psi: mid space - a cyclical performance event about psychic phenomena and our perceptions of time, space and thought

psi: the 23rd letter of the greek alphabet

in quantum physics psi denotes 'hidden variables in the collapse of the wave function'

tune in and receive.
messages from the dead and the living,
parallel realities, real time events.

we play ping pong with gravitons and closed loop thoughts.
we set right the quantum poltergeist table to watch it upturn again.
we're falling and waking: we're in the ganzfeld.

Psychic phenomena exist in the threshold between the possible and the impossible, the accountable and the inexplicable - that porous edge between the placebo and the medicine, twixt the actual and the imagined.

performance: psi: mid space worked as a cyclical event with multiple performances taking place at each venue.

A floor covered in 1008 ping pong balls. Three people lie in a semi ‘Ganzfeld’ state on paisley mattresses – the air is thick with red light, they have halved ping pong balls on their eyes. Electricity crackles from a small cupboard wrapped in cling film. On three television monitors across the space, millions of starlings flock, travelling across the screens at slight interval, electromagnetic formations.

The structure of the performance was built around the timing of the Ganzfeld experiment, so each performance lasted 45 minutes. We then immediately entered another 45 minute period of conversation with the audience, video showings and preparation for the next performance: a ‘cycle’ of action that moved from chaos to consolidation to chaos again.

"Below a certain distance known as the Planck length, time runs backwards, objects materialize, de-materialize…. to give a sense of scale here…. if I were to expand an atom to the size of the known universe then the Planck length would be the size of an average tree…”

The performance used many of the conditions and structures of the Ganzfeld experiment to provide the architecture of the performance: we partially inhabited the roles of sender, receiver and experimenter, we immersed ourselves in red light, we chased the psi-inducing ‘hypnagogic’ state that comes from durational and repeated actions.

A ping pong ball hovers on an invisible thread above a miniature table tennis game. A scientist attempts to explain pendulum theory postulating that we are continually disappearing and appearing, blinking on and off, on and off, expanding to the size of the known universe and contracting back in upon ourselves endlessly. 'Eileen Garret' lists psychic experiences and concepts mediated as a waveform through a television. The ping pong balls behave strangely and beautifully, they clump together like friends in a playground, or like hundreds of small worlds, or subatomic particles.

Using the ping pong ball as a multiplying object (1008) we entered the subatomic quantum world, attempting to create perceptual shifts in time and space through the consistently generating and collapsing game of table tennis – the ping pong table unfolding into the doors of perception that allowed accounts of phenomena to become material and realised.

"She heard things, noises crackles sparks. She heard electricity banging and thumping in her wardrobe in her bedroom, and she cried out because she was afraid, and someone came into the room to find out why she was shouting and the sparks and the crackles stopped. That happens, like we can’t all see the same things as each other. That happens, when you see something and someone else doesn’t or can’t. That must be frightening to say can’t you see that or hear that and they can’t or like Eileen it stops when someone else comes into the room."

video: a collection of films and images surround the space both during and after the performance. The televisions are used to import other materials into the space: the flocking starlings, the random images from the Ganzfeld, the split screen document we made of our experiment, slowed down versions of the ping pong game, images of poltergeist activity. They are also used as mediums through which to speak, the audio input signal translating itself into a visual electronic image.

“ I was sitting facing the door.…the door opened, the door, this very very heavy door, very very slowly opened…” The doors are opening and closing, changing dimensions, a game of table tennis is subjected to chaotic forces, the table shifts and distorts, the door opens, 1008 ping pong balls thrown hovering in mid space, for a moment they flock like the starlings, they shower endlessly, the space that has been momentarily ordered, descends into beautiful chaos.

conversation: we created opportunities for informal direct engagements with the public to discuss experiences, beliefs, ideas, anxieties, and perceptions of time and space. Conversation was at the heart of the project, embedded into the process from the beginning: the interviews became an artistic process in themselves and some of the most rewarding points of exchange throughout the project. Discussion and exchange with the audience spilled into and out of the performance cycles; these conversations travelled around the nature of reality, on the arts and their capacity, on thinking and thought forms, consciousness, life after death, the power of objects, the nature of time, neuropsychology, memory and its processes, on science, on love.

The live performance event took place in venues and locations across south west england over the spring and summer of 2004.

Other collaborations and artistic responses:

Dr Serena Roney Dougal: our experimenter for the Ganzfeld, one of the country’s leading parapsychologists.

Carolyn Findlay: an artist and clairvoyant who ‘mapped’ our process and many of the performances.

Joff Winterhart: early on in the process I asked Joff to draw some images of the world of psychic phenomena, and they were often displayed as part of the artwork generated around the project.