A Room of Disorientation
2020
hearing test room．5.1 surround sound．infrared monitoring device．display monitor．copy of declassified CIA documents．sound source list
Artwork Introduction
Unlike extreme sensory deprivation used for torture, which engenders physical and perceptual torment to defeat an individual’s will and resistance to authority, brainwashing techniques are used in everyday life, are imperceptible, and are based in psychology or behavioral sciences. A variety of pleasing reward mechanisms are deployed, so that individuals gradually accept the values, desire structures, and thinking patterns being implanted by the brainwashing mechanism, and through subtle influences in the environment, the brainwashed are made to think that they have freely chosen these values, desires, and ways of thinking via independent deliberation.
Similar in format to a sensory deprivation chamber, the installation A Room of Disorientation subjects participants to an extreme bodily experience to create a moment in which they are able to reconsider their values, desires, and ways of thinking.
The artwork includes a one-square-meter room that contains only a chair and meets the soundproofing standards of an audiometric booth. Once entering this dark room, the participant is completely separated from the outside world and only hears the sound of two people talking coming from above. As different conversations and shouts are continually added, the participant is immersed in swirling and reverberating sounds and falls into a daze-like state. Next, an intermittent low frequency sound descends from above and causes the participant’s entire body to vibrate repeatedly. When the participant’s endurance limit is reached, the sound suddenly stops, but the reverberations continue due to the room’s soundproofing. After two to three minutes the sound dissipates and the participant is plunged back into complete silence and darkness, and at this moment, is offered time for contemplation and reflection.
After leaving this small room in the installation, the participant must wonder about the reverberating sounds that he or she just heard and from where those sounds came.
Two documents are displayed with the installation. One is a copy of the 1985 CIA report France: Defection of the Leftist Intellectuals, which contains an analysis of the French post-Marxist philosophies of Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Roland Barthes, and outlines how these ideas could be used within the Cold-War framework. The other document lists the sources of the sounds heard in the room, including the initial conversation, which is a 1971 debate between Foucault and Noam Chomsky, and then other people, from leftist post-Marxist philosophers to right-wing philosophers giving lectures. There are also others discussing medical reports on the effects of psychedelic drug treatments and psychotherapy, introductions to The Lucifer Effect and the CIA’s human experimentation program Project MKUltra, and explanations of how the corporatocracy controls perceptions and how dissidents implement anti-control actions. In total, the list contains over one-hundred items.
The spatial disorientation aspect of A Room of Disorientation lies in the fact that even if the participant later finds out that the sounds were derived from speech expressing extremely divergent opinions, these opinions had been made incomprehensible by editing the audio files to create reverberating sound, and furthermore, the participant had difficulty resisting the continuously strengthening and heavy low-frequency sound to the point of physical discomfort. To a certain extent, listening to any words patiently in the noise of the Internet age is likewise difficult.
However, integral to the participatory and immersive nature of the artwork is an alternative─the participant could refuse to cooperate. That heavy door separating the room from the outside world is actually not locked, and a participant could just leave at any time, only partially enter the room, or even use the simple action of opening and closing the door to disrupt the influence the reverberations would otherwise have on his or her perceptions, thus shifting the participant’s role to an active one having influence over the reverberations. All of this depends on the choice the individual makes regarding his or her own position and what course of action the participant adopts when entering A Room of Disorientation, if he or she enters at all.
In other words, with A Room of Disorientation, Chen not only presents the toxin of pervasive control technologies in contemporary life, but also leaves participants the option of detoxifying by themselves. After experiencing the disorienting effect of pervasive control technologies, they might realize they can actively alter the disorientation.
Notes
- Sound for this artwork was designed and produced by Chen Mao-Chang. The audiometric booth was manufactured by Shing Ho Technical Engineering Company.