Later conspiracies flourished saying that enthusiasm to see it and the experience of seeing the work was changing it gradually, was even recreating it – the work itself – making later viewings different from earlier ones.
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction
┤ -TOTL – (pr: TAWT’L)
“The cradle rocks above an abyss … ”
– Nabokov
As an art installation ┤ or TOTL ranks among the most viewed ever. Any piece of art that becomes so popular must lose its ability to influence our thinking; that’s just the way it goes. With all the fuss and debate and attention it has had over the years, TOTL is now broadly agreed to represent a shared realization. But in the early days it really changed us. The artist (artists?) created it as ‘Trick of the Light’ and installed it secretly as land art in the Nevada desert in America. It was exhibited behind fencing, but not advertised, there were no video guides or explanatory signage. The staff manning the gates were vague when asked about it. No credit was claimed, by anyone for its conception. Lincoln County locals, hikers and bikers found it, saw it, took some time to understand it, respected the ‘no photos and no recordings’ signs, shortened its title to ‘TOTL’ and on social media started threads of discussion about their experiences and its meaning. That’s how it started. Since then, it has been exhibited all over the world. Millions of people have seen it. From a trickle of ecstatic critics, movie stars and VIPs in Nairobi and Shanghai to hysterical mobs in San Francisco, Barcelona and London hellbent on tearing down the fencing, turnstiles and ticket booths set up to maintain orderly viewing. City authorities, community groups and show-off billionaires who had patiently waited, sometimes for years, to exhibit TOTL and finally got it, tended to follow early showings and strictly limit the number of people in or around the work at any one time. The cult building up around TOTL understood this would improve the experience for every man, woman or child who saw it, give them time and space to settle into their comprehension of the experience.
As events, the exhibitions evolved over time to reflect the growing public excitement and enthusiasm to see the work. Ticket price charged started very high but became cheap, or even free, especially when it was shown in poorer countries. Early showings were near the centre of big cities but migrated over time to more open areas, in many cases near natural wonders or against beautiful backdrops. If these were far from centres of population then temporary buses or trains were set up to ferry people out, excited and chattering, and back, quieter and more reflective, having seen the work.
Organisers of festivals, art exhibitions and fiestas clamoured to be able to offer TOTL to start or finish their programs. Often this backfired as some patrons found TOTL so affecting that if they saw it at the start of a festival program they often went home directly after skipping the rest of the itinerary. Good art, better art, dare I say real art was rubbished by people who had seen TOTL first.
Fundamentalists of all creeds and beliefs held solemn vigils outside offering pamphlets and prayers to the queues waiting to see it. Politicians, though often among the VIPs jumping queues or otherwise getting early slots to view it, waved their arms about back in their parliaments offering it as symptomatic of a divided society, abandonment of civic responsibility and general nihilism.
Later conspiracies flourished saying that enthusiasm to see it and the experience of seeing the work was changing it gradually, was even recreating it – the work itself – making later viewings different from earlier ones. Not just conspiracy theorists said this but credible art commentators too. Somehow according to these theories, the ‘wow’ moment, the ‘L’ in ‘TOTL’ was consuming the global excitement directed at it and feeding off the chaos swirling around its conception.
Wherever it is shown, the ‘space’ is, by necessity, huge; often a giant circus bigtop or scaffolding based construction. Tall, wide and long. Cool and dimly lit once inside people must squint to see what they are seeing. So much was written and said about the experience of seeing TOTL that an unwritten protocol was adopted pretty much universally around the process: people in the queue are quiet, they let themselves become eager but thoughtful as they enter the space and walk towards the exhibit. Sound and sight are muted by whatever lines the walls and ceiling. As you approach, from ahead of you in the gloom TOTL hums (or seems to) softly vibrating the air around you. Like the banks of sound equipment and PA towers thrum in the whistling chattering moments before the first crashing chords of a rock concert you feel it through your feet as much as you see it with your eyes.
In just a few more steps forward you sense it there. Like the cavernous room housing it ‘Trick of the Light’ is truly massive and seems to hang in space, neither suspended from above nor fixed to any wall.
End to end and top to bottom it is completely black. Black as a bare word is not enough. This black is beyond black, beyond achromatic, way way beyond. Like an infinitely deep pool or cosmic blank, this black is total absence of colour and texture. The artist(s) never disclosed how it was done and no-one else ever touched the surface, ever. The screens guiding people around the work were too far from the installation. Many tried; sometimes they really tried to add touch to the inventory of senses by which they might codify what was in front of them so discomfited were they by what they were seeing.
Unfathomable. Uniform blackness. Not solid not liquid not gas. It has a surface but the surface recedes from outstretched hands as if the need to touch and the outstretched hand are the same magnetic polarity as the work itself. Somehow it cannot be touched. Not really seen either, for to human vision there is nothing to see.
What you feel in the dim light looking at the blackness is that TOTL is like the dark of space, like a dying.
After the first Nevada bikers posted their experiences at TOTL there was never any secret about what the work depicted, the ‘what’ was well known by the time the installation was shifted from the Nevada desert and set up again in the same scaffolding and back sheet structure at Uluru in the Northern Territory of Australia. The ‘what’ was speculated as triggering something close to the overview effect that most astronauts report but without leaving the planet. The ‘how’ could not be explained.
Knowing that what their eyes are seeking is somewhere along the work, but so far unseen, people walk quickly back and forth along its length staring into the blackness. Because only a few are allowed at the work at one time conversations between people in a group or between strangers follow similar lines;
‘Can you see it?’ one asks.
‘No nothing!!’ comes the reply. Until.
If you are lucky, somewhere, unmarked, along the work a miracle! You see a flash of bright light not a strip on the work but a perspective…the place you are at, the exact spot (if you stop yourself quickly enough) gives you a view deep, deep into the work like two long parallel screens facing each other running at right angles to the artwork top to bottom, bright, ever-changing screens showing nature and people and places and the past, present and visions of the future. Flickering fast moving images and sound, not loud but sound. In that single position you can hear music, voices shouting, gunfire and laughter. So many fast-moving images and randomly shown there is no narrative, no story to what you see but it is entrancing, funny and tragic. What you can now see holds you, mesmorised. Enraptured by light and sound and because of the contrast most people momentarily forget the black, the space they saw before. Many people swear they see themselves among the images. Or people or places they know. These stories fed the later conspiracies and wild theories about TOTL.
If you are not quite as lucky but still lucky, in the gloom you bump into someone transfixed at a particular spot along the work. Clustering close to them you try to follow their line of sight…yes, you now see it too! More people crowd around, all quiet but staring down the narrow alley of noise and light.
In those first moments seeing the light, hearing the noise work a spell on the viewer. Like water to the thirsty or love to the lonely, people soak up light and sound until they can absorb no more. They stand spellbound. Gradually, inevitably however the spell weakens and after some time (minutes or hours) the seeming magic wears off and they tire of it. When first tempted to look away or look down it holds them; they do not move. Eventually, everyone moves maybe a few inches but even if the movement is that slight, the perspective is lost; disbelieving, blinking they are again looking into the empty blackness.
Impossible to explain how, but once lost it is near impossible to regain the exact position and stance that had you see and hear the light and sound. It has been observed and even documented over the years; not many spend much time trying. The experience, so cleverly planned by the artist(s), is linear not iterative. People know even if they cannot explain why, a second spell of light would diminish not enhance the experience.
Rather than have the spell of the light and sound fade some unlucky people are bumped or nudged out of position by others shoving in to ‘catch the trick’. Still not fully down off the high of the ‘Trick’ they, like the others struggle to orientate themselves again. Often they do try harder and for longer. They all give up eventually.
Moving back along the work people are again quiet, seemingly arranging their thoughts about TOTL holding the blackness and the light and sound in their minds if they can. Reading the thousands of posts and articles that have almost but not quite buried TOTL as art, people leave the space trying to associate TOTL with their own experience of life, their knowledge and beliefs about being born and living and dying. But its three mysteries make it magic still, the who, the how and the why. That cannot change. Reactions are stark: Rejoice in the existence of the light and sound ignoring their brevity or despair that but for a short while there is only empty blackness.
Later, after the peak of its popularity, and when the ironic need for certainty had overwhelmed the starkness of its original interpretation, and had spun conspiracies political and cultural to fluff it up into something softer and more human, what had been known as “Trick of the Light” was dubbed the symbol ┤pronounced ‘tawt’l’ after fans shot drone footage above hundreds of sites all over the world where it had been installed and noted whether on grass or sand or even tarmac the same pattern of flattened ground. The compression of millions of feet moving along the piece then clustering and huddling at the light wrote its meaning on the surface of the planet again and again. This physical signature remains the fact while the origin, the intention and the message of the artist(s) have been over digested in the years since it was first exhibited into nothing.
The compilations of arial site footage got turned into many coffee table books and derivative artwork which gladly maintains some interest in the installation to this day.
Excerpt from one social media thread: “…took me back to that actor who was Captain Kirk. His reaction to going up in that rocket – he felt like shit hanging there in black empty space like he’s dead and hungering after the light and heat of the itsy blue dot shining way down below him. Remembering he was there only a minute ago ripped out his heart rough just like grief. If the dead remember living like that, eternity must be real shitty. Being among that light, around you and shining out of you just so bright you don’t see, really see, other lights dying all around you like fireflies or sparks from a fire. You are blind to the truth of it; that’s gonna be you.”
“ … our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”
–Nabokov
Author Biography: Geoff Copstick
I am a 65 year old company director living in New Zealand. Writing to me now is as necessary as exhaling. Its the second phase of creative breathing and my way of emptying lungs ready for the next breath.