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24 April - 4 May 1997: SYNAPSE DEAN WHITEHORN This story begins in the year 2016 at the Institute of Militronics and Advanced Time Interventionality, in London. At the time our scientists were working with virtual miniaturisation techniques for humans and objects, the aim being to recreate the entire planet earth in miniature so that it could be carried inside the body of an astronaut into outer space. Phase one of the experiment was to be the releasing of this digital earth, as a virus, into the atmosphere of a distant planet. I had been working as a researcher at the Institute for some years when I was approached concerning a mission to investigate the making of the film, Fantastic Voyage, in the year 1966. The principal researcher on this project, John Paul Bichard, reached a frustrating impasse in April and temporarily handed over the reins to the cinereach lab who had a great track record in unearthing vital research clues, through infiltrating the sci-fi film sets of the past. Pauline van Mourik Broekman from the lab contacted me early one morning, while I was working on a special costume for a visit to the set of Land of the Giants the following week, and explained the situation. We agreed that if I could finish the costume that night then it could double up for a visit to Fantastic Voyage. On the 24th of April 2016 I entered the VRTimetransport lab at the Institute, got into my costume and was wired up for the journey. Looking back on it, Dean Whitehorn, the VRTT operator, seemed a little hungover at the time, but he'd had a lot of experience and I trusted him implicitly. When I came to, several minutes later, I found myself in a large white space which I took to be one of the studios at 20th Century Fox. There were some free standing white walls with gaps between them, forming an enclosure in the centre of the studio. Several people were walking in and out of the enclosure on what appeared to be some kind of stepping stones surrounded by water. Every so often there was a bright flash of light. It didn't seem like how I remembered the movie but most of the people looked like 60s film stars so I wasn't too worried. I approached two of the actors and caught snippets of their conversation "...supposed to be an interneuron, the things that carry messages around your body... you know what Stephen Hawking... no, that's motor neuron..." A tall man accompanied by a woman with shoulder length black hair approached the two actors, "Carolyn, may I introduce you to Dean Whitehorn. This is...." Strange coincidence I thought. Also, I couldn't remember a Dean Whitehorn having had a part in the film. Must have been an extra, I figured. Feeling slightly disconcerted, I took a better look inside the enclosure. The flash kept going off but there were no cameras around. It seemed to me that this must be some sort of pre-filming test room, with all these people acting as human messages inside an enormous interneuron, or maybe it was a scene that had been edited out of the final cut. A rather pale woman with short black hair, standing with a couple of other women, was becoming very animated a couple of paces away "...on longing... yes Susan Stewart....yes.....this show..... we are both the container and the contained,... the transmitter and the transmitted.... within a gigantic representation of.... a part of our own body....insignificant within our own insignificance, oh I meant significance....yeh, I guess it's a kind of have your cake and eat it too kind of a show....no, not really....yes,....but what about relationships to the architectural?....Bachelard... you mean in a politicised kind of a way?....nomore like the body as architecture or interior design.... and we can become messages on the wallpaper of our minds, man....sublime..... you seen Fantastic Voyage?....no....yes....." I made a mental diagram of the set and relayed it back to the Institute for further investigation. Seconds later a message appeared on my receiver "....mission accomplished ....prepare to return to the future....." catalogue essay Suzanne Treister/Rosalind Brodsky, 3/4/97 |
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