nesting in a comfortable delusion

Comfortable delusion, 2019 (project)

Intallation

How often do we subconsciously choose to perceive the more convenient option?

As usual, this piece was sparked by a personal experience. One summer, when I was hired as a translator between the bands and sound technicians at a music festival, we arrived at the event a day early. Slightly bored, I waited for the stage crew to finish setting up all of the equipment.

I started meditating to pass the time, and one of the huge speakers went from music to static. And my awareness went from my breath to a memory of a sunny, quite chilly Baltic Sea beach I meditated on 2 years before.

As the sound spread all over the area, I felt tangibly transported to another place. My brain was hearing the waves, and who was I to set it straight? I settled into the experience.

After a while, I experimented with opening my eyes and looking directly at the speaker. Then closing them and retreating to the memory. Despite the conscious knowledge of what exactly emits the sound, my brain was perfectly happy to attribute it to the waves once I looked away from the speaker. 

It even invented an irregular crashing rhythm.

Fascinated by what I observed, I repeated the static and waves combination at home. Screen with the image and speakers in sight. Both false attribution and filling in the blanks were still present. Even though the source of the sound was clearly visible.

We, as humans, can intellectually understand something that isn’t true and still perceive it to be so. It’s not just the case of the suspension of disbelief when we allow our emotions to run free while watching a narrative fiction film.

It is our senses losing their grip on the true stimulus, and our brain course-correcting it.

It made me wonder how many mistakes like that happen in our day-to-day. Colours, smells, and sounds are always at risk of distortion at the mercy of our minds. What if we don’t always grasp the true source of the sensory input?

Once notice is taken of how eager one’s brain is to fill in the gaps, it begs the question of how it influences social interactions. Are environmental and political issues affected by the false attribution as well? How often do we hear the waves that just aren’t there?

Lastly, what fascinates me the most about this phenomenon is the question: what would happen if we simply ignore the true origin of an experience? If we choose to live comfortably in an illusion?

What happens when, and how often does it happen, that we are aware of the root cause of a problem, but a simpler, more appealing explanation is just convenient?

We end up nesting in a comfortable delusion.