Hallucinations in the Visual Cortex

When the eyes are closed, visionary experience begins with the appearance in the visual field of living, moving geometries. These abstract, three dimensional forms are intensely illuminated…Albert Huxley, Psychedelics and Visionary Experience, 1955. I became interested in the area of hallucinations while reading Albert Huxley’s Doors of Perception. I was interested in what he termed a ‘visionary experience’ and how such an experience may materialize. Whilst researching hallucinations and I found that they have been very prominent though out history, from early cave paintings in Africa and Europe to even some religious experiences or rather near death experiences.

Cave paintings as discussed in Nigel Spivey’s series How Art Changed The World, often featured scenes of everyday life but also uncanny abstract geometrical patterns that seemed to have no relevance to anything what so ever. These patterns were found throughout both Europe for instance in Altamaria, in Northern Spain as well as in South Africa, on the petroglyph of the San People. It was not till much later that it was discovered that these shapes and patterns were in fact hallucinations seen by the artists due to the locations they often crafted in; dark and completely depraved of light.

The idea of hallucination has also been studied within science and psychology, these abstract patterns scene on early paintings are called Form Constants, this was a term coined by the first psychologist to study visual hallucinations; Heinrich Kluver. Kluver through experimenting with physco-active substances, such as Peyote (or Mescaline), found that individuals experience the same typed of hallucinatory geometric patterns and forms.

The hallucination takes place in the visual cortex of the brain (V1), caused by interference patterns during activities that directly effect this part of the brain (taking halucogenics, mental stress).

Kluver organized these patterns into 4 categories: I) tunnels, II) spirals, III) lattices, and IV) cobwebs. As seen to the right.

Area V1

Diagram for the apparatus that will display geometric shapes that I create as well as few early ideas and experiments on possible geometric forms. The programming language I used throughout this project was processing.

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Seth De Silva