When walls form labyrinths…
I must self-confess: I have contracted an infectious compulsion. Like a paranoiac, I stumble upon seemingly random information that I automatically relate to this blog. Am I turning into Pynchon’s Oedipa? Which Oedipa, the crazy or the lucid one? Depends on your outlook.
In thinking about walls, experiences, and immersive environments, I came across something I was searching for in relation to a project on interactive cinema that I am currently working on.
The Labyrinth Project at Expo 67
Cinema is a big part of my life. Sadly, not as big as it used to be because reading about cinema takes up most of my time, so I don’t really have that much time to actually watch films! Yes, this is frustrating me more and more every day.
Anyway, I was reading descriptions of the Labyrinth Project installation at Expo 67 in Montreal at the same time as I was reading Brandscapes. Perhaps the connections I have drawn are arbitrary and a simple consequence of concurrent events taking place in my mind at the same time. In any case, I connected the cine-Labyrinth to a broader idea of cinema as architecture, cinema as an all-encompassing experience (an illusion enhanced by the immersive architecture of the project), and the Labyrinth as an experience cinematographed (rather than choreographed or orchestrated) around the installation’s traversers.
Any attempt to describe the Labyrinth experience is inevitably reductive. Not even pictures and sketches can complement a language-oriented description. But alas, this is all I have in terms of accessing an event that cannot be – and does not wish to be – recreated… and relived.
Floorplan of the Labyrinth building and of the vertical and horizontal screens in Chamber 1
Even though I had to imagine the experience of traversing the cine-labyrinth in an indirect manner – through descriptions, accounts, sketches and pictures – I still had an affective response to the idea of a cinematic labyrinth. All I could think of FEEL was a sense of panic creeping and building up inside me. I’m not quite sure why, but I think it has to do with the the fact that this is an experience that distorts certain expectations regarding cinema, architecture, and the concept of viewership. The labyrinth accentuates this feeling of panic… Panic when coming face to face with the unknown. Panic intermingled with feelings of clastrophobia and disorientation… Loss of control.
But then I read the inevitable analysis of this maze-like space. Oooh, so this is supposed to be an experiment that lays the “sensory training ground for the new global citizen”… a space “where simultaneous information inputs create not confusion which numbs the senses but a new ‘oceanic consciousness.’ “
“This represents the world in all its plurality… [a] mythological cultural mosaic of humankind that was the basis for Pierre Trudeau’s new plan for Canadian federalism.”
Do these interpretations negate my visceral response? Do they undermine the affective sentiment triggered by the fragmentary views of the project that I had to piece together and also fill in the gaps with my imagination?
Analysis rationalizes and ultimately negates the possibility of a raw affective reaction
Cretan Labyrinth
The Greek Riots ® 
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