Welcome to Into the Dark, shared. This website allows for those who have participated in the piece by Diane Appaix-Castro, to recount their experience. This allows for all to see how vastly different our individual experiences of the world around us are. Our perception is limited by our senses and single points of view. We can never know what it's like to be anything other than ourselves but perhaps through sharing our experience of the same, controlled situation, we can begin to understand that there is more out there, beyond our bodies, and beyond humanity and what we consider to be alive, or even to exist.
Below are quotes from other participants of Into the Dark
If you'd like to share your experience, please fill out the form in the "share your experience" section of this site. I will read your response and upload it to the site.
Thank you for your participation
"I'm always weary of intense visual experience, having had a seizure 10 years ago at an Avicii concert. So I navigated Into the Dark cautiously, trying to root myself in the world I was visually familiar with such that I could come back if needed.
As far as perception goes, how depth of field was thrown out the window was most striking. As small shapes landed and walked on my eyeballs I tried to swat them away. And as blue and green and yellow landscapes covered my vision, emotions similar to blissfully laying with a view came about. The audio and tactile (vibrations) contributed as well to create these sensory scapes. Looking back on it now, it all comes down to how something makes you feel, regardless of what you're experiencing."
As far as perception goes, how depth of field was thrown out the window was most striking. As small shapes landed and walked on my eyeballs I tried to swat them away. And as blue and green and yellow landscapes covered my vision, emotions similar to blissfully laying with a view came about. The audio and tactile (vibrations) contributed as well to create these sensory scapes. Looking back on it now, it all comes down to how something makes you feel, regardless of what you're experiencing."
-Paul Katzman
"I was unavoidably transported to a place. I felt like I was in a subway station or a festival, and even more so like a child in one of these places--places where I am decidedly not the subject, but swimming in a chamber of subjects. I felt a sense of not being able to keep up combined with a sense of desiring to NOT keep up, to simply flow in a current. With riveting immediacy, "Into the Dark" made me challenge my body's natural resistance to letting go."
-Alex Landry
"I felt like I was watching planet earth, but from the animal's point of view. But also like with a sight impairment. It was very immersive but also like very confusing. It was really amazing. My quote after experiencing it, 'It felt like being part of the matrix.'
Thanks for the interesting experience."
-Olivia Hornsby
"There were moments when I felt my body hovered between our reality and some sort of dreamlike plane. I was sort of uncomfortable yet enthralled at the same time. The experience was so unique but somehow familiar at the same time."
-Lauren
"Having served as a guide as well as a participant, it was interesting from the 'outside' to see and identify the projected imagery. But as a participant, it was abstract, yet somehow familiar - the sounds especially for me. I felt a bit anxious, trying to name or identify sounds and sensations, and tried to consciously relax and let go of that need to do so. I thought of sensory deprivation, but it is also a sensory feast. I think it could be relaxing or anxiety-producing, depending on one's mental state at the time. I thought of the accounts of people who see/hear their lives flash by when they are near death, and I wondered if it might be like that. And does it flash by in order? In reverse order?"
-Laura Richens
"Loved the experience....lights and sounds that one cannot interpret but produce sensations and feeling. Very interesting! Congratulations"
-Victoria