"The true source of religion
", a design for an installation by Tjebbe van Tijen and Fred Gales. for the Berliner Festspiele exhibition in the year 2000 called "Seven Hills - Images and Signs of the 21st Century" (The project has not been realized because of insufficient financial resources). |
Theme: The Oceanic Feeling: "A feeling as of something limitless
unbounded -as it were oceanic
a sensation of eternity"
Sigmund Freud summarizing a passage from a letter written to him by the French writer Roamin Rolland. |
Lay down in a hammock, from which rivers of white light flow, and dream away, rocking to and fro in an ocean of sound. |
Touch the loom of god and see how heaven and earth are woven together by patterns of light. |
Feel the traces in the sand, temporal signs of eternity; step from stone to stone on a path leading to sacred and scientific insight. |
Hit the drum and call the messenger, let him show you the sixteen ways of the shaman. |
Put a petrified object on a magic mirror revealing different parts of the mythosphere. |
The magic mirror is situated on a raised platform above the sand. In the middle of this platform is an eight sided frame around a 'magic mirror' that can display images. |
Around the mirror ten stones and other petrified objects are laying that can be taken in the hand and put on the mirror.
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Take up a sea shell or a cellular phone and listen to creation myths, ancient and modern |
On the felt carpet are also laying big sea shells through which the user can listen to specific narrated creation myths linked to each of the ten objects.
A short flashing of light from the inside of one of the shells will indicate that one has to pick up the shell for listening.
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The narrated stories last from one minute to a few minutes and are accompanied by related background sounds and music.
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When another stone or object is put on the mirror while a story has not yet finished, that story will be interrupted and the new chosen story will start. |
The text is spoken in two languages (German and English) a small colour code on the shells indicates which shell to chose. |
Try to unravel the outdated messages in knotted cords and guess the opened ended questions in unconnected wires and cables. |
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Enter the yurt, a network of woven wood, recite the barcode mantras, connect to myriads of belief on the World Wide Web; |
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Unroll the scrolls, be inniated in the sources of shamanistic knowledge. |
When one of the ten objects is getting close to the mirror (that is in fact a small LCD monitor) it will display first a picture of the landscape from which this object comes and than zoom in on the object itself and proceed with a microscopic image of the inside of the chosen object. |
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