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Experience (2011 - 2012)
by Carsten Höller
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Spread across multiple floors of the New Museum, the exhibition presented immersive works that invited visitors to test their own perception, balance, and psychological state. Höller’s background in biology shaped his approach: he used the museum like a laboratory, where art became an experiment and the audience became the subject.

























Among the most memorable works was Giant Psycho Tank (2000).





Visitors entered a large floatation tank, lying back in warm, heavily salted water. The high salinity made the body completely buoyant, removing the usual sense of weight. The pool was shielded from light and sound, creating an environment of deep sensory deprivation.





The experience was more than physical. Drifting without gravity blurred the limits of the body, producing what many described as an out-of-body sensation. Inside the tank, participants felt both highly aware of internal rhythms and strangely detached from themselves. Höller transformed the museum into a site for altered consciousness, allowing visitors to float into a state between science, art, and philosophy.




Weightlessness and Psychological Lightness


The Psycho Tank resonates with a larger idea: the body and the mind are not separate. In psychology, the theory of embodied cognition suggests that our thoughts are shaped by physical states. We often describe stress as a “weight” and relief as a “lightness.” In Höller’s tank, when physical weight is removed, psychological weight can feel reduced as well.

Floating induces a state similar to deep meditation. Studies on sensory deprivation flotation show reduced stress, anxiety, and pain, as well as heightened focus and calm. Many participants report a loss of body boundaries, where they no longer feel where the self begins or ends. This dissolution is often accompanied by relief from inner burdens.

The experience connects to life more broadly. Just as dancers translate bodily awareness into expression, or athletes transform balance into strategy, the tank suggests that releasing physical heaviness can translate into mental clarity. Negotiation, creativity, and decision-making can all draw from the same heightened bodily awareness. In floating weightlessly, visitors practice a kind of reset — a release from both physical and psychological gravity.



  Sources:

  • New Museum, Carsten Höller: Experience exhibition archive, 2011–2012
  • New Museum Press Release, 2011
  • Psychology Today, “How Floatation Tanks Reduce Anxiety” (2018)
  • Feinstein JS, Khalsa SS, Yeh HW, et al. “Floating Away: Effects of Sensory Deprivation Floatation on Anxiety and the Default Mode Network” (2018)
  • Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, “Altered States of Consciousness in Floatation REST” (2014)

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