As seen in my previous work, Dejate Callar, I’ve been experimenting with methods of viewing work that fully subvert our visual perception. This orb has been crafted to be the shape of the average visual cone. By surrounding the viewer’s peripheral and central vision, this method becomes a tool for telling almost impossible stories.
For this piece, In Cipher, I use the orb-method of viewing to explore the too-big-to-picture idea of the nothingness that existed before there was a universe. By placing the viewer directly into it, perhaps it becomes fathomable that there once was no existence.
Viewers approach the piece, put on the headphones, place their chins on the chin-rest, a press a key that is connected to a Raspberry Pi computer to begin the experience. My voice begins with the question, "Can you believe there was once everything, and right next to it, consuming it, was nothing?" I then list several versions of nothing that do not accurately describe this other nothingness; "Not nothing like when you’re asked what you’re up to and you reply 'nothing'." Around halfway through the experience, the viewer becomes aware that the static they've been looking at is being closed in on by blackness coming in on either side of their periphery. I then begin to list things on Earth and beyond and ask the viewer to imagine them all embracing them; "The Earth, the moon, the Sun. And all of the other stars and all of their worlds and everything that belongs to them. All of them, hugging you." In the end, the static becomes a sliver, then vanishes leaving the viewer in the blackness. Floating, in the nothing.
The experience lasts 00:01:45
