THE DARK ART Experience Room

The Experience Room is an installation that seeks to reshape common conceptions of light and darkness. The installation consists of a light-proof black box with a series of 3 chambers. Each chamber is progressively darker than the proceeding and presents the front-of-house themes of vision, touch and sound. In the 1st chamber, a display of shadows exploring the universality of our relationship to light and darkness. The 2nd chamber features a 3D text mounted onto walls, objects that could be felt but not yet seen nor understood. The 3rd chamber excludes all light, preventing vision completely while presenting a meditative soundtrack that plays until visitors are asked to exit slowly and observe their surroundings anew. By this time, the experience has lasted 5 minutes. Time and the progressively darker chambers provided the opportunity for the visitor's eye to adapt making the unseen 3D text visible. The experience is then revealed and the visitor is given an opportunity to reconsider their preconceptions of darkness. The Experience Room was designed together with The Dark Art.