Factory Media Centre Gallery Series presents
THE PSYCHEDELICS OF EVERYDAY LIFE
Installation by Sean Procyk
Opening: Friday, August 8 2014 | 7-11PM
Exhibition: August 8-29, 2014
“…regard the soundscape of the world as a huge musical composition, unfolding around us ceaselessly. We are simultaneously its audience, its performers and its composers…”
– R. Murray Schafer (Canadian composer)
Within our daily lives we are immersed by a ubiquitous and pervasive cacophony of sounds – what R. Murray Schafer describes as a “universal concert”. If attuned, one may notice their aural contribution, emitted through every interaction with the physical world. For example, rhythmic thumps radiate outward while traversing space, climbing stairs or chopping wood. Furthermore, the frequencies of our actions become more intense with the introduction of technology. Through mechanical and electric means, sounds propagate at higher speeds and greater amplitudes, shifting and extending our aural vocabulary to include a combination of clicks, hums, beeps and drones. Whether pleasantly sounding or not, these types of consumer products have set the tone for the contemporary aural experience.
The psychedelics of everyday life is an installation that articulates this sonic landscape using techniques common to live musical performance. Employing stage lighting to create a multisensory environment, a dialogue is established between the aural and visual phenomena that surround us in our day-to-day. In this work, consumer products act as a substrate, fruiting entheogenic mushroom forms that produce a visual light show. These sculptural objects act as the primary psychoactive agent, inducing an altered experience of the everyday.
Addressing the capitalist strategy of consumer product dependence and planned obsolescence, this work challenges the habitual cycle of consumption and disposal. As with the psychedelic experience, a perceptual shift must occur to unfetter oneself from this ostensibly ordinary model. Once liberated, the mind may open up to notion of decomposition as a means of regeneration. The psychedelics of everyday life introduces spirituality in materialism, spreading the doctrine ‘spend freely, waste creatively.’ From the mycelial model of growth, decay fruits new life.
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