Don Hill’s Mystery Machine

My friend Don Hill has a new at installation that recreates the perceptual properties of sacred holy sites. In his theory, rock formations create electromagnetic waves that alter our brain waves. As such, the theory seems to posit that urban landscapes are inherently unhealthy for our brains, whereas natural landscapes have electromagnetic properties that enhance our perceptual abilities.

This research seems to come from Don’s experience of living in a haunted house in Canmore. In his documentary, Haunted House, Haunted Minds, Don discovered that his house was built on a First Nations burial ground. But did the burial ground make his house haunted, or was it something else? What caused people to bury their dead at this location? Is it something in the landscape that allowed them to have spiritual visions, perhaps?

Don has re-created these electromagnetic waves in an art installation. He is asking people to sit in it and describe their experiences.

Some of the finest rock art is located in Canada, along waterways such as Writing-On-Stone on Alberta’s Milk River, the magnificent Hickson Lake
pictographs on the Churchill River system in northern Saskatchewan, Agawa’s inscription rock on the north shore of Lake Superior, as well as multiple pictograph spots on Lake of the Woods, and along the Stein River valley in British Columbia where “they write their
dreams upon the rock forever.” My scientific colleagues and I have simulated the
sense of well-being that is sometimes associated with rock art locations. pdf

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