Labyrinth of Truth

Design

This Installation is composed of four concentric circles of sheer fabrics that are suspended from above and rotate independently around their center. These function as transparent, hanging hallways that move and reinvent the labyrinth. Openings between the layers allows for easy movement between them. At the center of the piece is a shrouded circle with a rotating tree suspended from a parasol. Lights from within and around the tree cast multiple forms of its colored shadows around and through the transparent shroud and onto the layers beyond it. a projector is simultaneously painting imagery and light from the outside. As people move through the space their shadows are cast into the layers of labyrinth that curves and captures their shapes in its walls.

Psychoactive Effects of Moving Hallways

The walls move at different speeds and directions as people spin them. This creates a delightfully psychedelic illusion of moving two speeds or directions at the same time. When you move into the next layer, the experience of the labyrinth instantly changes to match the movement of the room. At times this created a very wild dance atmosphere. Lines of playful people were running and dancing with the walls at full speed, while other people were popping in and out of the different layers. Laughter was amuck. At other times this space was tranquil, and still or very slow, except for the center tree and its shadows. At one point there was a circle of meditators sitting cross-legged facing the center of the labyrinth. Both interactions were very special for me to witness and be with because I felt that the piece had grown beyond its original intent and had become meaningful in more ways than I had imagined.

Shadows, Perspective, and Infinite Truth

The true form of the tree is depicted in its shadows, and their images constantly transform as the tree spins. The reality of the tree is conveyed in each of these shadows, and yet there are many of them, and they are all quite different from one another at any given moment. Even the same shadow projection is different as it passes from one layer to the next. Our individual realities about the tree, one another, and everything else are as dynamic and different as the shadows. The shadows however, are not untrue or imperfect representations, rather, they are real as their own entities, seperate from the body of the tree. Likewise, we are also real, however far from objective physics our truths may be. Our illusion is alive, for it dreams perceptions as realities that transform like shadows of the tree.