June 1, 2007
Volunteers Invited to View World Upside Down
Stumble it!German visual artist Carsten Hoeller is hunting for a group of people willing to wear special goggles for eight days. Sounds easy enough, right?
The catch is, these goggles will literally turn your world upside down. Volunteers will wear the goggles during waking hours, and sleep blindfolded to avoid catching a glimpse of the world right-side up when they first wake.
Hoeller specializes in artistic explorations of behavior, logic and altered perception. He participants in this latest experiment to wear the goggles for eight days leading up to a stage performance at the Manchester International Festival later this month.
“The essence of art is to provide a novel experience,” festival director Alex Poots told the BBC. “But what could be more novel than getting the viewer, in this case a volunteer, to view the world from an unexpected angle and be part of the experience.”
Participants will live together with assistants during the eight-day experiment. Hoeller’s volunteers will remove their goggles in front of a live audience at Manchester’s Opera House during the Il Tempo Del Postino Group Show.
Hoeller’s previous works include the Test Site at London’s Tate Modern Turbine Hall and an event where the audience was invited to sniff a love pheremone while watching a film of bonobo apes mating.
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