Re-synthesizing the disciplines of music, video art, and theatre, RECYCLED TIME is a unique project which epitomizes the cross- fertilized environment of CalArts. It is a synaesthetic experiment in three-dimensional sound with multiple video projections. In addition, this multimedia event features live performance art and extensive propaganda materials. Our goal is total sensory saturation -- an attempt to effect psychic paradigm shift. This is accomplished via scientific means, utilizing audio and visual techniques known to induce mental states ranging from kinaesthetic disorientation to trance.
This project is firmly grounded in both science and art. We envision it as a virtual environment with features as fascinating for aesthetic merit as for utilitarian function. It is a space and a time which can be stored, re-used, re-experienced. As a multi-dimensional continuum, it presents a slightly different image to each observer -- and thus engages the creative processes of the reader in the experience.
We undertake this project in hopes of furthering mental evolution. It is our contribution to the noosphere, the realm of the collective unconscious. The message we transmit concerns the reconciliation of opposing psychic principles through disintegration and reintegration. Ours is an altruistic mission: the conveyance of information for the catalysis of quantum psychic leaps.
RECYCLED TIME is part of a long tradition of multimedia events, originating with the famous Vortex concerts in the San Francisco Planetarium -- a collaboration between composer Henry Jacobs and experimental filmmaker Jordan Belson. They were the first to combine a 360-degree sound system with multiple film projections and theatrical lighting techniques.
Our environment features multiple image video processing, strobe lights, and an ambience of post-industrial decay. These visual elements augment the music, which is precisely controlled to occupy and move within the space. In addition to the conventional musical qualities of timbre, pitch, and rhythm, we manipulate aural space to its fullest potential with ten discrete channels of audio, dynamically assigned through a matrixed mixing console. The entire program is documented on digital audio tape from binaural microphones suspended from the lighting grid. When the tape is played back through stereo headphones, the 3D spatial effects are reproduced. It is as if the listener's head is hanging from the ceiling in the center of the space. This method of recording is akin to head-mounted audio systems for virtual reality.
We sculpt space and time as if they were plastic media. The music is precisely customized to the space, complete with spinning and flying sounds, subsonic rumblings for that earthquake feeling, and calculations and experimentation revealing the resonant frequencies of the Modular Theatre. Our emphasis is on the physical characteristics of sound and its psychoacoustic applications.
One effect we hope to achieve is the generation of paranoiac perceptions within the minds of the audience. By bombarding the senses with information, and then contradicting that input, one can induce psychic disorientation. The mind then forms its own alternate interpretations of the experience, much in the same manner of Salvador Dali's paranoiac-critical method. In the case of RECYCLED TIME, we aim to create a mood of persecution/conspiracy thinking, and to demonstrate one method of escape from the stress of the Brave New World. We use shock tactics to produce a cathartic reaction -- the elimination of psychic refuse. Fight fire with fire!
This anarchistic agenda is essentially identical with that of the growing cyberpunk movement, which seeks to liberate technology and its power from the control of governments and corporations. Cyberpunk, too, is in service of the psychological revolution. The dreams of generations of science fiction authors, media artists, and computer hackers can now be realized -- through the inevitable dissemination of high technology throughout the society. Welcome to the future.
Aural, visual, and physical elements of RECYCLED TIME draw strongly upon the scientific discipline of chaos theory. The use of analog electronic systems is ideal for the creation of self- generating complex patterns, as evidenced by the theoretical work of the Dynamical Systems Collective at the University of California at Santa Cruz in the 1970s. The "Chaos Cabal," as they were called, simulated systems of differential equations using and analog computer, and monitored the output on an oscilloscope in real time. They observed aperiodic oscillations of an intensely hypnotic nature, constantly changing and unpredictably beautiful.
The media we manipulate share much in common with those of the early chaos scientists. In fact, the computer used by the DSC was really a modular analog synthesizer such as that used for electronic music. The analog synth is our favorite musical instrument: the pieces in RECYCLED TIME feature it prominently. This is due to its nearly limitless potential for reconfiguration, and its capability to generate chaotic information from just a few variables. Self-generating aperiodic and turbulent patterns can be created by combining waveforms tuned to precise frequencies. Since analog technology is based on continuously variable electrical potentials, its performance is not dictated by digital quantization. Analog circuits drift with temperature and humidity, and are thus much more given to chaos - - a.k.a. "dirt," "noise," and "character."
Even more fascinating from the scientific point of view is the technique of video feedback, which is the primary visual stimulus of this event. By directing a video camera at a screen which displays the output of the same camera, information is fed through the system in a recursive loop -- resulting in complex chaotic images. These moving fractals behave unpredictably, but can be constrained to produce desired effects by an experienced artist.
Technological media can be used to create vessels of projection, and explore the depths of the psyche. The function of the live video feedback in RECYCLED TIME is to provide accompaniment to music, similar to a color organ or light show. Its endless turbulent transformations give rise to psychological projections. In this respect, video feedback images resemble Rorschach inkblots. Confronted with utterly chaotic visual stimuli, the unconscious mind of the viewer forms an instantaneous interpretaion determined by preexisting complexes and archetypes. This is the generation of meaning at its basic level. Carl Jung called it "synchronicity." Dali called it the "paranoiac-critical method." We call it a metalanguage, and proclaim the primacy of the image over the word.
In addition to chaotic motion, detail, and color with feedback, we provide synaesthetic stimuli in the form of flicker effects. The video feedback is digitally processed so it can flicker between positive and negative, producing a stroboscopic play of light. Flicker oversaturates the brain with information, resulting in hypnagogic visual hallucinations, geometrical and archetypal. Attentive viewing at correct strobe frequencies yields trance formation. During RECYCLED TIME, video flicker at times gives way to variable frequency strobe lights, which are controlled in real time.
Subtle control of this sensory language can engender the psychic leaps so desired. Masters of these techniques such as experimental animator James Whitney are guides through uncharted psychological territory, where one is given the opportunity to learn about oneself. Religious icons, such as mandalas, have long been known to serve as tools for meditative trance -- just as certain resonant sounds can lull listeners to hypnotic states. Our primary influences in these realms are the ritual art and music of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism.
The point of all this knob twiddling is to learn about ourselves, and, in the process, about each other. By descending to the unknown of the unconscious together, we merge with one another. Metaphysical and parapsychological conceptions aside, there can be no doubt that this type of event (a music concert) is a 20th- century ritual, wherein people unite in what the anthropologists call communitas. The individual experiences loose ego boundaries, and fantastic dreams are not far away. As Kierkegaard said, truth is subjectivity. Personal experience consitutes our existence. And, as we surf the chaotic wave of the eternal present, it's nice to know that we've attained enough control over time to at least replay the good parts.
greuel@xian.com