Twilight Sleep

2016
Edition of 7
877 mm X 877 mm
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Twilight Sleep explores the intimate relationship between chemistry and creativity in 19th and 20th century literature. The project maps mass spectrum chemical signatures of various narcotic, entheogenic and psychedelic drugs to qualitative characterisations in literary output.

Mass spectrum analysis reveals the elemental or isotopic signature of compounds and is sensitive enough to elucidate the chemical structure of molecules. The complexity of a drug as well as its isotope distribution is revealed as a distinct fragmentation pattern of banding in the visualisations – a chemical signature which in turn determines the characteristic effect it has on the mind and body. 

The pattern of banding in the visualisation allows one to see the commonality between different drugs (especially the opioid narcotics and psychedelics), but also allows one to correlate the drug’s molecular composition to the tone of writing used by the author. In general, utopian and dystopian authors share little with regard to their predilections toward certain drugs.

An intriguing question remains : to what degree does the distinct chemical signature of a drug and its subsequent unique effect on the brain determine the philosophical trust of literature?

Reading top-left to bottom-right :

Morphine : Elizabeth Barrett Browning :: A Essay on Mind, with Other Poems [1826] : “I have been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixir—because the tranquilizing power has been wonderful.”

Thujone : Arthur Rimbaud :: Illuminations [1886] : “A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences.”

Cocaine : Robert Louis Stevenson :: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde [1886] : “That an invalid in my husband's condition of health should have been able to perform the manual labour alone of putting 60,000 words on paper in six days, seems almost incredible.”

Ether : Aleister Crowley :: Clouds Without Water [1909] : “Invaluable for mental analysis; also to discover one's own final judgment on any matter.  Gives the power to appreciate the elements of which sensation is made up.”

Nitrous oxide : Theodore Dreiser :: Laughing Gas [1914] : “…the clearest most concise expression of the cosmic balance of conflicting forces believed to determine life.”

Mescaline : Aldous Huxley :: Island [1962] : “As Mind at Large seeps past the no longer watertight valve, all kinds of biologically useless things start to happen. In some cases there may be extra-sensory perceptions. Other persons discover a world of visionary beauty. To others again is revealed the glory, the infinite value and meaningfulness of naked existence…”

Oxycodone : William S. Burroughs :: Nova Express [1964] : “I tried it as a matter of curiosity.”

Semoxydrine : Philip K. Dick :: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [1968] : “My major preoccupation is the question, 'What is reality?' Many of my stories and novels deal with psychotic states or drug-induced states by which I can present the concept of a multiverse rather than a universe.”

LSD : J.G. Ballard :: High-Rise [1975] : “I had such a negative trip, a real paranoid journey of despair. It was over in a day, but little vents of hell went on opening for years afterward, as I gather they do.”