Altered Spaces

Altered Spaces

I'm a proponent of altered spaces. That's my term for an environment that is something out of the ordinary, and preferably something out of the experience of most people. I believe that altered spaces can be an effective way of stimulating thought, creativity, and generally putting a barrier between you and the mind-wearying mundane world.

An excellent example of an altered space can be seen in the movie Willy Wonka. Yeah, this sounds crazy, but bear with me. Within the confines of his factory, Wonka has created a world unlike anything that most people commonly experience. Chocolate rivers, candy flowers, and all sorts of bizarre things are found within. One of the (admittedly hokey) songs from the film encapulates the notion of altered spaces perfectly:

There is no place I know
To compare with the world of pure imagination
If you're there, you'll be free--
If you truly want to be.

The last line is important. If you aren't up for entering an altered space, you probably aren't going to get much out of it.

Examples

Unfortunately, I can't provide pictures of the examples that follow. I hope the text will be engaging enough.

Alterna/Columbia, Missouri (April, 1994): Shortly before I left Columbia, Missouri to come to Seattle, I helped stage a rave (quasi-legal dance party) with some friends. It was called Alterna, and I was put in charge of environment design. I recruited two friends, Damon and Ascha, and we set to work.

The facility we'd rented for the rave was a massive sports complex. There was a sort of atrium room about the size of three high school classrooms, one story tall. This led into the open sports area, which was probably four or five stories tall. We only took half of the space there, with the rest blocked off by a massive silvery curtain provided by the facility's owners.

The atrium room was used as a small gathering & dance area. It was illuminated almost entirely by black lights. To take advantage of this, we got rolls of blank newsprint from the local paper and covered the walls in it. An artist painted a weird mural over part of the papered walls using flourescent paints, and we provided a bunch of flourescent markers for people to use. By the end of the evening, the papered walls were covered in glow in the dark graffiti. But this was just the opening gambit; the real fun lay in the main area.

The main area was huge, essentially being half a football field plus more space around the sides. Since the space was so huge, we decided to define a "dance area" within the larger room. This area was demarcated by four towers at the four corners, each tower consisting of three 6' tall by 15' long sets of oblong scaffolding cubes rented from a construction agency. These 'cubes' locked together to form the towers. The DJ booth, strobe lights, fog machine, and other rented goodies were placed at one end of this defined space.

Damon and I had spent a lot of time hanging out at the weekly auctions held by the University of Missouri and the city school system. There we'd picked up several truckloads of stuff. Among these were four 16mm classroom film projectors with a variable speed adjustor. These were placed in the four corners of the huge room. Two were laid on their backs, pointing up at the ceiling. Two were set up normally, each projecting a big square of light against the massive silver curtain that defined one wall. By setting these projectors to their lowest speed, the result was a projected strobe light that looked incredible.

Another find was a box of slides. Each of these slides had three four-letter words typed onto it, such as "DOOR GOAT FISH," the words placed one above the other. I have no idea what these were for--perhaps a vision test or a word-association test--but we immediately recognized the potential. We rented a slide projector and set it up against the wall opposite the silver curtain, so that it would project the slide images against the curtain. For the entire evening, we had a tray of these weird grungy-looking typewritten words thrown up against the silver curtain, three stories high.

We'd collected a tremendous amount of junk from the auction, as well as from a visit to an industrial dump site. From the crap obtained we built four displays, one within each of the four scaffold towers. One display consisted of a bunch of brightly and variously-colored vinyl chairs of 1970s vintage, jumbled atop each other. One consisted of several dozens bits of machinery, computer parts, and other stuff, all suspended from variable-length cord attached to the top of the scaffolding, giving the impression of a mobile or perhaps some sort of skeleton. One had a folded-up, rusted metal bedframe with various old computer terminals, a junked water fountain, and some other stuff. The last one had a humanoid figure constructed from a welder's mask, orange traffic cones, and other goodies. These four displays were all lit by theatrical spots with colored gels arranged by another rave participant, Gina Hosler. The result was magnificent.

The final touch was something really special. I paid a call on the University's academic resource center and rented a bunch of interesting-sounding 16mm classroom films as well as a good projector. I set the projector up on top of one of the towers, and projected these bizarro educational films onto a handy projector screen already set up on one wall of the facility opposite the dance floor. The films included a documentary about WWII anti-aircraft guns, another about urban centers of the future, a "cultural tour" of Disneyland circa 1960 or so, and one or two other oddball treats. These ran more or less continuously (they'd stop until I bothered to climb up and set up the next one) throughout the evening. This element was not without risk; had the films been lost or destroyed (not an impossibility given the circumstances) I would have owed the university almost $10,000 in replacement fees for these ancient, long-out-of-print "treasures." But all went well.

The result of all this work was amazing. When you entered the atrium, you were bathed in high-power black light, and bombarded by flourescent paintings, drawings, and graffiti all around. Once you passed through the doors and into the open area, the effect was stunning. You'd see the nearest tower first, and then the rest, which enclosed an area in which dozens of people danced with fog, flashing lights, and the rest. Beyond the dancers was a thirty-foot-tall white square containing three typewritten four-letter words that changed every few seconds. To your left, some weird old educational film was playing. On the ceiling, two corners were illumated with beams of flashing light. On either side of the big word-slides, two more giant squares of flashing light caught the silhouettes of adventuresome dancers who moved in front of the projectors and made massive flashing strobe-people appear on the curtain behind them. And of course, the music was loud.

As Damon and I walked around that night, we were beyond words. The environment we'd built was like a playground for grown-ups, a truly weird and exciting place that made you feel like you could do anything. People responded well; one couple even decided to have sex on the floor below the projector screen.

My Room/Wallingford District/Seattle (May, 1994-March, 1995): The Alterna rave happened the weekend before I left for Seattle. (Yeah, it was crazy.) Arriving here, I was determined to keep the flavor of the rave alive. I still had one of the strobing projectors, as well as a few odds and ends. So in my bedroom, I set up the projector, two black light bars I purchased, and various colored lights. I used heavy matte board to cover the windows completely as well. The result was that with the flip of a couple switches, my room became something otherworldy and very peculiar. I did writing there at several points, including the poem "Black Light" that can be found in these web pages; the title refers to the black lights I had in my room during the events described in the poem.

In March we moved into a new building, and my room is a shadow of its former self. I've got one of the black lights on now, just because I'm writing about this stuff, but the room is tiny and there's not much point in trying to create a true altered space here. Sigh.

Art Machine/McLellan Galleries/Glasgow, Scotland (September, 1995): I was so pleased and stunned at the unexpectedly-great results of Alterna that I couldn't imagine finding anything like it for a long time. In fact, it took about a year and a half. I was in Glasgow for a convention and stumbled on an art gallery known as the McLellan Galleries on Sauchiehall Street. What drew my attention was the entrance: glass doors, through which could be seen a black light-lit hallway full of bizarre and fanciful flourescent creatures made of papier-mache and other things. The Galleries were holding a multi-artist exhibit known as Art Machine, and I came back later to check it out. There were a number of altered spaces, but two in particular warrant attention here. One was so amazing that it knocked Alterna right out of the ballpark.

The lesser of the two was a smallish room with high ceilings. Above the doorway was a large projector screen, on which a live camera shown an image of the room you were standing in, including yourself. There was a chair in one corner of the room. (There was some other stuff in the room that was irrelavent to this bit.) The trick was, the live image projected on the screen was overlaid by other, pre-recorded images. When I first went in, I just saw myself in the room with the empty chair. Then someone else walked in and sat in the chair--but only on screen. I was still alone. Soon the room was full of people, on screen, though I was the only one really there. I could see myself superimposed over the people, like a ghost. At various points other footage would kick in, including a busy highway, ocean waves, and other odd things. Through all of these you would still see the live image of yourself walking around, seemingly engulfed by cars or waves or ghostly people or whatever. It was quite cool.

The most amazing thing there, however, was an exhibit called "The Enchanted Wood" by Belinda Gilbert Scott. This was the exhibit hinted at by the black-light entrance hall. In a nutshell, the artist attempted to make you feel like a character in a fairy tale. On entering the space, you were greeted with a forest of papier-mache trees and other odd objects and characters strewn about. Doorways at the sides led into small rooms. There were bits of paper attached at various places containing clues in verse as to the inhabitants and their fates. The key phrase of the place was "The birds are in the trees, and the trees are in the birds." True enough, the big trees extended upward and joined the bodies of flourescent birds as if the trees were legs.

The first room you came to had one of those gas-globes inside on a black pedastal. These are the globes full of weird glowing wavy lines, and when you run your hands over the glass the glowing arcs move in response. As you played with the globe, a recorded voice went on about the goddess of the wood and various weird stuff. Her voice was haunting and ethereal, really quite impressive, and the things she described were peculiar enough that you were left with suggestions rather than facts.

The next room was even stranger. It was a hallway ringed with massive mirrors in antique frames. In the center of the room was a weird candelabra hung at waist level. As you came in, you first saw a chest sitting on the floor containing a variety of cloaks and robes. Another scrollwork note of verse encouraged you to put one of the robes on. I did so, and looking into the candlelit mirrors surrounded by strange objects, I fell immediately into the thought that I was a prince on a dire quest or something. It was quite a jolting sensation--I was completely taken in by the situation and felt entranced. The effect was quite remarkable.

The last room was an open creative area where you could paint, draw, or do other crafty kinds of things and leave your work behind for others to admire. The last of the scrollwork messages was here too, wrapping up the tale of the Enchanted Wood.

The whole place had a pungent aroma (of paint and other stuff, I suppose) and there were strange bits of music and sound effects playing throughout. In addition, you could half-hear the woman's voice from the first room throughout the space which made for quite an odd effect. The displays in the main area (including a stuffed bear, a hollow suit of armor, a doll's house, and other things) were very peculiar.

It was all quite odd and very moving. For me, at least, this was the best example of an altered space I've ever been in. The artist had a particular goal--to make you feel like a character in a somewhat unwholesome fairy tale--and she succeeded to an amazing degree.

Well, that's enough on altered spaces. I know I haven't exactly given a clear explanation of what I see as the benefits of such places, but I hope the implication is obvious: that altered spaces allow you to step out of your reality and into another one, and thereby facilitate the flow of ideas and imagination.

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