Museum of Illusions invites visitors into a playful world of shifting perspectives, immersive rooms and sensory surprises in Sydney.
As someone who struggles with the concept of reality at times, I wasn’t entirely sure how to handle the challenge of taking on the Museum of Illusions. I was paradoxically deeply fearful and incredibly excited by the notion of it.
If there is one lesson that I learnt from a trusted friend of mine recently, it is that I know my own reality, and that is what matters.
The morning of the exhibit, I found myself ringing my mum like an excited child. She admitted, with a hint of envy, that she had been wanting to take my 12-year-old niece. With my mind racing and her anticipation ringing in my ears, I hopped on the light rail toward the George Street venue.
Earlier this year, I went to the optometrist to get my eyes checked. I almost felt my jaw hit the floor when she told me I no longer needed glasses – my vision had corrected itself. I could see! Or could I...
“Trick your eyes, entertain your mind, mesmerise your senses.”
Sleight of eyes, bend your mind, senses buffering.
Taking the escalators down into the depths of the streets, I stepped out of reality, or so it would appear, and into the Illusionatorium. Facing the very first fact on the museum wall, I let out an audible gasping groan – a combination of mystification and immediate acknowledgement.
“Following eyes”, as with the Mona Lisa – the eyes that follow you wherever you go around the room.
It made me get a bit of the Truman-ick feeling, like I might be being constantly surveilled. Big Brother is watching (and has been since before 1984).
Serving Up My Head on a Platter
Of course, I couldn’t leave without getting a photo of my own noggin ready for consumption at the “Head on a Platter” exhibit.
Amusingly, looking at the snap of my disembodied head reminded me of being about ten years old, lying idle on my mum’s bed while she was talking to me. I remember abruptly exclaiming, “Really, all we’re talking to is just a head!”
Strangely enough, I get that same feeling today during a gruellingly long Zoom call. My intellect and my voice are still up there performing, but my physical body, my comfort, and perhaps even a bit of my humanity have been completely edited out of the frame. (I mean, pyjama pants, anyone?)
Lost in the Infinity Loop
The Infinity Room neon sign promises infinite copies of yourself, and it absolutely delivers. The room is lined entirely with mirrors, creating a limitless expanse where light bounces into the infinite distance under hanging disco lights.
I struck a Freddie-Mercury-meets-me pose and watched an endless army of me stretching out into an expansive, all-encompassing void. Reflections stretched out in all directions.
Dizzyingly, I felt around for the exit door, only to feel solid mirror after mirror. I was deep in the Rabbit Hole!
I thought of the time I have wasted sidetracking completely off topic – a thousand open tabs in my head to return to later until, exhausted, I crash and click out of all of them at once.
And there was the doorway! (Spoiler alert: it was there the whole time.)
Surviving the Vortex Tunnel
The sign for the Vortex Tunnel explicitly instructs you to hold onto the handrails while walking through it, so naturally, I thought I’d test fate and see what happened if I catwalked through without them.
I took one teetering step onto the railed bridge inside the swirling, neon-lit tunnel, and by the second step, that catty confidence had vanished.
I toppled to my left and gladly grabbed onto the rail, exclaiming, “Hold onto the handrails, folks!”
I spent the rest of the walk teetering tentatively, foot by foot, laughing to absolutely no one but myself.
When I reached what felt like solid land again, I had to re-steady myself, even though the ground beneath me had actually been still the entire time.
When I reached what felt like solid land again, I had to re-steady myself, even though the ground beneath me had actually been still the entire time. My body was reacting to a storm that only existed in my head.
Flipped Realities
The Upside-Down Pub and Cliff-hanger exhibits turn your world upside down, forcing a surreal psychological state that feels like a physical gaslight.
Physically, my feet were planted flat on the ground, yet because the surrounding scenery was entirely inverted, the photos tell a topsy-turvy, opposing story.
Looking at the pictures, I appear to be happily defying gravity by holding up a pool table from the ceiling or desperately clinging to the ledge of a building façade.
It is a brilliantly fabricated crisis, but it mimics that exact, disorienting real-life feeling of having the narrative completely flipped on you.
So, I was thoroughly split, fragmented, decapitated, multiplied, inverted and flipped.
And if there’s one thing I have been burning for lately, it is a dedicated space built to entirely mess with my sensory data while simultaneously alerting me to it.
I think I’m starting to understand.
Reality is just a highly organised set of illusions.
Illusions aren’t a sign that your eyes are failing you or that you need a check-up. They are proof that your brain is actively trying to find a pattern, even when the input is rigged.
Illusions keep our minds guessing.
We don’t actually see the world; we construct a highly educated, often deeply flawed prediction of it based on the data we receive through our eyes.
I think that I ‘see’ more clearly every day.
Reviewed by: Odette McCarthy