“The clockwork snail” was a very special experiment with the powers of immersive performance that I created together with Panopticum for the Romanian psychedelic WAHA Festival in 2015. It was the first meeting of the psychedelic creativity with the instruments of sensory interaction that I took part in. Located between several trees near to the Alternative Stage, it was conceived as a time-bending consciousness catalyst that allowed for in-depth personal transformation in its spiral-like inner part.

The entrance of the installation, marked with two torches, is manned by an attendant in a dark-purple hooded cloak who invites the visitor inside. Then they meet me – the cartographer of transformation, who articulates the neon pathways printed on the door of the inner chamber into sound and body movement according to the their mental state. After getting out of the meandering darkness, they stand afore a tree with a masked female creature in its crown asking them questions on the time and space they are in. Lastly, shortly before the exit, in a white geodesic dome covered with white shiny Lycra, they meet another female creature, cheerful and playful, with whom they translate the insights they have gathered into the language of movement and dance.

As the installation served to intensify consciousness in a minimal sensory environment, the aim of the cartographer was to give the visitors a scheme by which their inner personal information could be arranged. In order to do this, I had to utilise their attention in the most precise way. This meant that each phrase of the vocalized behaviour of my body had to match exactly their emotional state. The way that the installation was functioning was based entirely on the context in which it was built and was my first experiment with immersive art in psychedelic environment.