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SPEED: Jeff Harrington, what is iDEAL oRDER/Psychic TV?

Harrington: It's what I call my psychic ability to make the lenses of television cameras that are broadcasting glow. The IdEAL ORDER part was left over from a collaborative grafitti art project I did with my spouse, Elsie Russell. I'm a big believer in not enhancing individual spiritual attributes with personality. By calling it something bizarre, like IdEAL ORDER Psychic TV it assumes a state unto itself. We named it that around the same time Genesis P-Orridge was getting his group together... synchronicity, I guess... When questioned, I've been clear about my non-affiliation, however, you're correct in assuming that Genesis' work has been beneficial to the goals of my project.I've contacted them a bit through email, answering questions and discussing about out mutual goals. My recent Scotland performance was curated by an associate of Genesis', Robert Frenais.

SPEED: What were the circumstances under which you discovered/developed this ability?

Harrington: I'd been having some very deep meditative experiences and my spouse, Elsie would tell me that my eyes would glow afterward. I was employed at the time at Liberty Audio/Video (the very first record store in the world, on Madison Ave). as the record department manager. There wasn't much business; I spent most of the day watching a bank of TV's. I started trying to make the people on live TV (newcasters, MTV VJ's, etc.) react to my ability to make my eyes glow. It wasn't until months later that I found out that the lens was actually glowing.

I began experimenting with ways to get the people on camera (usually newscasters) to demonstrate the effect. I developed a way to make them blink more often by changing the focus of my light from one eye to another. I knew that one thing a news caster did not want to do was to have a problem with blinking. Other than that, I had no idea that the effect was anything more than a neurotic delusion. I didn't even tell anyone about it, but I got confirmation months later from friends and strangers.

Elsie and I had become notorious in NYC for a grafitti art campaign. We'd been written up in the Village Voice, a play had been written about us (by Charles Ludlam, "The Avant-Garde Bourgousie", lampooning our "beauty-driven" grafitti art (but using one of our anti-art slogans: "Today's Avant-Garde IS the Bourgousie!"). We were real artist anti-heroes. The Voice had called us "Neo-conservative art vandals;" Keith Haring and his lackies were actively defacing our art.

I began zapping more and more programs; looking for people to focus on to try and get more of an effect. I began zapping the morning news programs and the CBS Evening News. As I did this, I became more aware from friends and people on the street that something really strange was happening . I beefed up our grafitti art in a more religious direction. We began using religious symbologies in bus and subway stations and we tryed to tie it all into an apocalyptic scenario. This was 1982-83 after all. Reagan was in power. Many of us really felt the world could end any day now. We started calling our street art "The Seven Seals."

Then there was a point around July-August 1983 when it was really scary for us to go out on the street because of this "apocalyptosis/art hysteria/personality cult" There were people who were beginning to believe I was Christ re-incarnate! Others just called me a saint. We'd always approached the artistic subject of religion from an absurdist point of view. Evidently we had created a feedback loop by combining the psychic phenomenon with an underground public relations campaign. It didn't help of course, when friends of mine from Juilliard would tell other stories about my psychic powers; a time when my eyes glowed uncontrollably at a party or the time I spoke directly to someone telepathically in the Juilliard cafeteria and the woman started screaming, "You spoke directly to my mind!" These were never that controllable by me to the point of being able to use them like a tool. It would just come and go at random. The TV effect was something that I could use to effect. I began entertaining the idea of using it to actively "jam" corporate and political messaging.

By this point, some Arab neighbors of ours had become upset because of my "spiritual" notoriety. We'd never paid that much attention to them, but more and more Arab men in black robes were hanging outside of our apartment building, praying. We just ignored them; finding it hard to believe that it was related to our art activism. But when mullahs, fresh off the plain from Iran, started dropping by our door when I was at work and visiting Elsie and leaving Khomeini literature, we became a little concerned. They began threatening us in the elevator when we were alone with them; we believe this probably started when they found we had put their literature in the trash. Maybe not.

Things on the street were heating up so hot, that we had photographers waiting for us outside our building. When we'd go out, people would chase after us to get a better glimpse of "that saint." We started getting worried; I had never had any interest in becoming a religious figure. I was a composer! Elsie had recently lost a couple of documentary filmmaker friends who were making a film about a voodoo cult; they had been found chopped up in little pieces in the back of their car. We knew how crazy people could get when it came to religion, art, mob behavior, and cults. And we could see now that it was not going to come out in the legitimate press. The whole scene was going to be ignored, big-time.

We left town after death threats became more believable. But even then, I was still unconvinced that the TV effect really was not a delusion. I decided that if things got weird in New Orleans, that it had to be true. After I started zapping TV programs in New Orleans, this time without any preliminary grafitti art; it was obvious from our friends and neighbors that something was happening.

SPEED: Is this something that "anyone" might already be aware of "intuitively" or is this something one must approach with a specific mind-set, or both, or neither?

Harrington: People have told me that they could never figure out why certain strange things kept happening around certain TV personalities until they heard about this phenomenon. The Dan Rather, "What's the frequency Kenneth?" phenomenon, Reagan's sudden inability to give a speech without blinking uncontrollably. (In retrospect that could have been Alzheimers' related!)

SPEED: Do you know more than the average person about the 'What's the Frequency, Kenneth?' episode?

Harrington: Sorry, I've just heard a few speculations.

Actually, I have called CBS Evening News news room several times. Once, I posed as an ABC correspondent and asked about whether they were going to do a story on the disturbance effect. The reporter paused for a few minutes and then came back to me with, "It's our policy not to discuss news stories in planning." I called the news room after the Panama Invasion, accusing them of under-reporting civilian casualties and pledging to zap every news show for the next few months. Our phone went dead within minutes. It took 3 weeks for us to get phone service back. The phone company couldn't explain what happened. It ended up, they told us that a computer error had blocked our line.

SPEED: How does the process of psychic disturbance work?

Harrington: I've got no idea. It's got to have something to do with issues at the sub-quantum level, non-locality, etc.

SPEED: Do you think it's something built into televisual technology itself?

Harrington: That's my guess. It's hard for me to tell if it's something personal or whether others can do it, also. The act of seeing, itself, is an invasive act. All of us can "tell" when we're being stared at, even without eyes in the backs of our head. Seeing, seen as a penetrative act, combined with our own obvious illuminative characteristics (as lifeforms we emit all kind of radiation) enhanced by manmade amplification combine into this effect. But this is more speculation.

SPEED: Can the person on the t.v. control the effect as well?

Harrington: I would doubt this. I have noticed, though, that when some news-casters that were well aware of the effect got angry, that my process was weakened. I suspect that this has more to do with me losing concentration, but who knows?

SPEED: I'd like to ask about the relationship between your grafitti art and the television zapping. The former is a kind of interference that is very public, a group thing; while the later is much more private, an individual thing (or is it?). I ask this in terms of a certain change: televisions are everywhere in our cities (in malls, airports, shops, building lobbies, everywhere) Have you attempted to utilize the zapping as a form of graffiti by using on one of these public televisions?

Harrington: Ha... that's exactly what I'm doing! It is a kind of writing, after all, especially when seen as a way of provoking reponses (i.e. blinking) out of a specific subset of society. Our methods during the street art project were designed as non-destructive provocations. Our agenda was always unclear. We essentially were doing things to see what would happen. To this day, I'm unclear about how or what I can accomplish through this process (outside of a kind of ridiculous celebrity). I'm reminded of a scene in Tarkovsky's "The Sacrifice" when the father is telling his son about monks watering a tree they know would never survive. "They did it because it was a meditation." Interesting things happen as a result of things done for no reason.

SPEED: You've just been to Scotland to participate in the "Forbidden Science" t.v. program and to zap the national lottery. How did this go? Did you end up on the BBC talk show after all?

Harrington: The Forbidden Science show was a curated art gathering with other performance artists that do related telepathic/technology work. I did a presentation/setup Friday, the 8th and the zap Saturday night, which was disappointing because the 20 minute show was mainly a bunch of shots of things people are doing with the zillions of dollars they win. The camera angles weren't in my favor, that is, the person on camera was done from the side and not looking into the camera. The studio audience was loud and distracting to the people on camera. It's a little bit like a short British "Sabado Gigante."

Because it wasn't a good demonstration (even though it worked pretty nicely as a piece with the round projection TV and me meditating on a tiny TV in front of the audience) I volunteered to zap a Sunday morning David Frost show, which two audience members agreed to tape. I got a good zap in with one of the gentleman on TV blinking himself practically senseless... and did a followup Q&A afterward. It was a pretty good demonstration.

BBC didn't come through with the talk show, something about the complexity of the setup I requested. I insisted that they have a separate in-screen shot of the camera on me looking at itself with a mirror. The show was going to use "ghosts and psychics" as a 5-10 minute diversion from a rock star interview.

They did send a crew and they taped the whole weekend. Some spots will probably end up on latenight BBC.

I think the one thing I got through with the Q&A's and the demo was my insistence on no special privelege for this kind of illumination. I attempted to hammer my ideas that achievement of the "miraculous" is nothing; possibly even a sin. That there is no merit in this; that merit is in the illuminative act for that instant, itself.

SPEED: In terms of the problem of public-space television. What kind of responses have you provoked?

Harrington: In terms of immediate physical responses, the usual, blinks and gaps in the goings-on of the show. In terms of long term response... this is more problematic. Because of our society's authority-driven nature, the usual response is not wonder at the idea that this is possible but instead, the desire to establish hierarchy-driven spiritual merit on me. That is, I'm a saint and you're not games.

SPEED: You said regarding the zapping of public space screens that "Interesting things happen as a result of things done for no reason," but can the responses reveal their own reasons, cause after effect?

Harrington: Yes, definitely. This is one of the dangers with having reduced the effect to a physical, intrusive act, that of promoting blinking or stammering in the person on camera. The illumination is the interesting part. Often, my use of relevant increases or decreases in illumination to promote a blink here or there end up as a commentary, even though this change might be the result of me burping or being momentarily distracted.

SPEED: Along the line of public-space screens, many of them do not broadcast images, people and such, but "raw data," numerical information of various sorts. Have you experimented with any manipulation of these contents?

Harrington: No. I'm still so surpised even after 14 years of glowing cameras that I haven't attempted to add new tricks to my collection. I'm not real comfortable with the whole idea of changing or manipulating things at my will. It's so ego-driven. After the Scotland presentation, I was reminded vividly of the dangers of the ego-driven performance of psychic processes. Several people each evening came that were obviously close to delusional and requested that I help them achieve greater mastery over their own powers. One fellow bragged about causing people to have headaches; another ranted about radio transmitters in their brains.

I ended up spending about 10 minutes of my presentation Saturday night preaching about the dangers of ego-driven magic. I'm very worried about the fact that I may not inspire people to think creatively about technology and the spiritual or about meditation, but instead to obsess about getting more power over other people. In Zen, one is told always to "hide your true face." People who have attained certain methods of inner knowledge/illumination should hide themselves. This is my continuing sin.

SPEED: It seems that your project has been lumped together will others with which it doesn't really have much in common. Why do you think this is? Are you emphatic in differentiating yourself?

Harrington: I'm not certain what you mean. If you mean that it's been lumped together with channelling, etc., that's certainly true. And given the media focus on this type of psychic phenomena, understandable, although you're correct in assuming I'd like to differentiate my project from other channelling efforts. By approaching the piece as performance art, I believe that I've lessened the danger of establishing a guru/student relationship with my audience.

SPEED: I'd like to ask you about the idea of ego-driven work. Cultural theory and practice of the last twenty to eighty years (depending on one's view) is characterized in the various terms of 'the death of the subject.' How do you see your work in light of this context?

Harrington: In as much as these theories are at times relevant to the destruction of the subject-object dichotomy, yes there is relevance. But my perspective generally has been more weighted towards the traditional mystical rather than the theoretical. It's been my hope, however, to be able to teach others to produce these effects. By establishing a community of people who could interfere with corporate television illuminatively as a collective, we'd truly produce a piece without boundaries. At last, the piece would transcend my own personal political and emotional interests. However much I'd like to be able to illuminate without political intent, the temptation is too great not to try and help the process.

SPEED: Does it have to do with producing new kinds of technological subjectivities, reasserting 'subjectivity' in the face of technology, or something entirely different?

Harrington: In the examination of the 'piece,' that is, the performance of the invasive act, yes, my goal is to create new inexplicable subjectivities. Especially when it comes to intruding upon the political/propagandive process of TV as political tool, my interest has been to create a context which was meaningless, yet potent. In the upcoming US presidential debates, I find myself once again forced to abandon my hope to be able to zap both parties with equal intent. So, I end up with a more traditional theoretical role, that of intruder/provacateur, rather than that of a producer of constantly changing and inexplicable illuminative commentary.

SPEED: Where does that leave the "ego" that needs to be cautioned, and its more general relationship to technology?

Harrington: By learning how to transcend one's ego, I believe we can achieve a more interesting relationship with technology which might include direct control of telepresence enhancements to our natural psychic abilities.

SPEED: What would be, in the best of all possible worlds, the ultimate medium of demonstration for your art?

Harrington: It would require at least one broadcasting television camera focussed on a mirror. The illumination would be visible in the mirror as the camera took its own picture of its lens. To have another camera on me watching and meditating on the broadcast with a split screen of the camera's recording of itself in the mirror of its lens. To have another camera on me watching and meditating on the broadcast with a split screen of the camera's recording of itself in the mirror would be ideal.

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