"The vampire of subjectivity sees the play of identity from the metalevel, sees the fragrant possiblities of multiple voice and subject position, the endless refraction of desire, with a visual apparatus that has become irreducibly and fatally different."

excerpt from " The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age", Allucquere Rosanne Stone, MIT Press, 1996. Pg 182.

The seed of the Idea

Last summer I read Sandy's book, The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. It's a great read: deep, sardonic, accessable, mysterious and remarkably relevant today. I decided to work with the quote above and try to create a device that would let us see from the metaverse POV how "endlessly" refacted our modern personalities are.

Aesthetically, I am bored with the hype from the first and second waves of the Information Age. The web is stale and predictable. Yet despite the plague of humdrum, blog-infested, 3-column websites, the internet-driven cyborg revolution is still going on within us. We continue to mutate, splinter and grow. The merger of constant digital contact with desire seems to ensure our personalities will continue to become more and more complex and fractured as we get more and more physically and psychically isolated.

. I was particularly struck by the many examples in the book of multiple, fractured personalities. As if, modern, cyber life is too complex to allow us to have single, consistant, individual personalities. I wonder if we ever could? Perhaps our times are giving us the tools to reveal what we always were: complex compositions not consistant mush. As a person born astraddle the siesmic shift from marvelous machines that land us on the moon and glide across the skies on monorails into the sterilized atmospheres of bits and bytes as ethereal, powerful and powerless as light (aka the information age), I am excited about the possibilities.

I found the discussion in the book exciting, comforting and familiar. As a life long student of character study, the way Ms Stone states this dilemma is so elegant it seems a simple and natural explaination for all the contradictions and moods that affect everyone.

Thus, I have been pondering the issue all summer. This project is an attempt to make visible many facets of each person who puts on the helmet. To visually distort, magnify, and rearrange each visitor's physical self image. To let the unknowable universe peek back at you - as you appear from the metaverse. To re-image that familiar person we see in our minds and in the mirror every time we turn around.

The project is intended to be an innocent, tongue in cheek experiment that offers an opportunity to take a moment to reflect on ourselves (that most fascinating person of all), in literally new angles. I sought to make it seem less threatening than I believe this might be for many. To take the anxiety about putting your head into a strange white cocoon seem harmless. Yet I also hope to mix it up and stir up feelings from very deep and unspoken places.

Design & Construction of the Artifact

I constructed a physical place where we can physically see those other "me"s - a dimension of refracted desires. It evolved from a cylinder to a cone. Inside the cone are over 100 different reflective surfaces and angles.

I began my sketches thinking to build a giant kaliedoscope where the viewer was the image being reflected and distorted. I wanted to use projectors and mirrors. That idea still has merit and might be the next iteration, if this idea proves to deserve one.

Next I tried a reflective cylinder. It wasn't as complex or interesting as I wanted. You can see an animated gif of the cylinder on the BlackBox home page.

Finally, I settled on the device pictured above. This cone shape creates an immersive environment without a clostrophobic feeling. Inside are a collection of reflective materials (visible to the left) layered to give multi-dimensional views of portions of the participant's features .

The cone shape also brings in images from outside by virture of the flare shape at the bottom. Thus your feet, the floor, nearby objects, and your clothes become part of the scene.

The helmut weighs a few pounds. It is constructed of art paper, a hula hoop, dowl rods, convex and concave reflective surfaces, mirrors in many shapes, an LED light source and christmas lights. I draped it in white to mask the object, change it's color from outside (to make the black inside more dynamic). It also resembles a cocoon swaddled as it is. The entire appartus was suspended from a tall light grid.

One enters the helmet from underneath and most people have to stoop to get under it. Then you striaighten and stand up into the light. For the hard of seeing, I offered prismatic plastic glasses that put stars around all light sources. This device bends the light. With them on, you can not help but see in a different dimension. However, they are a cheap trick compared with the self-exploration the helmet was meant to provide to those who would experience it with an inquisitive open mind.

The Presentation

I left the helmut hanging in the rafters during class. At the beginning of my presentation, I lowered it. The lights were dimmed in the ACTlab, and I distributed light sticks. I had the light sticks on the table and was toying with them as we discussed many things in class. People were more curious about the light sticks than the Helmut. I wanted them to be interested, but I carried it too far.

When the helmut was set up; I went inside it to show everyone how to access it. Then I demonstated the "scanning" procedure. This was a short ritual done by the participants to prepare the viewer to enter the helmet. We used the light sticks and I made a buzzing sound when I demonstrated. I wanted to use the light sticks to make it seem like a playful ritual - clearly a contradiction. Everyone began scanning each other but soon bored with it. I had hoped to use it to keep them focused on who was going into the helmut and to use the scanning to reinforce the tribal, ritual act of cleansing your old viewpoints before you entered the "metaverse". This did not work as planned. I got kerfluffled as everyone scurrried to scan before I finished my introduction. I know now that my hurried explanation did not set the proper tone.

As people began taking turns going into the helmet, I projected a video slide show of pictures my husband shot of light sticks within the helmut. I also played two lighthearted, irreverant songs about modern disillusionment during the presentation. Few seemed to notice and no one commented.

Participants moved into the helmut one at a time. No time contraints were made on the visitors, but most people only stayed in the helmet a short time (less than 45 sec). That was expected. It is a little disorienting in the helmut because it is a very stange environment. Like a house of mirrors on steroids. With so much to look at, most people still do not see or examine what is right before them: themselves reflected, refracted, bounced and bent.

The audience became much more distracted by having tools in their hands than they were interested in the helmut or the video I prepared. After the initial rush to playfully scan each other, they broke into discussion groups with the same people they normally associate with and largely ignored the environment or other entrants to the helmet.

For these reasons, I feel this presentation of the project failed badly - maybe even spectacularly?.

Some Results & Conclusions

Creating a three dimensional stage for one person at a time was a risk for me. I am much more comfortable in the 2D video presentational dimension or with a 3D theatrical event where the audience is controlled. However, I believe the device is successful to a point. The helmet behaves as intended. It produces the splintered images of the observer and fractures their image to show many facets. How to get people to see is another question.

Yet, I do not think it was successful in this class. Most people in our class were not ready to explore it with their full attention or did not take time to think about what they were seeing. They treated it lightly, and I assume at least some responsibility for that. I believe I could improve the experience in a few ways:

• Introduce the helmut in a mysterious and more serious way first.
• Secondly, introduce scanning with light sticks. Demonstrate it alone once, then turn it over to the group to let them do with it what they will.
• Perhaps I should trust the work or experience of the helmet to stand on its own. I wanted them to enjoy it and was afraid they would be bored. I added some visual eye candy. Even though I wanted to make it entertaining, hardly anyone even saw the video projection.
• Manage my initial remarks to set the tone and scene. I should have demanded the stage rather than rush and treat the presentation so lightly.
• I sent mixed signals: the music was light, the light sticks were fun. I wanted to make a non-threatening environment, but I also wanted them to experience the "otherness" of being in the helmet.

Another important aspect of this experiment for me was to continue to explore the limits of a director's power to control/release the audience to experience the event. As the creator/director, I wanted to see how much power I can relinquish and still be effective in communicating my ideas. I need a place where I can try this repeatedly to truly learn more. I need to practice how to treat the event differently and see if I can produce different results. This showing was confusing, and I am still assessing what happenend.

I'm certain this will not change anyone's perception of their selves. However, this device offers a glimpse into the other dimensions within us all. It remains to be seen if any artifact will help us put away our learned, self-concious responses to our own image and begin to see ourselves in all our interesting fractions and refractions as the "vampire of subjectivity" sees us from the metalevel where the view is more clear and less judgemental.

Hopefully, the Multiverse Helmet might lead it's wearers a tiny step toward the same flexibility, freedom from expectations, and tolerance for themselves..

My Husband, Rob Donald, in the helmut.

Note:

During this project I had surgery, so my husband, video artist Rob Donald, helped me a lot. He took many pictures to help capture the spirit of the device. Pictured above you can see him in the helmut. It's difficult to photograph the experience, but I think he did a great job.

You can also see some of his experiements with light sticks within the helmet on a second page. I used his photos in the slide montage that was projected. No one mentioned them, but I think they are beautiful.