An installation idea examining how yantras encode specific mechanisms for altering visual perception — using controlled light environments to test in three-dimensional space.
Core concept:
A pitch-black viewing room where light itself becomes the yantra. Rather than a painted diagram, viewers experience sacred geometry as immersive light streams through precision cut apertures, materialising the yantra’s structure in space.
This approach investigates how yantras function through specific visual mechanisms: sustained fixation on a central bindu, progressive layering from outer to inner focus, and sensory withdrawal. By constructing the yantra from light rather than paint, the work becomes both historical artifact and contemporary perceptual experiment.
David Shearing, The Rising Sun, 2022
The space:
- Dedicated dark room
- Single central viewing position — chair/cushion or marked standing point
- Light enters through precision apertures, creating the yantra’s geometric structure in space
Visual illustration
The process:
- Preparation: Transitional area with gradual dimming light allows eyes to adapt (minimal sound to reduce distraction)
- Entry: Through a curtain into near-darkness; viewer can locate central viewing position
- Light sequence: Yantra materialises progressively – bindu appears first and the viewer maintains central focus as the structures emerge and geometry stabilises.
- Viewing: 5-10 minutes; documented effects may include altered edge perception, afterimages, spatial disorientation
- Exit: Gradual return through transitional space
Documentation:
Each iteration will include technical specifications, behavioural observation, interviews and viewer reports. This becomes part of the work.
References:
- James Turrell’s perceptual cells, skyspaces
- Anthony McCall – line describing a cone
- Yantra practice, dark retreat traditions
- Ganzfeld research – uniform visual fields altering perception
Summary:
Yantras are designed to alter perception through geometric structure alone. Does this actually work, or is their effect purely psychological/cultural?
This installation creates controlled conditions to find out – using light-based yantra projections in darkness to test whether specific geometric configurations produce measurable, consistent perceptual shifts across viewers.
The work should generate questions, not promises:
- What are these geometries doing?
- Why might they produce effects?
- What does this reveal about perception’s formal structuring?
James Turrell, Imaginings, 2021
Rothko Chapel
Anthony McCall, Line Describing a Cone, 1973
Reflections & learnings
- Could I make this even more immersive? What if the yantra was in the ceiling and all walls?
- Or 3D > 5D, the whole room design/architecture was the parts of the yantra deconstructed and reassembled into a tunnel?
- An easy way to create a test environment for the various yantras would be to ideate them in Adobe Illustrator and/or a moving image software & then show the image(s) on a large monitor in a pitch black room
Challenges:
- Projected vs natural light. Natural light will always be my preference, but the challenge initially is the ease, cost, simplicity when testing
- I’m very wary of this not veering into cheesy “spiritual” art, the kind found on sale in Etsy/Amazon – in fact even the idea of that slightly turns me off this concept…
- How do I avoid commodified “spiritual experience” aesthetics, therapeutic claims, or something that reads as wellness retreat
Next steps
- I’m going to build 1-2 test versions using Illustrator & show them on a large monitor in pitch black room
- Sit for 10+ mins and meditate on the bindu
- Document everything systematically
- Date, yantra type used, light source, duration, perceptual observations
- Also noting technical spec like distance from screen, brightness levels, size of room
- Write immediately what happens after 2, 5, 10 mins
- Ask 2-3 other people to do the test & record their observations – don’t explain in advance what it is or what to expect
- Then, build a physical aperture test
- ie. Black foam-core/cardboard, cut geometric shapes, mount over window in a dark room – experience a natural light version
- This will help me learn about light quality, time of day effects, scale requirements
- Visit one of James Turrell’s installations
- Record my experience – how long before effects begin, duration, what instructions/framing are given