ITP Thesis Week 2009
Monday, May 4 - Friday, May 8

Altar to Our Lady of the Shining Silver Sun

Eduardo Lytton

An interactive Latin American shrine depicts the beatific highs and the exponentially nightmarish shades of losing touch with reality.
Music by: Angélica Negron

http://shiningsilversun.com



The Altar to Our Lady of the Shining Silver Sun is a shrine in the Latin American tradition dedicated to presenting the beatific highs and the exponentially nightmarish shades of losing touch with reality. It holds testimonials of strange and powerful visions in the form of retablos, colorful votives often seen in Latin American churches that mix painting and text to show gratitude for moments of divine intervention or miracles. The retablos and the collection of small personal votives on the shelf that complement them will be offerings on the theme of “visions” and/or psychotic disorders that will become animated as one approaches the altar, hopefully presenting an environment where the perception of real and the unreal starts to stretch and rip apart.

Background
Why were retablos chosen as a format for The Altar to Our Lady of the Shining Silver Sun? The answer can be understood by breaking down the language of the the retablos. Though strictly speaking, retablos are paintings, they are a unique form of communication that are also akin to comic books and literature. Retablos are storytelling in one panel. Like comic books, there is a certain additive or almost interactive quality to them where the viewer is given just enough details to build upon and then must fill in the blanks. The viewer experience is roughly as follows: the viewer reads and takes in the information, the viewer understands and compiles on a literal level, then a bigger grasp of the abstract concepts associated with the image bubble up. This last part is what makes retablos unique– quite simply retablos are a communication between human and God, and there is something quite revealing about the human condition when we hear what people pray about. These stories told with simple images show a way of thinking where God and life are inextricably linked, a world where everything that surrounds someone is imbued with symbolism, where every thought is a prayer. As such, the fact that they are an insight into a different sort of logic makes them a perfect device for illustrating the story of visions and mental illness.

Audience
The project is for anyone that is curious about or who has experienced visions or moments of breaks with reality or a moment in which he or she feels that God or a higher power may have been active in his or her lives. The Altar to Our Lady of the Shining Silver Sun is also for anyone who has ever experienced the dissonance of mental illness in his or her life, either through themselves, a family member or someone close to them (Recent statistics show that one in four adults will experience a mental disorder in any given year and that one in five families will be affected by mental illness (National Institute of Mental Health)). The Altar to Our Lady of the Shining Silver Sun may also be of interest to those that are interested in the actual process of cognitive development–The process of “building a reality” (or schema as Piaget suggested). The mind of someone suffering a psychotic break has a lot in common with the same process in which a child may put together his or her life-view, his or her view of reality, with the difference being that upon sharing his or her own unique way of perceiving things, the child gives it up upon learning of this new “shared,” community, perception of reality.

User Scenario
Research into the the phenomenon of psychosis has shown that sometimes the process is not an abrupt change–sometimes the slide into psychosis can be more subtle and may not even be rapidly noticeable. As such, interaction between the viewer and the installation will reflect this: The language of the shrine will be one of slow fades over harder, more “shocking” cuts, of glows, of sounds mixing together. As there will be subject matter that may be a bit disturbing (someone stabbing himself with a crucifix, for example), the “shock factor” should be more in keeping with a sort of gestalt effect–a slow realization. Sounds used with The Altar to Our Lady of the Shining Silver Sun will be somewhat pleasing (again to draw people in), are evocative of a past time (such as 19th Century Mexico, the “heyday” of the retablo art form) dealing with elements of memory and events depicted in the retablos. Sounds include birds chirping, metals clinging, bells, and scratchy television static and found sounds in Spanish and English.

One of the main focuses of The Altar to Our Lady of the Shining Silver Sun is for someone who is not mentally ill to be able to comprehend what sometimes is the dual nature of visions, how two realities can exist simultaneously, how one thing can actually be two things at the same time, without being in conflict of each other. In the case of psychotic disorders, an “enhanced” reality does not necessarily have to take the place of accepted reality. That being said, the project seeks to draw people in with what seems to be normal, only to have a moment of revelation where the “second lives” of everyday objects become apparent. This “reveal” should quietly celebrate the transcendentalism of the everyday object into something sacred. In addition, by putting different stories or retablos, some ecstatic in nature and others nightmarish, next to each other, one may begin to form an idea of what it may be like to experience such dramatic highs and lows so close to each other. In this case, the question of interactivity is informed (Why make it interactive?) by the overall narrative of the project and by its intentions and theme.
Animating the retablos as people approach them also serves to highlight the theme of an “enhanced reality” or of objects and items bearing a “second life” or an infused aura. The animations will be simple and repeatable in a trance-like way so that they may fit in with each other as a colorful moving collage. For example, in one retablo about an incident in a club, a spinning tornado of sound and light whirls around to show what it feels when like someone is controlling the lights and sound with their mind, while most other objects will have little or no movement.

Implementation
The Altar to Our Lady of the Shining Silver Sun holds testimonials of strange and powerful visions in the form of retablos, colorful votives often seen in Latin American churches that mix painting and text to show saints gratitude for moments of divine intervention or miracles. The retablos and the collection of small personal votives on the shelf that complement them will be offerings on the theme of “visions” and/or psychotic disorders that will become animated as one approaches the altar, hopefully presenting an environment where the perception of real and the unreal starts to stretch and rip apart.

The project consists of the following: Several retablos with hand-drawn elements will be displayed in a shrine constructed from found materials. Underneath the series of retablos will be a shelf with personal objects related to the theme of visions/losing touch with reality and/or mental illness. The retablos will be projected onto a layer of thin paper and will feature a mixture of projected image with painted paper and glass surface. People should be attracted to the shrine even from afar and the altar should work on its own on a very basic “first impression” level, but people will also be rewarded upon closer inspection of the altar. A series of sensors will detect the viewer’s proximity to the projection surface, and as he or she gets closer, the retablos will become animated. A mixture of projection with actual painted physical surfaces will serve to highlight the theme of duality and transcendence of The Altar to Our Lady of the Shining Silver Sun, which is part of the larger theme of visions.

Conclusion
To the Mexican people, death is not seen as the ultimate end to something, but rather, as part of a larger cycle. There is life in death and death in life. Communication with ancestors continues: the death of a family member is transfigured into something akin to a living memory. Many primitive cultures venerated not only creator gods, but also destroyer or destructive gods. There is a primal power that is the other side of the coin of creation, and sometimes in order to create one must first destroy. In a seeming contradiction, some powerful Tibetan meditations involving visualizing death highlight and emphasize the act of living. Sometimes the significance of something isn’t apparent until we ponder its absence. In a similar vein, seeing what happens to people undergoing mental activity on the highest and lowest part of the range of human experience can cultivate a new appreciation for mental health, perhaps even making people develop a respectful fear of mind-altering substances.

The Altar to Our Lady of the Shining Silver Sun is also an examination of what is sacred or profane in people’s lives. What makes that object that someone picks up or that thought that someone keeps extra special? Is there an aura that we infuse on things that we attach meaning to? By asking these questions, one can look at everything around them and see them with a new value. There is sheer magic in the spider-web in the corner, in the dramatic whirl of a fingerprint, in a breath of air visualized in the cold winter air–moments where someone closes his or her hands just to feel the very “meatness” of their flesh, where there is a closing of a circuit of thought feeling and the physical, where it is amazing that a lump of flesh can see, hear, and form something as powerful and mysterious as thought.

More than anything I want people to leave The Altar to Our Lady of the Shining Silver Sun with a new appreciation of life. Just as the retablos start and end with gratitude to God, The Altar to Our Lady of the Shining Silver Sun in the end is about giving thanks to the art gods and to a Higher Power. It is no wonder that people want to see the face of God everywhere: The very fact that everything has met and manifested itself the way it has is a miracle, a gift from God.