Imagine Essay
Around the time I began playing with Wonder Bread, I also developed a rather intense fascination with teleidoscopes. A teleidoscope is a kaleidoscope with a marble at the end of it, which expands the potential combinations of source material from the object contained within a kaleidoscope, into anything we can see with our eyes.
At the time, the teleidoscope was an essential object in my life. Rarely would a day go by when I would not have one in my pocket, ready to transform the world at a moments notice. Teleidoscopes had become a crucial tool, not only in my everyday life, but also in my work.
For the time period when facilitating the construction of Wonder Bread sculptures was part of my everyday routine, it was not long before I found myself wondering how to add an extra touch of magic to that experience. I purchased several large teleidoscopes to bring with me, so that once complete, participants could see their own sculptures in an entirely different way.
Aside from the almost guaranteed attention and fascination the teleidoscope offered those who ventured to play with it, the most common response I would receive after looking through it was “I wish other people could see what I’m seeing.”
I took it on as a personal mission to figure out how to make this happen. Two months later, I built and utilized my first IMAGINE Device.
IMAGINE, which stands for Integrated Mechanical Apparatus Generating Images Nearly Existing, is comprised of a teleidoscope, a miniature wireless video camera, a wireless video receiver, and either a television screen, a video projector, or both. Other than this, IMAGINE can be anything.
At its most basic level, IMAGINE allows for someone to point the wireless device at anything in the world, and see the kaleidoscopic image on a screen. At its most complex level, IMAGINE can produce kaleidoscopic video feedback, when the camera is pointed at its own image, seeing itself infinitely, and through a teleidoscope.
Despite the novelty and enjoyment one can experience from pointing the IMAGINE at the world around us, I find myself solely interested in the feedback that is created when the IMAGINE is pointed at either a monitor or projector, thereby perceiving its own light. Most interesting is that the only source material at play here is the feedback itself.
This raises an interesting paradox. Much like the Chicken and The Egg, if no image existed before the feedback began, then where does the feedback come from? It can not be said that the feedback comes from the IMAGINE Device, because the IMAGINE Device had no light to perceive before the feedback existed. Similarly, it cannot be said that the feedback came from the monitor, because the monitor had no light to display before the feedback existed.
The feedback exists only because of the interplay of the IMAGINE Device and its own image on a visual field. Accordingly it only exists in the moment it is created and experienced, before constantly morphing into a new image, that, like the first one, also only exists because of the interplay between the perceiver and the perceived at present time.
Having now set-up IMAGINE on hundreds of occasions, ranging from galleries to nightclubs to museums and even living rooms, I have solidified what could perhaps be the most important lesson I have ever learned about magic: play is a direct path to the magical experience.
As to avoid confusion, I will begin by clarifying what I mean by play, and I shall do this, by explaining what I don’t. I am not speaking about the type of play that leads to a winner and a loser. I am not speaking of the type of play with rules, or even a desired outcome. Instead, the play I speak of is of the infinite variety— play for play’s sake.
In this form of play, it is easy to get lost in the spirit of exploration, discovery and total involvement in a moment. This play is reminiscent of our childhood, before we were guided away from such behavior, and told to grow up.
The play I speak of is the type of play that demands improvisation, and therefore creation in the same moment of experience.
Most importantly about IMAGINE is that it utilizes no thinking entity outside of ourselves, and the images only appear and transform because of our interaction with it within the physical world. Despite several suggestions to develop a sound-automated controller, I find great happiness in knowing that without you, me, or somebody else, IMAGINE is nothing.
