High science meets high consciousness. The Flogiston chair is the hedonistic toy Romans would have given their right hand to have back in the days. Like a vital stat monitor or a flight simulator, the Flogiston chair is one of those pure-feature objects that are so hard to describe (as objects) because they are only about what they do, and what they do is so purely high-tech that it is not very interesting. What is interesting is that the Flogiston chair is an object that is an experience. A commercial spinoff of a NASA undertaking to develop an immersive training system for astronauts, it was invented in 1989. Its inventor, Brian Park, wanted to develop a reclining chair based on the posture experienced in zero gravity, the posture that the body naturally falls into when external forces are reduced. The Flogiston chair really an immersive mini-environment. The user’s head is surrounded by a frosted fibreglass dome onto which images are projected. The effect is that of a personal IMAX theatre. The chair’s electric / pneumatic base provides a vibration effect synchronized with several other audio-visual and sensorial effects. Using software, sound and light are mixed to induce different brain frequencies in the user. Integrated speakers set up various bi-neural beats to entrain the occupants into specific alpha, beta and theta wave states. The state of total situation awareness that the user experiences defines, 40 years later, the psychedelic proposals of the 60s and 70s.
