December Goals
I have recently been entranced by the work of James Turrell. Turrell is an artist who manipulates light and space in order to offer an enriching experience. He has lived quite the life; he flew monks out of Tibet during the Vietnam War as a humanitarian effort, later he was arrested for helping young men evade the Vietnam draft, in his free time -when he wasn't saving lives- he restored antique airplanes. Basically, he's a superhero.
It may seem odd that I am writing about Turrell in my goal post, but I think it's quite relevant. Recently, I went to an art museum that hosted an installation by Turrell. Into The Light was one of the most intriguing experiences of my life. Turrell's installation involved several darkened rooms with one window of bright piercing light shining through. The main attraction of the show, however, was one room in which there were strobe lights flashing and bright shifting lights. The room had curved walls that were painted completely white. What was the strangest was the fact that the window through which the light was coming from was hollow- someone could have fallen in. Because of the emptiness of the room, there was spatial manipulation taking place. It almost seemed like I was floating amongst billions of stars, instead of one room of just light.
Honestly, I am not going to act as if I knew the artistic expression behind the installation. I didn't. Further, I was even more confused about why people were just sitting on the benches and staring into the light without any words. Those people didn't seem to need any words to understand the idea behind Turrell's art. I did. I felt completely out of place sitting there watching other people understand something that completely evaded me. Additionally, I wasn't able to calm myself enough to follow their example and simply watch the lights.
Truthfully, it bothered me more than it should have. I left the museum confounded; I wanted, no, needed to understand the purpose behind the installation. Was I to admire Turrell because I thought his work was simply cool? Was that why the rest of the people there were also entranced? To find the answers to my question, I looked to where I could find solace: research. And so, I dove right into James Turrell, his work and even his biography. What I found completely astounded me.
Turrell's work is very similar to my own research. If anyone were to understand his art, it should have been me. Turrell utilized perceptual psychology, more specifically manipulations to visual stimuli. Before creating his artwork, Turrell completed extensive studies of the Gansfield effect. perceptual deprivation caused by exposure to an uniform stimulation field. This causes your brains to feel tricked as a result of the amplifying neural noise which causes the brain to search for the missing signals. This disruption of the senses is then interpreted by the higher visual cortex and often causes hallucinations. Bottom line, Turrell's work with manipulated light and space causes his audience to quite literally view the world in the different and unique way.
Interestingly enough, this perception deprivation leads to an altered state of consciousness, or even lucid dreaming within the viewers. This is another point that I hope to analyze further in a different journal post.
Since, this is a goal post, I must explain that I don't plan to manipulate anyone's perception. That does not mean that I wouldn't like to, just that I don't think anyone has that trust. However, I rambled on about James Turrell for a different purpose. The installation of Turrell or rather the feelings it invoked within me reminded me of the importance of an audience, it reminded me why events like the symposium or even the January presentation are of prominence. Even though my research has prominence to me, I must relay that to my audience in a way that makes sense, in a way that shows the purpose properly. Like Turrell's artwork, my research must also retain its importance and even speak to others as it did me.
Understanding this has actually driven the nerves away. Now, I am that much more excited and ready to discuss my research further in January. Further, I am excited to work with Alex, not only because his topic interests me but because I can tell how passionate he is to learn and explore more. Recently, I sat down with Alex and spoke about how our topics may relate and it was eye opening. It was simply nice to discuss our topics freely, without any constraints.
In the upcoming weeks, I want to create a podcast with Alex about our topics -morality and dreams- without any guide, to see where the conversation takes us. This wouldn't be a direct part of our January presentation but will hopefully make us more comfortable in front of an audience and ease our way into talking about our topics together.
We have discussed various questions to present. However, what spoke to me personally was one of the "so whats" we touched upon. This may change in the future, but Alex and I talked about how both of our topics are extremely difficult to answer. That said, that is what makes conversation about them that much more valuable. Unquantifiable questions like the purpose of dreaming and what it means to be moral might never reach a clear conclusion, but ultimately show the true value of questioning. After all, is that not the purpose of presentations like the one in January?
Further, other goals for December include collecting the dream journals more efficiently and analyzing them properly. I also hope to finish the next section of my Thesis by the end of the month. There's a lot going on this month, but if that wasn't the case, I would be more concerned.
