I completely agree. This performance seemed to be flashy and loud simply for the sake of being flashy and loud. I also agree that we should have been notified of how intense the display would be. I’m just glad that no one – to my knowledge – had any extremely adverse reactions. I understand that the performers may not have wanted the show to start with a warning of potential seizures or something like that, but I think it’s a small price to pay for safety. When an artist puts out a work such as this that alienates so many – either from its sheer abstractness or hazardous conditions – one has to wonder whether they’re putting on the performance for the audience or for him or herself. I’m sure it all made sense in Mr. Ikeda’s mind, but certainly not in mine or in the minds of everyone I’ve talked to about it.

Superposition was madness. Utter madness. And I hated it. I came in expecting something different and abstract, though I didn’t realize just how out there it was going to be. I felt that the performance transitioned between the incomprehensible and the self-consciously abstract. I was also expecting more musicality out of the performance. Sure, noises were made in a fashion that could be described by the generous as musical, but if it was music it certainly was not any type of music that I would ever deem fit for listening. Superposition was an overly absurd and mysterious performance that had a few saving graces in the realm of the visual – though these were few and far between.

For me, the majority of Superposition seemed like a random collection of jarring computerized images and sounds that seemed to have no other function than to disorient the audience. At times I thought I might begin to make sense of them or the meaning of the piece, primarily during the sequence that involved scrolling through the newspaper pages, though nothing ever clicked for me. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t working hard enough to create my own connections – Superposition was a sort of “choose your own performance” in this sense. Though, I do not believe this to be any fault of my own. Any great performance should engage its audience and make it so that the audience wants nothing more than to be in the midst of the experience. This was not the case for me and my experience with Superposition.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Superposition was its pacing – it succeeded in effectively lulling me to sleep with its slower bits and then jarringly and unpleasantly shaking me from my intermittent slumber (which, may I add I was fighting through, to the best of my ability). Superposition was a performance that seemed as if it craved for me to have an unpleasant experience. It seemed as if it was a parody of bad performance art. Perhaps if I had thought of the performance as that before seeing it, I could have had an experience reminiscent of a good time.