Ekpyrotic art is an aesthetic that recreates the experience of the eschaton. Earlier post on Ekpyrosis here
What are the mechanics of Ekpyrotic art? Trance through repetition: drumming, mudra, chant. When material remains consistent, the mind latches on to epiphenomenon. Perception of a pattern in repeated gestures is to remove the gesture from time and perceive a crystalline structure.
When physical phenomena are perceived outside of time, the mental attributes of that action are lost , without meaning. The body becomes open to new imprints. Like a new born duckling. Its a condition before the new material. Ekpyrosis is liturgical, and ecstasy is a functional precondition for effective liturgy.
To this duckling mind, then, we throw contemplation of the immense. Contemplation of the immeasurable: large or small. The breath-devouring ancient. The face-melting future. Experience of the impossibly loud. The unbearably silent.
Imagine the very small. The nano. That experience, the full-on contemplation of the vanishingly tiny: a big part of that is looking back and recognizing our bigger selves. Like Alice in wonderland. It is an anticipation of our death, as much as an anticipation of our departure from earth, where every glance will be backwards.
This is not only the definition of, but also the reason for, the Overview effect. Think on it: the entirey of your life - of all life - is "out there", external, not-all-around-ness. It's probably like going to a sensory deprivation tank and realising you left your body behind for real, a sensory deprivation tank where your body is vaporised for the duration.
For sure, I feel this sometimes when I look at a map of the US Eastern coast. I've lived in Washington DC for High school, Lewiston Maine for College, and Pittsburgh for everything else. A psychogeographic asterism on the map.
The extraction of the physical gesture in to a space outside of time has some consistent and remarkable sensations. It feels to me like biting on a piece of metal foil, a clenching in my abdomen, a slight shiver that feels like it is generated by the muscles at tip of my spine where it meets the skull. There is enough of a contraction that my jaws quiver from side to side, although there are no muscles moving in my face or neck. A quiver. An impulse. At the bottom of my breath, all air expelled from my lungs ( if my eyes are closed) I feel a swaying - or more like there's a cyclone, a small cyclone that I've swallowed, When I breath out, I contract enough to touch the sides of that moving wind.
That's what it feels like.
Mircea Eliade talks about Hierophany. Hierophany is the revelation of the sacred, a differentiating event. Essentially poetic. A shift where the pattern is perceived, the physical gesture ("mortality") has been removed from time. If it isn't an intimation of death, it's an intimation of hypersptial experience.
