Building on research by Diana Deutsch, Albert Bregman, Maryanne Amacher and others, The Sick Sense is an ongoing project, currently consisting of three live abstract audio-visual performances, exploring the limits of the perceptual system, stimulating otoacoustic and flicker phenomena and auditory and visual hallucinations while searching for stimulus patterns that deactivate the brain’s Default Mode Network, switching the brain into the role of ecstatic perceiver.
Each project begins with a custom-built software system, performed live, operating according to a set of rules which offer various possibilities for exploring the perceptual process. The progression of the piece then evolves as a pathway through the system that exploits those possibilities while simultaneously demonstrating the system’s rules. A key emphasis of the project is the one-to-one relationship between sound and image, as both are either driven by the same data or data from one is used to generate and control the other.
