Flight Song, Introduction

Scientists have isolated the part of the brain that allows us to perceive the spatial and temporal boundaries of our physical world. They recently discovered that when people enter a transcendental state through meditation or prayer, activity in this part of the brain declines dramatically. It seems Richard Carlyon has found a vehicle for narcotizing this same brain region for aesthetic ends: play.

Carlyon invents (invisible) rules for collecting, assembling, and ordering mundane things in meaningful ways.

Avoiding the politics of Dogma 95 and with more humor than the Oulipou, his aesthetic games are frivolous constructs that transport us to seriously amusing places. Playing along, we make friends with uncertainty and gossip with the unknown. In the process, our minds expand beyond the visual, linguistic, and auditory to a sensory-less, logic-less placean aesthetic realm of lucid abstraction.

Carylon is a happy existentialist. On his playground we ride Pegasus instead of a horse. Romping with our own minds is the ultimate subject here. The only losers are those who dont play.