article about psi: mid space
published in the Paranormal Review October 2004

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.

“psi: mid space” is a contemporary performance piece that uses sound and video work to explore psychic phenomena in relation to time and space. Made in collaboration with Vic Llewellyn, Lisa Griffiths and Stephen Clarke, (artists, performers and video makers based in the South West of England), the performance was researched and devised over the past year. The term “mid space” originates from the Irish psychic Eileen Garrett, who used the phrase to describe the state which she entered prior to her mediumistic work – mid space became something we attempted to frame and to capture in the performance: the space between, the threshold between the possible and the impossible, the accountable and the inexplicable. Mid space also became a performance mode.

“the psychic is the space between namings” Ned Reiter

We all have long term interests in the subject, and after receiving Arts Council funding for the project, we undertook intensive research in the field, including a visit to the 2003 Society for Psychical Research Conference. It was there that I was struck by the presentations on the Ganzfeld, the internationally recognised experiment that tests for psi in the laboratory. “Ganzfeld” is German for "uniform or whole field”. The experiment involves a ‘sender’ who mentally transmits an image which has been randomly generated from a computer, to a ‘receiver’ who is in a mild sensory deprivation environment (red light, halved ping pong balls over open eyes, white noise playing through headphones). The experiment lasts for about 45 minutes. It is thought that about 20 minutes into the Ganzfeld, the receiver enters a state known as ‘hypnagogic’, between wakefulness and sleep, where the mind is lucid, and dream like imagery is perceived; a state conducive to psi receptivity.

We collaborated with Dr Serena Roney Dougal, author of “Where Science and Magic Meet” and one of the country’s leading parapsychologists, (and a good friend), who offered to be our experimenter. In November 2003, we set up a Ganzfeld experiment, imitating as much as possible the necessary laboratory conditions. We didn’t get any ‘hits’ although we had some significant moments of communication. More importantly, the Ganzfeld experiment became highly influential to us: we were fascinated by the protocol, the structure, the equipment, the choices that parapsychologists had made in establishing the experiment, and perhaps most intriguingly, the idea that moments of psi might be captured in this illusive and curious state of hypnagogia.

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 continuously disappearing and appearing, travelling to other dimensions and back again. A recorded voice 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.

As performance artists we look for key ideas or tools within a subject in order to open up the terrain, to seek the connections between ideas and concepts, to encourage other ways of ‘looking’. A performance work is itself a place where time and space are changed and reshaped, where all sorts of things can come into relationship beside each other, and other connections and insights unfold. The halved ping pong balls from the Ganzfeld bred a whole ping pong ball, multiplying into a thousand, spilling over into the game of table tennis as a visual and structural metaphor for the meeting place between psi and science, between order and chaos.

"No other sport can engage in the same way, it allows you to dream, it is like being in a trance state." Henry Miller on the fine art of ping pong

“psi: mid space” is an attempt to bring various aspects and perspectives from the field of ‘psi’ together; it draws on the Ganzfeld as a source alongside many other ideas and notions in the field of psychic phenomena. An artistic work has the potential to cross boundaries within a field or territory, to bridge divisions: scepticism can converse with belief systems, the inexplicable colludes with the understood, personal ‘knowings’ chafe with scientific explanations. “psi: mid space” aims to provide a ‘space’ that owns these paradoxes, where an audience can wonder, think, experience, reflect; perhaps a notion of active meditation.

“The world doesn’t yield to us directly, the description of the world stands in between.” Carlos Castaneda

My focus and commitment are rooted within the working processes and contextual relationships engaged in devising and making performance work: obsessive theme chasing and intensive research, a dedication to engaging with new audiences and finding routes for migrating performance into unusual situations. We toured “psi: mid space” to various venues across South West England over the Spring and Summer of 2004, engaging with both arts and non-arts venues - perhaps the most interesting choices were Cheltenham Festival of Science (June 12th) and Quest Natural Health Show in Devon (July 2nd). In both these venues, the performance sat at the ‘edge’ of the event - a portakabin in Cheltenham, and a ‘Stewards Dining Room’ at the Mind Body Spirit fair. The content and focus of each of these very different events combined with the contemporary nature of our performance made for fascinating exchanges with the audiences, particularly in relation to the meeting points between contemporary theories in quantum physics and experiences of psychic phenomenon.

....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.

Through the project we collaborated with visual artist and clairvoyant Carolyn Findlay. Carolyn drew the devising process and many of the performances using light, colour and written text to ‘map’ the work onto and into another artistic form, translating our interactions with the subject, the audience and with each other into layers of colour, text and abstracted shapes to allow another ‘reading’ of the material. Perhaps it is through art, through performance, an action that is live, focused and momentary that the pursuit of the constantly disappearing, illusive and elliptical world of psi is possible, where other relationships can be observed and momentarily grasped.

....cutting the ping pong ball for the ganzfeld experiment, we release the air from the country of manufacture, China or Taiwan perhaps, air captured from a different time and space, air perhaps from another dimension, with dimensions folded in upon themselves inside the sphere, the atom, and we place them over our eyes, and begin to feel the weightlessness of the ganzfeld environment, where the graviton might move over to a parallel universe and back again....

Sue Palmer is a performance maker, and Associate Lecturer in Theatre at Dartington College of Arts.