The Haunt
Noxious Sector is a formalized forum for informal inquiry, a platform from which to explore the failures, intricacies and absurdities of artistic possibility. Building from stories of strange science and the paranormal, Noxious Sector projects are moments from which to wonder about the creative possibilities of speculative living. We were thinking about ghosts and wondering how they find their spaces to haunt, and what creative forms such hauntings might take. We each have our own ideas about what this might mean -- whether the inhabitation of virtual space, the willful abandon to unconscious directives, or the spirit possession of a technological present.
The Haunt: Noxious Sector Haunted Plaque
We decided to conduct a series of hauntings, a psychic transference in which we mentally occupy difference spaces, for different purposes -- preferably stair wells, alley ways or dark corners of a public area. While inhabiting these space, we psychically taunt anyone who wanders through, tripping and poking and laughing in as malicious ways as possible. The idea is to explore both the limits of psychic possibility -- given shape through our remote occupation of the space -- and the thresholds of public comfort and discomfort with the knowledge that a space is being occupied with malicious intent.
The project grows out of a recent series of explorations in which we tried to purposefully haunt each other. We didn't really know how to go about it, so we made it up. We took turns -- two of us ganging up psychically on the third -- invading his house and mind, and attempting to implant our presence on the space he was in... The project provided preliminary strategies for this sort of virtual engagement, and gave us some first hand experience with what strategies for haunting are most effective. Using a variety of techniques -- from voodoo to witchcraft to astral projects to telematic embraces -- we psychically taunted one another, attempting to willfully impact on the environment and psyche of our fellow collective members.