A Trip Through Light and Sound
Leila Bordreuil’s “Episodes et Mutations”
By Lisa Peterson
Soon after the mind-bending sound-and-light experience that is Leila Bordreuil’s Episodes et Mutations begins, it starts to feel like a cellphone is buzzing inside the back of my head. The repetitive, unmelodic pattern of low, humming chords composed by Bordreuil and performed by the string musicians of Mivos Quartet sound like the auditory embodiment of a pendulum swinging back and forth. The cavernous, domed space of Brooklyn’s ISSUE Project Room is entirely dark, save for some glowing blue and purple hues covering the nearly floor-to-ceiling, silk-screen backdrop that hangs behind the quartet. High, arched ceilings amplify each instrument’s sound, making a particularly long-held cello note feel as though it’s rubbing between the folds of my brain.
As Episodes et Mutation’s debut performance progresses, the tempo builds to a frantic pace. A dissonant violin pushes against the rest of the group’s harmony, disrupting a sustained chord. The lights, now an ominous shade of dark crimson, pulse against the backdrop. White bulbs seem to flash from somewhere behind my seat as the clashing sounds reach a crescendo. The dull buzz that started earlier in the back of my head has now inched its way forward to create a vibrating sensation that encompasses my whole brain. A square-shaped shadow hanging at the top left corner of the backdrop begins making subtle twitches. My focus stays on the shape for a while longer until the square seems to stretch out into a hazy rectangle that’s traveling ever so slowly to the right. I crane my neck around, looking for signs that the shape’s eerie transformation is somehow human-made, but find no proof that it came from anywhere outside of my own head.
My psychotropic experience is precisely what Bordreuil set out to achieve with Episodes et Mutations. According to Crossing the Line’s website, the piece aimed to explore “neuro-somatic imperfection” and “subtle hallucinations” with help from Doron Sadja’s lighting design. Described as “an immersive experience in which the listener’s physiological state is in constant mutation,” Episodes et Mutations promised to take its audience “on a singular cognitive journey.” When I ask Bordreuil about her attempt to induce micro-hallucinations, she’s quick to ask whether I think her experiment worked. She nods approvingly when I describe my experience of leaving Episodes et Mutations feeling a little bit high, but points out that her piece wasn’t necessarily about simulating a drug-related sensation. “It was about tripping and psychedelia, but tripping on drugs is one thing — you know, sure, okay, mushrooms or whatever. But people trip when they have a fever, when they’re tired, when they’re sick. Everyone trips, you know?”
I wasn’t so sure. Could my experience of Episodes et Mutations really be considered the equivalent of a subtle hallucination? Or was I simply absorbing the effects of a transporting piece of art? According to Dr. Jonathan Weinel, author of Inner Sound: Altered States of Consciousness in Electronic Music and Audio-Visual Media, sensory overload has been used as a technique in “trance [ceremonies] across the world for thousands of years. It was specifically used “in the 60s by the multimedia arts collective USCO,” Could my experience somehow be both one of the artistic sublime and of the mushroom- or fever-induced variety?
Weinel has specifically studied altered states of consciousness (ASCs) — which he defines as “perceptual states, such as dream, delirium, or hallucination that fall beyond a commonly accepted normal waking consciousness” — as they relate to consuming art and performance. He explained that when audiences zero in on sounds, they “may be able to immerse themselves and conjure a hallucinatory journey purely through listening with the aid of their imagination.” As for my Episodes et Mutations experience, Weinel said that the “overall effect could have been one of sensory overload through lights and repetitive music, producing something similar to a trance state,” adding that the moving shadows “may have been a trick of the light.” Weinel allows that my experience could be classified as a mild ASC if I felt “different,” though he notes that “most artworks do not cause the brain to hallucinate.”
Perhaps Episodes et Mutations did send me on a subtle, hallucinogenic trip, opening up an altered state of consciousness as a result of my intense focus on the sights and sounds of the piece. Or maybe it simply provided an especially noteworthy night of kaleidoscopic visuals and hypnotic sounds. Regardless, this piece did unquestionably succeed in pushing me to consider the altered states of consciousness my mind is capable of reaching — no drugs necessary.
