Absence of Light: 275 hours has been completed. (March, 2007)

The title is pretty self explanatory, but here is some background info and responses from the performance piece / research project:

About two years ago a I read a wonderful book ( The Eyes of the Skin ) which talks about the rise of ocularcentrism among humans. We are predominantly visual people. We, those with sight, obtain the vast majority of our understanding of the world through our eyes. But it was not always the case.

Also, last summer I sat for a 10 day meditation retreat, in which the only technique was to observe the sensations on your body, part by part. I found that I couldn't feel, or concentrate on a specific part of my body without the aid of my eyes. Even with my eyes closed I would focus on, say, my right knee cap by half visualizing/half looking at it. The teacher told me not to do this, just to feel it. Being a visual artist/designer this seemed as possible as asking me to teleport; just couldn't do it.

Thus the idea for Absence of Light was born. I wanted to know what would happen if I could no longer use my eyes. I wanted to know if how I related to the world would change and if my other senses would adapt.

So naturally, I locked myself in the dark for two weeks.

I sealed off the windows and doors with two layers of black plastic and took the light bulbs/leds out of anything else that made light. I did a good enough job that my eyes never adjusted, the only light I saw for two weeks was from static electricity (which looks like the Northern Lights, its beautiful).

Some notes from the experiment:

+ My first reaction was that the most remarkable thing about it was that it was pretty unremarkable. I expected some great shift, but instead everything was normal, except that I couldn't see anything. Nothing like that scene in the movie Ray where Ray Charles, as a boy, dramatically hears the cricket and the boiling pot and is suddenly completely aware of his surroundings through his ears.

+ On day 5 my eyes started to hurt. For those of you who have had your eyes dilated, it is an uncomfortable feeling. This is what I felt. I could tell that my pupils were gigantic, searching, to no avail, for any amount of light. I had to keep my eyes closed more often than not so my pupils could relax.

+ I went outside into the yard on day 6. I wrapped my eyes in a combination of black plastic and gauze bandages, which worked well. I had not been outside for more than 10 minutes when I had a frightening experience when someone yelled at me from the sidewalk and then started to walk toward me asking if I lived in the building. It quickly turned from frightening to amusing when I realized it was the stoner guy who lived on the second floor. His response to not being able to see; "Whoa! Bummer…" After this I fumbled my way to the back of the building for a little more protection from passersby. I sat there for about an hour and I can only describe it as a John Cage Moment. Everything, every sound, seemed perfect and composed. The traffic, the two guys yelling a block away, the squirrel a few feet away, it was all a symphony. I have read Cage's work and always intellectually sided with his argument that everything was equal in quality, that motzart and the refrigerator were both beautiful. But sitting outside that day was the first time I experienced it. That hour was worth the whole project. If this is how my musically inclined friends experience the world, I am envious.

+ With the combination of my experience outside and the pain from my pupils I decided to end it early. The original goal was 500 hours (20 days). I made it around 275 hours.

+ On day twelve I woke up before sunrise ( a friend set my alarm the day before) and cut away the plastic on a window that faces east. I sat two rooms away, with sunglasses on and let the light slowly creep in. Even still, my eyes were very sensitive and the ambient light from street lamps down the street was pretty blinding. I opened and closed my eyes in 15-20 second intervals. When things started to focus looking was a luscious, visceral experience. A chair was still a chair but it had a certain presence to it. And color was most pleasurable. The night before as I was reflecting on the project I realized that I hadn't thought about color at all, even my daydreams where without color. So that morning when color came rushing back, I adamantly state that the most beautiful thing in the world is a traffic cone. I stared at one for nearly a half hour. Traffic cones.

I also spent quite a while enjoying one of my previous piece of sculpture – here is a video looking inside it with a flashlight moving about on the outside:
http://www.andrewzientek.com/ocw02.mov (5.3 mb)
http://www.andrewzientek.com/ocw03.mov (7.9 mb)

+ As I walked around very slowly that day, enjoying seeing things and thinking about this pleasure and the John Cage moment, what really hit me is not that my senses changed markedly, I couldn't hear or see better than before, but that I wasn't imposing a value hierarchy on what I saw or heard. I wasn't discriminating and tuning out what wasn't important to my functioning in the world.

+ I thought a lot about John Cage and Robert Irwin, who in music and the visual arts managed to break through and dismantle conceptions about what is art and what is beautiful. Both finally arrived at the idea that art is nothing more than a frame of mind, a way of seeing or hearing the world around us. I struggle with the implications…

If anyone knows how to contact Irwin, please let me know, I would love to pick his brain.

I have rambled long enough, email me with questions, thoughts, or anything else that comes to mind.

All the best,
-andrew