Chasing The Dot

Philip Vermeulen’s immersive installation Chasing The Dot (2021-ongoing) is an intense multisensory experience, exploring immense depth and physicality of color, in the setting of a large Ganzfeld space.

While enveloping the audience – comfortably seated on a custom shaped couch – in a diffuse, glowing field of light and color, eliminating the horizon and making the shape and boundaries of the light-filled space disappear, visitors are confronted with the concept of watching with your ears and listening with your eyes.

Synesthesia, a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to unexpected experiences in another, is a strong theme in Vermeulen’s body of work. As part of ongoing research, the artist creates various poems of light, color and after images; each exhibition comes with bespoke compositions, as part of an experimental process, resulting in a constantly evolving choreography.

As color manifests in Chasing The Dot, light becomes material, and visitors will experience a large, fluctuating dot appearing right in front of them when allowing themselves to dissolve in Chasing The Dot. From that moment on, wherever you look, the dot is right there – in the centerpoint of your vision. 

Chasing The Dot comes from chasing phenomena, from after images to flicker-induced hallucinations – once intensity occurs, the work finally takes over the viewer’s perception and experience of the space. 

Duration: 18:35 minutes