BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012.


You are not logged in. Would you like to login or register?



January 20, 2014 10:16 am  #1


CAM's mind palace-the white room

Have you ever been into a white room, aka a room where the walls, the roof and the floor are white?
I had once such an experience. It was a kind of interactive art room built for an event for Zeche Zollverein in Germany. The artist painted the room inside a cube in pure white. It was dimly lit and just a bit of light came through the roof where there was a small slot.
When you walk in you are probably meant to feel unsure, uneasy because your mind can’t cope with “the feeling of nothing”. Your mind is used to be fixated onto something and your eyes start to wander around to find something to occupy. After a few moments the atmosphere shifts and it feels as if the room closes in. If you can relax it suddenly feels very nice and you can easily contemplate and you might start to think, feel or meditate or whatever you like to do in it, sing, speak…

The artist or a representative who waited outside the room asked for feedback and we talked a bit. She told me after I expressed my feelings that many people can’t stand the room and rush out as fast as they can. Others feel comfortable.

In canon there is a story where Holmes mentions in passing that he might try to sit into a box to think but hasn’t done it yet. This white room can be an adaptation.

 

 

January 20, 2014 11:03 am  #2


Re: CAM's mind palace-the white room

It's not as creepy as walking into a mirror room where all four walls floor & ceiling are mirrors. Don't know if such a room exists but it would scare the bejesus out of me & would be very mych my idea of hell especially if I am to walk into it alone & unaccompanied. (Shivers)

Last edited by saturnR (January 20, 2014 11:04 am)

 

January 20, 2014 12:15 pm  #3


Re: CAM's mind palace-the white room

They do exist. They're actually quite fun because it looks like you're in some kind of infinite tunnel 

 

January 20, 2014 6:56 pm  #4


Re: CAM's mind palace-the white room

I think it would depend on the size of the room. A smaller enclosed space would be creepy. If it was a large area, it might not feel as strange.
And now I have White Room by Cream stuck in my head. (deep sigh)

 

January 28, 2014 2:13 pm  #5


Re: CAM's mind palace-the white room

I am currently reading Marcel Proust and found a quote about imagination and something that reminded me of a combination between a mind palace and a white room that allows you to feel differently:

~~“As for me, I feel myself living and thinking in a room where everything is the creation and the language of lives profoundly different from mine, of a taste opposite to mine, where I find nothing of my conscious thought, where my imagination is excited by feeling itself plunged into the depths of the non-ego; I feel happy only when setting foot—on the Avenue de la Gare, on the Port, or on the Place de l'Eglise—in one of those provincial hotels with cold, long corridors where the wind from outside contends successfully with the efforts of the heating system, where the detailed geographic map of the district is still the sole ornament on the walls, where each noise helps only to make the silence appear by displacing it, where the rooms keep a musty perfume which the open air comes to wash, but does not eliminate, and which the nostrils inhale a hundred times in order to bring it to the imagination, which is enchanted with it, which has it pose like a model to try to recreate it with all the thoughts and remembrances that it contains...”
― Marcel Proust

     Thread Starter
 

February 27, 2014 3:30 pm  #6


Re: CAM's mind palace-the white room

     Thread Starter
 

Board footera

 

Powered by Boardhost. Create a Free Forum