James Turrell - The Perceptual Cell
Feelings of nerves and excitement tumbled around my stomach sparked with a tingly buzz. I was lead up to a small platform of stairs by a young woman dressed in a white medical jacket. She instructed me to lie down on my back and handed me an emergency stop remote if I were to feel any discomfort inside the Perceptual Cell.
The cell structure itself from its outer shell was a large spherical dome made from fibre glass. Lying on my back the lady in the lab coat pushed me slowly into the cell where the entrance sealed in front of my feet. Like a bird fluttering inside a cage, my heart was racing out of my chest with anticipation. I took deep breaths and relaxed my mind and body as if preparing myself for meditation.
Before I entered the cell, I opted for the hard version. Well there was certainly no hesitation to plunge straight into this. Within the first ten seconds the womb of the cell became totally absorbed with a series of intense glowing colours that flashed simultaneously with a monotone humming through the sounds coming from the headphones.
As the intensity of the light show progressed I felt a connection with my minds eye which opened up visions that became totally hallucinogenic. James Turrell calls this 'behind the eye seeing '. Patterns of geometric shapes and a series of cubes began to form, where I experienced colours that I had never seen before appeared in a a flow of kaleidoscopes. I began to focus my vision on a small ball of glowing light which conjured energies that snowballed with size and colours. As the lights In the cell continued to flash intensively I could feel my eyes twitching in reaction to the strain. A tingling sensation shivered its was through my veins and the energy ball burst into a thousand pieces collating a vast galaxy of stars and patterns that darted around in some sort of organised chaos before me.
With light shooting from every angle, it felt as if my vision had become widened, as if a wide angle lens had been placed over, my eyes. It felt as if could see out of my ears! Floating somewhere above our planet in far outer space, suddenly a moment of clarity overcame me when a dark blue tone consumed the space where I existed. As I looked up I felt as if I had delved suddenly into the bottom of ocean where i lay inside of a tranquil bubble, where an oily sheet of iridescent film lay above me that ever so slowly dispersed into hundreds of swimming bioluminescent creatures on the surface.
The moment burst into the closing phase of trip. Neon glowing fuchsia pinks and Aqua marine colour vibrations continued to pulsate all around me in an ever changing correlation of geometric patterns. My body remained to lie perfectly still with the only slight movements that came from the subtle rising of my belly as I took deep breaths of relaxation and the twitching of my eye lids, yet I felt as if my whole body was spinning around this space like a tiny planet orbiting something much greater. I existed in my own galaxy far away from anything I had ever experienced before.
I had no real concept of time inside the cell. I was in there for 8-10 minutes but to me moments seemed to last for what felt like minutes. My time inside the cell had drawn to a close, I felt the door unlock and I was slowly pulled back into reality. The light outside seemed stark and I lay still for a few moments for my head to adjust to normality. The lady in the white lab coat told me to take my time and slowly led me down the steps to the gallery floor to meet Emma. We both looked at one another and just laughed, with no words to express our experience. We left the building for some fresh air and an opportunity to gather our thoughts.