Geoffrey Badel
Panorama Ganzfeld

The Panorama Ganzfeld performance is an attempt to connect with the potential supernatural entities of charged places. It consists of an automatic drawing session of indefinite duration. The chosen device refers to the Ganzfeld protocol invented by German psychologist Wolfgang Metzger in 1930 and used in parapsychology to study extrasensory perceptions, particularly telepathy. The percipient — the person attempting to receive images from the Other — is immersed in a red light environment. Two celluloid half-spheres are fixed over their closed eyes, and the red light passing through them provides a blind, monochrome vision. A headset broadcasts white noise directly into their ears. This device alters normal perception, creating an inner state similar to a trance. The drawing then reveals the landscape of the experience on the sheet of paper, which takes the form of an orientation table. Considering the body as a seismograph capturing internal and external forces, it becomes both a receiver of possible signs from these entities and a transmitter of them through the pencil strokes.