Sensory-overload performance could induce altered consciousness before LSD use

Evidence

Experiencing what he called a “theater of the senses,” Village Voice drama critic Michael Smith was receptive yet confounded. “The eyes can’t cope with the data and the sense of space goes vague; meanwhile, wild sounds have deadened the sense of time. It made me high. It also made me sleepy … For audiences at any future performances of Black Zero, I think the secret ingredient is LSD.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 769

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s thesis that avant-garde invention was enabled by drug culture and cheap spaces — sensory overload as proto-LSD experience.