XYZZY is a hallucinatory visual and auditory experience which touches on parallel worlds, psychedelics and all manner of alien esoterica.
Technically it is a movie, as we watch it on the vast overhead screen at the Planetarium. It is also fully in the realm of the Art world and cinema is just the medium. Which will bleed out from that to occupy much bigger spaces of the mind.
How much of the universe is Mind? What is the relationship to our cerebral cortex and reality? Are we existing in the Mind of other beings?
Why does the stove keep complaining to me in this robotic squealing after I grill toast in it? I suspect it is slowly becoming sentient.
The artist creator of XYZZY is Jess Johnson. She is a New Zealander and she currently resides in Roswell, New Mexico.
Discovering that after I had seen the show, set my fillings off with electronic tingles and had me reaching for the tin-foil hat.
She is currently an Artist-in-Residence there for 3 years. What better place to channel the alien and supernatural!
This was hand-drawn art she has worked with over a ten-year period. Obviously there has been much in the way of computer-generated graphics and motion to bring it to the present level of sophistication.
The director in this regard is Simon Ward. The production is also in partnership with Tuhara Otago Museum.
There are numerous Mandalas involving humanoid beings rendered in latex. Blank genitalia but other characteristics identify them as male or female. Or androgynous.
Animal heads appear which can become grotesque. Unknown organisms from unknown planets.
Rotating mandala montages which represent an eternal nature of being. As mass and energy are equivalent, as you know.
We travel down avenues flanked by massive buildings. Skyscrapers being the present-time pyramids. They are both energy channels in the same fashion, though the mystery remains about how the ancient ones in Egypt, North and Central America were built.
This is suggested by massive humanoid beings who can cradle us in one hand and attempt to do this.
As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods/ They kill us for their sport. King Lear.
Giant sandworms appear with disk mouths full of sharp teeth. Four pairs of legs covered by one giant grotesque mask. Or else a demon figure.
A point of intersection could be the movies Koyaanisqatsi (1982) and Powaqqatsi (1988).
Both are experimental movies made by Godfrey Reggio with electronic Minimalist music by Philip Glass.
The original title name comes from a Hopi Indian term meaning life out of balance.
Some of the creature ideas may also come from the movie Naked Lunch, directed by David Cronenberg. In attempting to film the unfilmable classic book from genius Beat Godfather writer William Burroughs, he filmed the story of how the author did it.
And peopled it with dream creatures like the Mugwumps and giant insects which try and copulate with the authors typewriter.
Sexuality and overt violence are absent in this presentation. More likely subsumed in the mix.
The chains of humanoids do move in a long train and they are close to spooning. They do not go on to form up the tapestry of polyamorous sex that is the Temples of Khajuraho.
Electronica music supplied by Lachlan Anderson.
To experience the movie is akin to taking psilocybin. We do not wear 3-D glasses, but the experience becomes one of virtual reality.
Hallucinatory and psychedelic with soothing surround music. It is easy to slip into a dream state and drift. Boundaries of Real and Hyper-Real disappear.
XYZZY is an Experience. Like Jimi Hendrix and his famous explosion into popular music.
XYZZY debuted in Melbourne to sell-out shows. It is due for a world tour after this current season. Are You Experienced?
Rev. Orange Peel
