Lazy Goat Works

Trance and Memory

Trance and Memory references the Brazilian religion of Candomblé and the symbol of the bull’s eye, states of trance that occur in participants of the religion, as well as states of memory generally.

This piece debuted at zeitraumexit in Mannheim, Germany in November 2019 as part of the Brazilian Cultural festival, “Mais Amor Por Favor” (https://www.zeitraumexit.de/veranstaltung/trance-and-memory)

It is an installation comprised of a grid of paper squares (5cm), printed with the image of a bull’s eye. The grid is 27 rows of 24 squares, 648 total squares. The squares are suspended in the center of the room on stainless steel wires that stretch from the ceiling to the floor. Viewers are able to walk completely around the he installation.

The installation has two phases: (1) illumination, and (2) projection.

In the illumination phase, spotlights on the floor cast shadows of the squares on the ceiling and walls of the room.

In the projection phase, an animation is projected on to grid with an audio soundtrack. The soundtrack uses samples of Raimiro Musotto songs Caminho and António das mortes.

The animation is intended to induce a trance-like or hypnotic state in the viewer.

The animation is a projection of the bull’s eye image onto each of the paper spares. The movement of each is eye is generated in real time; this is not a simple video loop. The movement at times mimics waves on the surface of a liquid, and at other times is inspired by the propagation of impulses through neurons in the brain.

(A simulation of an array of particles with “mass” connected by “springs" is used to generate the movement of the projected eyes. The movement is calculated based on Newtonian physics using a 3D particle physics engine with Verlet integration using an open source software package. See: http://toxiclibs.org/about/)