A public installation designed in collaboration with local artist, Lucy O’Doherty, as part of City of Sydney Art and About 2020.
We are primarily concerned with the sensory deprivation experienced within the city, a product of two contrasting dualities: firstly, the overstimulation of cars, noise, hard surface, crowds, that produces a certain numbness in order to cope. Secondly, the under stimulated short-sighted, experience that focuses primarily on a single screen, to the exclusion of all other senses.
This installation explores the Ganzfeld Effect, where visual hallucinations are experienced as a product of sensory deprivation. Colloquially termed, the ‘Prisoners Cinema’ it is a phenomenon reported by individuals after experiencing extended periods deprived of visual stimulus, such as prisoners in solitary confinement, or trapped miners in the pitch black.
In an attempt to recreate the same hypnotic visual effect, in 1962 alongside William Burroughs and Ian Sommerville, artist Brion Gysin constructed a slowly rotating light source, titled Dream Machine. Dream Machine is a tall rotating cylinder with irregular perforations, and light shining from a central source within. Users sit with their eyes closed, facing the turning light. The effect is likened to the Prisoner’s Cinema, geometric patterns and colours evolving from the darkness of one’s own closed eyelids. The experience creates a dream-like state, the transitional moment of waking up or falling asleep. Gysin intended for the mass production of the Dream Machine, and our proposal is an ode to his research and fascination with the hypnogogic phenomenon.
In search of a site for our proposed installation, we discovered a city of spaces that we were otherwise disconnected or disengaged. We felt inspired and connected to the city, navigating small streets and alleyways as a pedestrian. In response to this exciting reengagement we propose to construct an artwork that engages the senses, much like children’s “sensory bottles” which provide sensorial stimulation to encourage focus and attention, calming the mind and aiding the child’s development.
Our proposal is titled Prisoner’s Cinema, in which viewers are woken from their prison, from the city, from their screen. Moving out of their deprived state, they reengage and embrace their senses. We seek to create a meditative space for the viewer to transition through a dream-like quality into an alert reconnection with their surroundings.
Located in a small side alley on Outram Street, Chippendale, are five openings in the wall of a ground level brick garage. These openings are screened by breeze blocks, a robust, geometric, veil to a pragmatic interior. By day, northern light reflects from windows above, casting geometrical patterns of warm light across the ground and walls of the street. There is a delightful playfulness to the reflections.
In front of the breezeblock walls, we propose to insert five steel-framed, glass objects. They will be installed within the existing recesses of the brick wall, flush with the exterior, situated as though part of the existing building fabric; the Prisoner’s Cinema.
Concerned with introducing a softness to contrast with the industrial character of the area, we will employ muted tones and delicate detailing to create an intimate moment in an otherwise placeless location within an urban environment. These gentle objects are framed from steel, referencing the historically industrial location. Akin to steel framed windows, the objects slot into the walls between the brick, above the pavement, on the side of the road. The glass will be toughened, reed glass, sand blasted to achieve an opaque, soft veil, to which the geometries of the breeze block become a celebrated feature beyond.
Neatly slotted into the brick wall, the viewer approaches the artwork, unsure at first whether they are looking through a window at a, domestic moment. Located on the periphery between the central business district and dense redevelopment, the work is in conversation with the adjoining apartment buildings.
The appearance of the objects will change throughout the day and into the night. By day the direct sunlight will shine into the box, through the sandblasted glass providing a soft veil to the breezeblock, the reed gently distorting the geometries.
By night, these objects become the Prisoner’s Cinema, when viewed from the street towards the Dream Machine inside the garage beyond.
Inside the garage space, we propose to construct a version of Gysin’s Dream Machine. A small Dream Machine will be located behind each glass object. Slowly rotating light shines through the breezeblocks, onto the reed glass. As the light gently rotates, the geometry will distort and shift across the ‘cinema’ screen. Each machine may have a different tone, rotating speed or strength of light, providing each screen with its own unique but subtle quality. A gentle dynamism reinvigorates the small alleyway, creating an intimate, engaging moment. The viewer becomes hyper aware of their surroundings, but with a sense of meditative calmness.