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time-is-standing · 3 years

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just to start a little tradition, here are the most listened to songs of mine from the past 4 weeks.

1. I'm Not Angry Anymore by Paramore

this song just helped me so much to cope with my feelings. I really do feel angry sometimes and the message of the song came in the perfect time for me, so I became pretty obsessed with it.

2. Hollywood Whore by Machine Gun Kelly

oh, don't even get me started on MGK and his songs. If more of the stuff from last year's quarantine were on spofity, they would be in this list as well. (in these walls and pretty toxic revolver for sure at least.)

3. Hayloft by Mother Mother

a tiktok song I'm happy to know. sometimes I was like "it's hayloft time" while walking or doing my tasks and it helped so much to get stupid thoughts out of my head.

4. F*CK YOU, GOODBYE by MGK and The Kid LAROI

this song is pure fire! just like hayloft, great to blast it out of the speakers, gets me into a great mood every time.

5. Boom Boom by Dan Bull

this is.... I can explain. actually I can't, but the story of it goes like: I was watching some funny Tubbo and Ranboo clips and in the one where Tubbo blows up a creeper, he sings the first lines of this masterpiece. It got stuck in my head instantly and I had to search the original so I can... investigate.

yeah, it was all for science.

6. Heat Waves by Glass Animals

oh, oh. it is back because I decided to read the end of Heat waves (the fic) and I usually read it while listening to the song on repeat. and it somehow found it's way into my life again, so I'm listening to it a lot.

7. agoraphobic by CORPSE

this song... now this is something!

you all may know that I'm fully invested in the faceless youtuber/streamer wave that is around youtube, twitch and tiktok nowadays. and not too long after I found corpse, I started listening to his songs. this one was playing non-stop on my computer while doing schoolwork earlier but I forgot about it because I switched to spotify when I moved. Dream's new song reminded me to look up this gem. I started listening to it again and I love it to bits.

8. broken by lovelytheband (acoustic ver)

still on my list, it's a banger. i cried to it one day last week. I had the worst week ever and when it started playing, I just broke down on the tram, started crying like crazy.

9. SugarCrash! by ElyOtto

I have no excuses for this one. it's a banger.

10. Roadtrip by Dream & PmBata

this one i still love and enjoy! can't wait for Dream's new songs. it's just such a mood.

(+1 daywalker is on the list as well but a few tracks lower, don't worry. the song is up my alley, I listen to it a lot❤️)

#my top 10 songs #march

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eggyee · 4 years

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Tag game

Thanks @storytime-reviews !

Do you make your bed? I don’t most of the time.

What’s your favourite number? 8

Can you parallel park? Yes! My best parking manoeuvre actually.

A job you had which would surprise people? I sold merchandise for a sailing competition one holiday with my cousins.

Do you think aliens are real? I think that it’s not out of the question if microorganisms existed somewhere other than earth, but I doubt “whole civilisations that will attack our planet” kind of aliens exist.

Can you drive a manual car? Yes

What’s your guilty pleasure? The high school musical tv show - enjoyed it but I’m not going to advertise that.

Tattoos? None

Favourite colour? Lavender

Things people do that drive you crazy? People who tear other people down due to their own insecurities.

Any phobias? I’m slightly agoraphobic.

Favourite childhood sports? Badminton, gymnastics, Kung fu.

Do you talk to yourself? Once in a while.

What movies do you adore? I could always watch a Studio ghibli or Wes Anderson movie.

Do you like doing puzzles? Loved Professor Layton-type puzzles/riddles back in the day!

Favourite kind of music? I seem to have a selection of 5 favourite artists that I rotate through depending on my mood and I don’t really listen to anything else. I think they’re acoustic, folk, pop types?

Tea or coffee? Tea

What’s the first thing you remember you wanted to be when you grew up? Vet because my grandfather was.

Tagging anyone who’s bored too!

#storytime-reviews #tag game

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fluidsf · 4 years

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Polar Visions Amplitude reviewing -

Sissy Spacek - Featureless Thermal Equilibrium

Released on September 4, 2020 by Helicopter

Reviewed format: CD album

Connected listening - there are various ways to order a selection of Sissy Spacek’s further discography. The Helicopter mail-order stocks various Sissy Spacek releases and solo works by John Wiese and associates, you can find it here: https://helicopter.storenvy.com/collections/924915-sissy-spacek

Sissy Spacek’s releases on both physical and digital format are also available from their Bandcamp page here: https://sissyspacek.bandcamp.com/music

For an overview of Charlie Mumma’s solo releases as well as the releases he’s featured on as part of various bands, you can check out Discogs here: https://www.discogs.com/artist/1491175-Charlie-Mumma

In a similar manner, Jay Randall’s solo and band releases can be found on Discogs here: https://www.discogs.com/artist/393304-Jay-Randall

Several solo releases by John Wiese are available on physical and digital format from his Bandcamp page here: https://johnwiese.bandcamp.com

As I mentioned in the previous Polar Visions Amplitude review on this blog, 2020 has proven to be quite a fruitful year for both new Noise releases as well as reissues of classic Harsh Noise albums, mentioning the recent Helicopter / Troniks batch of CD releases and today we’re going to start diving into these with a review of one of the most recent Sissy Spacek albums, Featureless Thermal Equilibrium. Sissy Spacek is a John Wiese formed band which as being one of his most well-known projects not only carries a very prolific discography of a big number of albums, EPs, singles and many miscellaneous releases but is also an ever-changing line-up of extreme music artists and performers from various directions of experimental and contemporary music. This makes Sissy Spacek a rather versatile band with the kind of music / Noise you’re going to get on every release being quite unpredictable at times as this could vary from monolithic Harsh Noise to gritty Noise filled Grindcore to free-wheeling electro-acoustic cut-ups of instrumental and vocal recordings created by John Wiese. On Featureless Thermal Equilibrium we get to listen to Sissy Spacek as a raw power filled anarchist Grindcore unit which is continually blasted through with screechy Noise courtesy of John. Sissy Spacek’s core of John Wiese’s streams of Noise (and vocals in this case too) and Charlie Mumma’s fiery thunderous drums and vocals is strengthened here with Jay Randall (of Agoraphobic Nosebleed and various other terror-filled extreme Grindcore and Harsh Noise themed projects) providing particularly aggressive and appropriately screechy screamed vocals to the general energy-filled chaos that is this 24-minute new album. The album is one hell of a ride of dissonant murky noisy sonic energy that blends John Wiese’s screechy layers of Noise with surprisingly crisp sounding vocals and drums which in the case of this album still have quite a dynamic and roomy sound to them, creating some kind of balance in what in other cases could end up being more of a wall of Noise with all elements blending into eachother. Before we dive into this speedy album, it’s good to mention the neat looking presentation of Featureless Thermal Equilibrium, designed by John Wiese. The CD version of the album comes in a sturdy thick 6 panel digipak featuring some great minimalist artwork. The cover artwork is quite striking with its eerie grainy image of a face (which looks familiar but I can’t quite place where I saw it before) with the name of the band and album title set in some quite classy looking serif type. It has quite the classic LP sleeve look to it which purely based on the cover could suggest that the music contained within would be more like Hard Rock or Metal but its grittiness does express the actual music rather well. Other than the cover artwork the imagery on the digipak and CD face feature mostly grainy undefined composed textures that do very well carry that visualised Noise look that best expresses the crumbling shapes of texture that Noise can often conjure up in your mind when you dive into it and start to notice its many subtle variations. John Wiese’s signature type-writer style typography is looking great on the album’s digipak as always with the spine featuring the more recognisable all-caps Sissy Spacek “logo” with wide spacing and while the extra dirt John applies to the letters to make them look more degraded (again matching the music) can make some text a bit harder to read, especially in the credits listed on the back of the digipak, the design looks excellent and adds to the experience of the album’s raw power in visual form. Besides the artwork itself looking great, I also want to point out that the artwork is also printed in very cool looking silvery metallic ink making all art reflect and shine in a subtle manner, giving it some premium edge and the attention to detail that I appreciate a lot in the design of music releases even when it’s extreme music which often carries a much rougher, dirtier and at times lo-fi edge to it which might make it seems like premium artwork isn’t fitting its aesthetic that much. Now that we’ve looked over the presentation of Featureless Thermal Equilibrium, let’s dig into the album itself.

Just like what I found to be often the case with Grindcore or Grindcore related albums, Featureless Thermal Equilibrium is best to be listened in one go as being one long track as the 13 listed tracks are actually split up into at least 40 separate tracks especially about half-way into the album. It’s pretty much blast after blast after blast of raw and particularly rough power rooted in almost absolute dissonant chaos that with its relentless energy over so many blasts becomes an exhaustive but especially thrilling 24 minute ride that keeps the group on point throughout and proved to me that length doesn’t matter that much with this kind of album as it’s better not to let the band burn out after its first half but keeps things as consistent as Sissy Spacek are here. Amusingly the track titles (Fffff Eeeee, Aaaaa Ttttt, Uuu Rrr Eee) directly seem to reference the choppy nature of the blasts as well as spell out the album title, pointing out how Sissy Spacek themselves also point out that the album is like a continuous 24 minute recording rather than a collection of tracks recorded over several weeks or months (this is also confirmed on the back of the digipak as this album was recorded in a single day). Whilst this album is really best enjoyed by rocking out wildly to the energy blasts the band provides to let it all out, listening to this album on headphones does reveal some nice shifts in the separate layers that make up the bands sound on this album. Let’s start with the Grindcore layers of vocals and drums. The vocals are made up of these murky groaning lava like rumbling screeches with the “lead vocal” (most likely Jay Randall) driving the tracks themselves with rough gravel like screechy grumbling in words that are mostly quite indiscernible though you could guess mostly along the lines of “you motherfuckers” and related aggressive words thrown at us, as I heard. The lead vocals vary in intensity throughout with the shorter blasts being moments when the grumble layers take over at times with the lead vocals quickly returning with further bursts of grit but what I generally noticed from the album as a whole is that they form a bit of a circular pattern, starting off intense, falling a bit in intensity in the middle until rising again the most right at the end of the final track, Equilibrium as being a final screechy Harsh Noise finale to burn up the last remaining drops of fuel into a sparkling explosion. The drums in the pieces are somewhat between rumbling bass layer and an almost Free Improvisation like acoustic edge to the tracks, varying from blast-beats to many different often cymbal filled fills. The first few tracks showcase Charlie Mumma’s tumbling but tight drum performances with some surprisingly clean sounding tom tom and aforementioned hi-hat fills that also literally fill in most of the stereo field within the mostly centred noise and vocals that have a rougher more mono sound to them. The short blasts obviously mostly feature very fast blast-beats but after the lengthy sections of short blasts Charlie returns to the more free-flowing mixture of slower blast-beats and drum fills at the end of the album, but definitely blasting away at the finale of the last track however. The noise layer within the pieces never changes that dramatically, being quite like a gritty hazy mass of extra lava that drives the sonic mayhem forward however it’s noticeable that it does shift from screechy, mid / high frequency focussed sharp lines of Noise to lower rumbling streams during the short blasts until reaching a critical state at the finale of the last track. Interesting to notice is how most of the time the sources of the Noise are pretty hard to discern but within the first few tracks a few notes and even bass tones can still be heard throughout the continuous streaming screeching, giving away how the Noise within is created on this album. In the end I can say that Featureless Thermal Equilibrium showcases Sissy Spacek’s strengths especially in its focussed thunderous dissonant energy and excellent interplay between the performers but also does offer some rewarding subtle variations within the screeching streams of manic gritty sound which make for an enjoyable listen on the performance level too. This is another entry within the ever-growing Sissy Spacek discography of ever-inspired sonic freedom and anarchy, a recommended listen for fans of Grindcore, Noise and Sissy Spacek’s other (noisy) albums and with awarding this album a Polar Visions Amplitude of 90 dB I do recommend this album very strongly.

Featureless Thermal Equilibrium is available on CD and as a download from the Helicopter Bandcamp page here: https://helicopter.bandcamp.com/album/featureless-thermal-equilibrium

#polar visions amplitude #sissy spacek #Featureless Thermal Equilibrium #september 4 #2020 #helicopter #cd album #album review #charlie mumma #jay randall #john wiese #grindcore #noise #aggressive #fiery #anarchic #pva

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miamibeerscene · 7 years

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9 Beers to Match Your Personal Phobias

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October 20, 2017

Spiders. Snakes. Creepy clowns. Most of us know what it’s like to have an irrational fear, whether it’s acrophobia (fear of heights), mysophobia (fear of germs), or hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia (fear of long words). Luckily, as with most things in life, phobias are easier to handle when you’ve had a beer — unless that beer’s name and label art happen to play on your deepest, darkest fear, in which case, you’re out of luck. But at least you have a beer!

(READ: Buy Anheuser-Busch? Craft Beer Wants to “Take Craft Back”)

Sometimes, it’s fun to scare ourselves silly for no good reason. See if your personal phobia is on the list below, and track down the beer we recommend with it.

Arachnophobia: Fear of spiders | Eye Be Use Imperial IPA

A fear of spiders seems to be wired into the human psyche. While not everyone has a paralyzing fear of them, it’s tough not to get the heebie-jeebies at the thought of one of these eight-legged creeps crawling on you.

If you don’t have enough spider-related terror in your life, Spider Bite Beer‘s Eye Be Use Imperial IPA can help. Spider Bite got its name after co-founder Larry Goldstein walked through a spider web while trying to think up what to call his new brewery. He hates spiders, and the thrashing around he did after his mishap made his business partner laugh so much they decided to go with Spider Bite.

Eye Be Use plays cleverly on the measurement used to determine how much hop bitterness is in a beer, and while the beer is big at 9.6% ABV, it’s balanced enough that it’s nothing to be afraid of. One look at those gigantic arachnid eyes staring from the front of this bottle is enough to give most folks the willies. If you see a spider as big as the one on the bottle though, run the other way.

Ophidiophobia: Fear of snakes | Snake Hollow IPA

According to the book of Genesis, people have good reason to be scared of snakes: the devil himself took on snake form and got humanity kicked out of paradise. Of course, ophidiophobes don’t need any help from the Bible to be scared of these legless reptiles–one look at their lidless eyes and flicking tongues is enough.

The folks at Potosi Brewing in Potosi, Wisconsin, know a thing or two about snakes. The area was once known as Snake Hollow because of the prevalence of rattlesnakes in the area, so Potosi decided to name their flagship IPA after the old nickname. At 6.5% ABV and a clean 65 IBUs of classic American hoppy goodness, a snake bite never sounded so good.

(INFOGRAPHIC: How to Choose the Right Beer Glass)

Astraphobia: Fear of lightning and thunder | Thunderball Stout

We can all get a little nervous when dark clouds pile up outside and the lightning and thunder crack so close it sounds like the sky is splitting in half, but for some folks, the fear runs much deeper.

The mother of Eudora Brewing‘s owner and head brewer Neil Chabut narrowly avoided being swept away by a tornado when she was young, and she’s been terrified of storms ever since. The first time Chabut (pronounced shub-YOO) brewed this 7% ABV oatmeal stout, he was homebrewing in his garage as a storm broke loose outside. He decided to name the brew in honor the appropriately dark weather, and kept the name when he opened Eudora Brewing in Kettering, Ohio, in 2013.

“Thunderball is unique because it’s fairly roasty and sharp, but smooth and silky at the same time,” says Chabut. Sounds like the perfect comfort drink for when you’re huddling under a fort made of couch cushions until the storm passes.

Claustrophobia: Fear of small spaces | Rugged Coalminer

There’s something about tight spaces that fills some of us with anxiety. Whether the close confines make you think of the grave, or you just feel trapped, close-quarters are a nightmare — which would make coalmining a truly hellish job.

Illinois might not be the first state you think of when you think of coalmining, but Lincoln’s birthplace actually has a rich mining history, and still has several active mines. Scorched Earth Brewing in Algonquin decided to honor hardworking miners with a robust porter featuring mining tools and the legendary mineshaft canary. Rich and chocolatey, Rugged Coalminer won gold at the 2017 L.A. International Beer Competition in the Robust Porter category.

(VISIT: Find a U.S. Brewery)

Aerophobia: Fear of flying | Sky High Rye

Evolution did not equip human beings with wings, so it’s safe to say we don’t come pre-programmed with a tremendous comfort level soaring through the sky thousands of feet above the ground. While most people are comfortable with air travel, some folks never do get over their fear of airplanes, much less jumping out of one.

Arcadia Brewing founder Timothy Suprise had no such qualms as an Army Reserve cadet in college. He attended jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia. Decades later, long after he’d founded Arcadia near Kalamazoo, Michigan, he was talking with some customers who were avid skydivers, and they took him up for a few jumps. The experience provided the perfect name for the brewery’s new Simcoe-hopped, West Coast-inspired pale ale, Sky High Rye. There are no parachutes required to enjoy this crisp and well-balanced pale ale–you can keep both feet firmly planted on terra firma if you prefer.

Ornithophobia: Fear of birds | Northern Hawk Owl Amber Ale

Birds might not sound all that scary if you don’t suffer from this unusual phobia, but that’s probably because you never watched Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” during your formative years. I did, and while I’m not spooked of our avian friends, I can certainly understand why someone would be after that harrowing experience (I have a particular ornithophobic friend who refuses to get out of any car door that faces a tree).

Right Brain Brewing in Traverse City, Michigan, understands too, so they named their amber ale after one of the most fearsome, feisty feathered fiends (we’ll see if my editor lets that stand) in the state, the Northern Hawk Owl. Right Brain owner Russell Springsteen says, “This is an owl to be feared, as it is small, quick and clever and may get caught in your hair if you have mouse a nesting in there.”

Note to self: remove all nesting mice from hair before visiting Michigan to try this easy drinking amber.

(DISCOVER: Fall Seasonal Beers)

Agoraphobia: Fear of crowds & public spaces | Mosh Pit

While most of us prefer not to be jostled around in a crowd, if you suffer from agoraphobia, it’s about a lot more than discomfort. When a person with this phobia feels trapped in a crowd or perceives a public space to be unsafe they can experience panic attacks and great anxiety.

If this describes you, you probably want to avoid that swirling human maelstrom of the rock music scene we call the mosh pit. San Diego’s Acoustic Ales gives musical names to many of their beers, but it’s their Mosh Pit red ale that will get an agoraphobes hearts beating faster. Floral hop character, smooth caramel malt and a touch of spicy rye make this beer a much safer option than jumping around wildly with a bunch of strangers, though the beer’s ABV does have an ominous tone: 6.66%.

Cynophobia: Fear of dogs | Cerberus Trippel

If you find your neighbor’s friendly, furry companion to be a source of terror, you probably want to avoid Akron’s Thirsty Dog Brewing altogether. While most of their canine-themed beers have humorous names like Barktoberfest and Old Leghumper, there’s nothing funny about their limited edition Belgian Tripel known as Cerberus. Named after the gigantic, three-headed guard dog who stood watch at the gate to Hades in Greek mythology, Cerberus isn’t to be trifled with. Cerberus might not be as frightening as its namesake, but at a sizable 10% ABV, you’d still be wise to show it some respect lest you find yourself rolling over and playing dead too early in the evening.

Thanatophobia: Fear of death | Permanent Funeral

The good people at Three Floyds Brewing in Munster, Indiana, aren’t much for subtlety. They’re known for big, bruising beers with grim bottle art and outrageous names, so we’ve saved them for the biggest, baddest fear of all, the one we’ll all have to reckon with sooner or later: death itself. There’s no coming back from Permanent Funeral, a 10.5% ABV, 100 IBU imperial IPA brewed in collaboration with band Pig Destroyer, whose members are friends with the Three Floyds crew. Named after a track on Pig Destroyer’s album Book Burner, the beer is about as subtle as the band’s thrashing, grinding brand of metal. This hop monster thinks your fear of the grave is just adorable. Whether you laugh in the face of death or shake in your boots, nothing sets the mood for Halloween like a Permanent Funeral.

David NilsenAuthor Website

David Nilsen is a Certified Cicerone and a member of the National Book Critics Circle. He teaches a monthly beer tasting class and leads other professional beer tasting events around his hometown of Greenville, Ohio. He lives with his wife, daughter, and a very irritable cat. Read more by this author

The post 9 Beers to Match Your Personal Phobias appeared first on Miami Beer Scene.

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#9 Beers to Match Your Personal Phobias

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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I Meditated Inside NYC's Quietest Art Installation

A whisper is 40 decibels, a normal conversation, 60. A loud brunch reaches 70 or 80, while a screeching subway clocks in at around 100. A screaming jet engine is 110 decibels. Sound waves higher than 10 decibels are absorbed by pyramids and wedges jutting from walls, floor, and ceiling like stalagmites and stalactites inside Doug Wheeler's PSAD Synthetic Desert III, now open to the public at New York's Guggenheim Museum. It's the quietest room I've ever been in, and according to architecture consultancy Arup, among the quietest places in the world's 7th-loudest city.

I know this from personal experience, having lived exclusively next to major subway stations in my years. If it's not the train itself that wakes you up at 3 AM, it's the aggressively drunk partiers shouting about how much fun they're having. That's why, when I heard about the Wheeler's new installation, billed as the quietest room in the city, I hauled ass to get there. Synthetic Desert is a semi-anechoic chamber filled to bursting with a sound absorbent material called basotect. Standing inside a specially-designed room tucked into the heart of the Guggenheim simulates Wheeler's own journeys into the barren desert of northern Arizona. I exit a noisy subway platform, and breathe a sigh of anticipation.

Wheeler is a 60s-era minimalist painter-turned-light and space artist similar, in some ways, to James Turrell. He's concerned with peeling back human perception, using soft light, rounded corners, and rigid standards of cleanliness to cultivate otherworldly experiences. He studied at the Chouinard Art Institute (now the California Institute of the Arts) in Los Angeles, then spent years funding his groundbreaking works out of pocket, one at a time, well before "immersive experience" was a buzz word.

Wheeler didn't get his first solo show in New York until 2012, but, according to ARTNews, freezing crowds lined up for hours to don protective shoe coverings and lose themselves in an all-encompassing white room called an Encasement. According to Bloomberg, Wheeler will sell you the instructions to build a similar white void in your own home—for a cool $2 million.

Before I and a group of other visitors can enter Wheeler's latest installation, we learn all about the soundproofing material that helps makes it possible. Basotect, chemically similar to the foam made for Mr. Clean sponges, can dampen sound in a room to disorienting levels. There are 600 pyramids and 400 wedges of the stuff occupying 80% of the Synthetic Desert like a miniature mountain range. In addition to the sound dampening basotect, the room is mounted on gaskets to keep outside noises from entering the room.

Doug Wheeler, PSAD Synthetic Desert III, 1968 Ink on paper, 61.1 x 91.4 cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Panza Collection, Gift, 1991 © Doug Wheeler

Doug Wheeler, PSAD Synthetic Desert III, 1968 (detail), Ink on paper, 61.1 x 91.4 cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Panza Collection, Gift, 1991 © Doug Wheeler

When I'm finally allowed to enter the installation, I find out I must share it with four other noise-making human beings. At first they're all I can hear. Fabric rustles as each attendant finds a place on the narrow pathway to sit down, as has been recommended to us. I hear ever shift in hips, every breath and sigh, every smack from the lips around me. As we begin to settle down, I stretch my neck to the left and the vertebrae let out an audible crack. Those around me visibly flinch.

Finally we're settled and can soak in the near-silence. The 10 decibels in the room keep it from feeling like the silence one imagines in the void of outer space. On the way out someone muses, I wonder if that was an HVAC." It seems to me that a noisy air conditioning unit would be a major oversight in planning an installation about silence. Later, Doyle Robertson, a manager at German chemical company BASF, which manufactures the material, clears it up. "It's actually recordings from the desert that have been modulated," he says.

That customized recording is the only sound in the room, aside from what you bring with you. It's partially an aesthetic decision on Wheeler's part to include that low-level sound, and partly a safety decision. "If there wasn't any sound at all, you could go batty," says Doyle. Your eardrums are used to the pressure of sound waves, he explains. "If you take away the sound, you take away the pressure, and it's nauseating! I've been in perfect anechoic chambers, and I can't be in there for more than 30 seconds."

I didn't go mad inside Synthetic Desert—quite the opposite, in fact. Anyone who buys into immersive experiences should find the installation transcendent. If we were allowed to whip out our phones, the space would be as appealing a selfie spot as a Turrell light box or Yayoi Kusama infinity room. As with those works, PSAD Synthetic Desert III is just one of a large body of plans Wheeler has drawn up over the years.

"This is the first time a sound-based work by this artist has been produced," curators Francesca Esmay and Jeffrey Weiss tell Creators. "Wheeler conceived a number of works referred to as Synthetic Desert, most of them based on acoustical experience. The element of added sound was not envisioned in Wheeler's early conception, but was included by him when he reconceived the work for the museum." While it's advertised as a primarily sonic experience, a huge part of Synthetic Desert is how the sound transform the visuals of the piece. Robertson explains, "Wheeler found that near silent conditions in deserts of Northern Arizona influenced his visual sensation of distance."

Doug Wheeler, LC 71 NY DZ 13 DW, 2013, Reinforced fiberglass, flat white titanium dioxide latex, LED light, and DMX control 771 x 811 3/8 x 219 inches 1958.3 x 2060.9 x 556.3 cm Photo by Tim Nighswander, Imaging4Art © 2014 Doug Wheeler; courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London

I split my time inside Synthetic Desert into quarters. First I sit with eyes open, then eyes closed, then stand with closed eyes, etc. Eyes closed, it feels almost like the Daredevil movie with Ben Affleck—except on mute. Each shift in another person's position is broadcast so loud you can visualize it. Allow your brain to soak in the foam stalactites dripping with pale purple light, and the room seems to grow. A rounded corner of the ceiling that spills into the wall is particularly hard to focus on, seeming to stretch out like an endless horizon. With imagery of the Arizona desert already planted into my imagination, the lilac surface stretches out, at times oscillating like heat waves on sand baked by the sun.

These visual musings are soon accompanied by aural hallucinations. Before I learn about the soundscape, my subconscious tries to identify it. Ventilation occurs to me, but that would be a waste of such a hermetically sealed environment. I decide at one point that it's the sound of all the frequencies I've hurt with loud noises haunting the scene of the crime like ghosts.

That thought is interrupted by a Guggenheim staffer informing us that our time is up. As we shuffle out someone asks, "Did anyone else feel that was claustrophobic?" In fact, my feeling was the opposite, a near agoraphobic suspicion that the far wall enclosed with spikes stretched forever. Even though I know it's physically impossible, immersive installations like this are a feast for my active imagination to prod at the reality of perception.

Exiting the Synthetic Desert is one of the harshest experiences of my young life. Whispers about the group's differing experiences yield to the now cacophonous-sounding chatter of everyone else waiting in line. I stay to ask Richardson a few more questions and snap up some hors d'oeuvres. It's torture.

Visit PSAD Synthetic Desert III at the Solomon R. Guggenheum Museum through August 2, 2017.

This Immersive Light Sculpture Simulates a Near-Death Experience

Wander Through 30 Rainbows of Light at This Festival

James Turrell Illuminates a Memorial Chapel in a Berlin Cemetery

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#IFTTT #creators

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