“Lucid Delirium” is a “trance/dance” film inspired by two iconic dance sources: the outwardly focused, 32 fouettés (or “whipped turns”) performed by the Black Swan in “Swan Lake” and the inwardly focused  rotations of the body performed by the Mevlevi (Whirling) Dervishes of Konya, Turkey. Both dances, in their very different ways, utilize repetition to induce a trance-like state of concentration in the viewer. 

 “Lucid Delirium” –as  its title suggests—has similar trance-inducing aspirations.  But in this film, the “dancers” are metallic wind spinners rather than human beings. How then to invest these inanimate objects with a range of “dancerly” qualities? 

First, if not foremost: The movement of the wind spinners is “choreographed” to  “phase music” by the composer Steve Reich. In this severe variety of minimalist music, a repetitive musical phrase is performed on two instruments (most often, in this case,  two pianos) in a steady– but not strictly identical –tempo. The ear of the listener thereby experiences a wide variety of “echoing” effects. “Lucid Delirium” attempts to find precise visual equivalents for these acoustc  phase variations   by subtly altering the wind spinners’  speed, direction, and spatial configuration (vertical, diagonal, horizontal) as well as the depth of focus, color palette, and directionality of lighting within the frame. Over the duration of the film, the solid metal, stainless steel wind spinners become increasingly “light,”  incorporeal and weightless –a metaphor for spiritual transcendence of the body. If the film succeeds, the viewer will be gradually seduced into an altered state of consciousness which is paradoxically, both lucid and delirious.