My intention is to produce aesthetically satisfying short audio video pieces based on the research of distinguished anthropologist David Lewis-Williams, mainly as interpreted by Graham Hancock in his book Supernatural. The basis of this approach is the idea that reports of visionary experiences from many different places throughout the world have certain elements in common.

From the trances induced by all night dancing of the now-extinct San people of southern Africa to the truly bizarre experiences described by those who have taken the South American drug ayahuasca, the visionary experiences that are produced follow a remarkably similar path. Not only that, but the accounts of these excursions to the other world are quite independent of the cultural background of person having the experience. Bankers and mystics see the same sorts of things.

In other words, visions of the other world, no matter how arrived at, have a common underlying structure. The very strong implication is that some normally hidden universal element of human consciousness is being accessed. The writer Aldous Huxley, drawing on the work of English poet William Blake, described it as cleansing the doors of perception.

These experiences frequently unfold in sequential order and contain particular geometric components. I'm attempting to work within the framework and constraints of these elements, not unlike the way Renaissance painters came to operate within the rules of three dimensional perspective. The purpose of following this procedure is to utilize the cinematic experience as a proxy for exploring a state that is both universal and ancient.

Old wine in new bottles, indeed.

A sample video, password required, is at: http://www.vimeo.com/25305766