move towards the
cone’s inner core. Some investigated the three-dimensionality of this
hovering body, tearing holes into the cone’s circular shell by
interrupting the shaft of light with their hands. Others stepped into it,
walked towards the floodlight, stepped out of it again through its fragile,
outer membrane, to examine more closely from without the nature of the curved
ray of light. A hypnotic apparition and yet no more than a projected circle,
which through reflection turned into a material-immaterial cone of light. Was
it all just sensory illusion? By no means! Perhaps rather an unaccustomed
visual experience confronting the viewer with the conditions of his/her
perception. Besides the overt magic of the figure of light, this experience
promoted the perception of one’s own perception, and consequently, the
investigation of the very limits of human perception, i.e. the realisation of
its fundamental inadequacy. We are accustomed to accepting that what we perceive
as being true. Our perception of things seldom gives cause to doubt in its
grounds; it is rarely questioned, i.e. it is naturally taken as
‘true’ or ‘right’. Yet it is often overlooked that
perception is not only linked to one’s own faculties of perception, but
is also both a part and a product of particular construction mechanisms, which
in turn are equally dependent on other factors (individual physiological
characteristics, habits of perception, visual experience etc.) as on the act of
sensory perception itself. Only very rarely, when one experiences visual
phenomena that are difficult or indeed impossible to explain, does one ideally
begin to consider one’s own perception and its basic conditions. This
happened to me just recently, on a flight from Frankfurt to Tokyo. Agonized by
my neighbour and his olfactory peculiarities, and irritated by a host of
passengers who were talking in their sleep, there was little left for me to do
than to go for a stroll. The flight attendant invited me to visit the cockpit.
After walking through the business class and up the stairwell to the first
class cabin on the 747-400’s upper deck, I reached the aircraft’s
inner sanctum. I was immediately taken aback by the exceptionally cramped
conditions in the cockpit, there not being much more room than in a large
average car; apart from the countless buttons and control sticks that were
blinking or not blinking, the semicircular panoramic view of almost 160º
out of the cockpit’s window was absolutely mind-boggling. We were just
crossing the northern polar circle at an altitude of about 27,000 ft. Below us
a closed blanket of cloud that seemed to break open towards the horizon. For
some time already we were flying along with the dusk, and it looked as if we
were going to dive into complete darkness at any moment. The captain suddenly
pointed out the so-called ‘green rays’. I knew of this privileged
instant more from stories than from personal experience, in which, just after
the last ray of sun disappears from the horizon at sunset, a fluorescent green
shimmer is bestowed on the sky for a short fleeting moment. And lo and behold,
there it was, the green ray appeared… and it remained, as if someone had
pressed the PAUSE button causing a still to be projected onto the semi-circular
cockpit window. However, when I left the cockpit to slowly make my way back to
the economy class and seek refuge amidst its softly mumbling somnambulists, I
had already started doubting the essence of the natural spectacle I had just
beheld. Had I really seen the green rays or had I perhaps surrendered to a
figment of my imagination, had I ultimately seen only a projection of my own
subconscious? Back at my seat, I fell into a deep sleep and dreamt of a young
journalist, who, as one of his first commissions for a reputed Paris daily in
the 1920s, had to compile a report on the execution of a murderer. It so
happened that at a debauched party the night before at a hedonistic
aristocrat’s, he came in contact with an assortment of various different
mind-expanding stimulants of that time. The walls of the aristocratic
lady’s flat were covered in wallpaper with a pattern of symmetrical
blobs, designed by a Swiss psychiatrist to determine the character and
intelligence of his patients. The guests reclined on couches like those
employed in Vienna by the Father of Psychoanalysis to the ends of more profound
and efficient analysis. All sorts of hallucinogenic substances were handed
around, but he was most inspired by the strawberries pickled in fluid ether.
Our hero, high and beside himself in ecstasy then suddenly fell asleep in his
hotel room. He woke up when the announced ‘guillotining’ had
already long been performed. Still in a state of ecstatic hallucination –
yet also intent on concluding his first job to the best of his abilities
– he worked himself up into a hysterical rage of inspiration, writing
extensively on the function and meaning of capital punishment, imagining in
minute, true-to-life detail, indeed, as if he had been there himself, the offender’s
final minutes in the face of approaching death, and the moments of transition
from life into a more peaceful existence. The looming execution appeared to him
as images circling around him, projected onto the hotel room’s walls:
many were blurred, some seemed almost abstract, others resembled lights that
drew him into a giddying whirlpool of illumination. He then sent his opus
magnum to the paper’s editor per courier, who immediately published the
report – unread – as a special edition. Subsequently lapsing into a
deep, death-like slumber, he only resurfaced on the delivery by a mounted
messenger of the announcement of his dismissal: at the last instant the
offender had been reprieved. He read through the letter with an air of ennui,
crumpled it up, and surrendered again to the infinite expanses of his own
consciousness, whose various doors he continued to unlock as if with a key
through the effects of the most adventuresome psychoactive substances,
exploring all these realms and letting the door slam shut behind him at an
undefined moment to later wake up and remember it in retrospect – as if
nothing had really been real – as a dream just barely visible on
memory’s outermost reach – like the way one just about seizes the
memory of a dream.
(Translated by Oliver Kossack)
Published in: SUBREEL, Cat. MAC
Galeries Contemporaines des Musées de Marseille, 2002.
© 2002 Jan Winkelmann