THIS IS ALL YOURS – ONE OF INFINTE INFINITIES.

Let us not beat around the bush – TAKING PSYCHEDELICS IS ONE OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS TO DO. I won’t go into the WHY here (that’s a whole other article), but the knowledge of their involvement in my life is needed in this instance. Moreover, this will also act as a good primer///pilot for what I intend to publish here as well as what I intend to do fimically for the rest of my life.

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In my second year of university I decided to create an installation for one of my modules. It had to use at least two screens and have, as all installations do, an interactive element (either physical, mental or otherwise) for the audience.

I ended up using four screens, four strobe lights, twelve speakers and two soundtracks that created a 3D sound scape that changed and shifted as you moved within the installation.

I pitched it as a sort of ‘Virtual Reality torture’ to my tutors, which may actually be an accurate description depending on your frame of reference.

What I actually attempted to do was take elements of and from my psychedelic experiences and express them in the form of light, sound, movement and narrative.

Could I have done it with less than four screen and twelve speakers? Probably. Would it have been an accurate and fair representation of some aspects of a psychedelic experience? Definitely not. You could probably do a singular screen installation around cocaine for example, as all it really does it give the user a feeling, instead of a perception changing experience (This being the distinction I make when justifying my drug taking choices, me favouring the latter). Given more time (and a hefty sum of money) I’d have figured out a formation that incorporated more than four screens, as four is probably as unfair to the psychedelic experience as I just was to coke (but really, MKAT is cheaper, does more or less the same thing and is more likely to be a higher percentage of the actual substance you wanted to buy).

Unfortunately, the only evidence of the actual installation is a shitty video I cobbled together that was required for the module which can be found here —

Fortunately I have the original video, that was then spliced up and played simultaneously on four different screens, and it works extremely well when taken out of the massive context of the installation and watched on its own. The elements of psychedelia are still represented narratively, formically, thematically but not kinetically as this requires the installation set up. Do engage with the speakers turned up or headphones on – it’s worth it, i promise —

I won’t go into the nitty-gritty of it as would be extremely boring unless you:

1. study film academically or scholalarlylylyly
2. take psychedelics or have an interest in their effects upon the mind
3. do both of the above (in which case, hit me up on the comments section or send me an email at samuelrathjen@gmail.com and I’ll oblige in either a micro or macro way depending on demand)

Just be aware that storytelling, stories and psychedelic experiences have an awful lot in common with each other on multiple levels. Why do you think psychedelic experiences are known as TRIPS?

THIS IS ALL YOURS  may end up being the broadest-if shortest- filmic representation of psychedelics that I come up with. Moreover it is my first representation of what I’m dubbing ‘psychedelic-fiction’ or ‘PSY-fi‘ – even though the suffix of ‘fi’ becomes a misnomer once you experience a certain level of psychedelia, BOTH JOKES STILL STAND.

There’ll be some actual written content soon I promise, I just wanted to get the whole ball rolling via a post-initial-post-post.

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