dissolves the connection between optically perceptible spatial depths and the experience of spatial dimensions, engendering the impression of finding oneself in an infinite field of pure colored light. Turrell's light spaces thus not only treat vision itself and the mutual play between illusion and perception, but show through a lack of optical and spatial orientation at the same time the body as a site of perception. In his «Perceptual Cells« (1991), Turrell provides the participatory variant of these stagings of perception. The observer enters in a small closed perception capsule, where with the help of buttons and regulators he can test sensory stimulations.

Sound

Starting from the body as a site where perception manifests itself, Olaf Arndt and Rob Moonen use sensory deprivation to show in their isolation space «Camera Silens» (1994) that it is impossible to not perceive anything.[46] Protected from external influences, perception concentrates on one's own body noises. John Cage, whose thinking was influenced by Asian philosophy, allowed himself to be inspired to

one of his most famous works through the experience in an isolation tank. The realization that the lack of external influences does not lead to absolute silence, but a concentration on interior sensory experiences that are suppressed in everyday perception is the concept of the piano work «4'33''»[47] which was premiered in 1952. The title corresponds to the length of the piece, during which however no single piano tone sounds. Instead of using the keys, the pianist shuts the cover of the keyboard and thus produces a supposed silence, which is multiply interrupted by the opening and closing of the piano lid. What thereby can be heard are the sounds of the spectators like rustling, coughing, heckling and the like.[48]

The technique of briefly interrupting silence with the banging of wood in order to subsequently experience the silence all the more intensely is used in the art of traditional Japanese sound gardens. In a creek, a wooden vessel attached to a kind of see-saw fills in regular intervals with water; this then shifts the balance, and when the see-saw hits the bottom it produces a sound that contrasts the dominant peaceful atmosphere with its brief small shock of the