Radionics & Art

What does radionics, a little known energy medicine technology have to do with art? What radionics means to art is best understood as a means of employing subtle energy radiation, directed through materials by focused intent, at the viewer. In a simpler context, who hasn’t felt menace from a set of headlights approaching from behind at night? Or positively, think of a loving cook putting that intent into the food, and how it seems to taste better for it.

Forget for a moment the formalistic concerns of art. Think instead of the means by which intent can be applied to tools & materials. Doesn’t some energy or radiation permeate art and broadcast itself to the viewer? Traditionally, radionics encompasses a variety of tools and techniques, of many different types and design. All are used to direct the operator’s intent to heal a patient or do other forms of work. Ironically, these devices can themselves be considered works of art.

In certain types of shamanic art and practice, an energy/intent matrix infuses a form or ceremony, radiating its presence (and purpose) to the viewer. That art form becomes like a battery. The creator’s intent powers a symbolic construct which has multiple functions, as in mandalic art. There are also numerous instances of trance dance, from classical Indian Kathakali to Afro-Cuban Orisha dance, which demonstrate how radiated intent from a deity adapts and directs kinetic expression to the audience.

Artistically, the manner by which one employs directed intent via subtle radiation is completely open ended. We think of art as metaphorical, unique to the individual and their circumstances, but viewing art as radiation that can be focused to do work has rarely been employed outside shamanic societies. Thus, the form radionics can take remains relatively unexplored in conventional artistic contexts.

I began making paintings representing radionic operations I performed in the mid 1980s, and later experimented with radionically designed sonic listening environments. These studies followed the experience of a powerful, spontaneous vision that slowly became comprehensible through integrating it into visual art. The notion of consciousness acting as a medium for the absorption of energy and information from internal states of being provided me with a model for understanding how a lateral transaction between intent and creativity (i.e. radionics) could occur in other contexts.

The first opportunity I had to explore this process on a larger scale was in the early 1990s when I began designing the Dragonline Studio facility in Rhode Island. Long an admirer and later a friend of British writer/philosopher John Michell, I had become accustomed to thinking about sacred geometry in architecture as a radionic transaction between cosmos and man. Employing the Golden Mean in the design of the studio turned it into a radionic “tuned cavity”. Within that space one could theoretically experience a higher degree of harmony with the cosmos and nature. The studio was constructed upon a site of extraordinary natural beauty. The radionic implication of the Golden Ratio design is that beauty and harmony are focused and concentrated within that space. Activities performed in that environment would simultaneously be “broadcast” or radiated back into the world, stimulating a constructive “feedback loop” with Nature.

In fact, by numerous accounts over the succeeding years, I would say the finished structure fulfilled, to a degree, those lofty expectations. The architectural utilization of radionic theory became in my experience, immediately self-evident and aesthetically refreshing. Seeing radionics work architecturally helped me to disentangle it from historical radionic design, which can be obscured by cryptic techniques, devices, diagrams, and methodologies.