Tech artist Usman Haque is seeking participants for a new project where he is artificially creating the "experience of a 'haunted' space." He and collaborator Chris French are generating fluctuations in humidity, temperature, infrasound and/or electromagnetic frequencies, all phenomena that parapsychologists have linked to ghostly hauntings. If you'll be in the London area over the next few weeks, you can set up an appointment by emailing event@haque.co.uk. (I wrote an article last year about one of Haque's previous projects. Link) From the invitation to be a subject in Haunt:
As a participant you would be asked individually to spend up to one hour in the specially constructed chamber. Participation may involve periods of exposure to infrasound and/or magnetic fields. You may experience mildly unusual sensations and will be asked to keep a record of these.
"Infrasound" is sound at frequencies below approx. 20Hz, which is generally too low for humans to perceive as sound. The magnetic fields will be generated by electromagnetic coils and will be similar to those generated naturally by the Earth. The levels used in the experiment will be at or below levels detected in the natural environment. These too will generally not be perceptible on a conscious level and are well under ICNIRP guidelines for health and safety.
In some cases, participants will be exposed to neither phenomena, though these participants will not be informed of this until the end of the experiment. In these cases, participants will be given an opportunity to experience the space with all phenomena active, though the results will not be included in the dataset.
And from the project page:
There are naturally questions regarding whether these phenomena arise out of existing natural and manmade constructions: power stations, draughty windows, leaking pipes. The project proposed here does not attempt to explain how the phenomena arise, or even how they give rise to haunted perceptions. Rather, the project focuses on how the psychology of human perception gives rise to the construction of space.
