Tomorrow Never Knows

April 2004, Starkwhite, Auckland

May 2004, The Physics Room, Christchurch

Text is scratched into the blackened windows. The sun and passing cars send words flickering around the gallery. In a corner is a potted history of the geodesic dome, a family portrait in sepia tones, lit by a lantern soldered together from triangular panes of smoky glass.

A projection space built from polystyrene slabs divides the space. Images generated by the visualization feature in audio player software create a room of swirling psychedelic colour from the waveform of a computerised voice. The reading is of a J G Ballard story, a science-fiction tale about psychotropic architecture – houses that alter in response to their owners’ emotions. Sound visualization is an evolution of the bubbling, glowing lava lamp. The software takes the sound wave – in this case, the story-telling voice – and applies real-time transformations, converting sound into a streaming field of stoner imagery. The effect is of moving, morphing, psychedelic wallpaper.

Essay by Paul Andrew Wood