MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE LSD

The best thing to do for more basic information on the LSD is

to visit the previous incarnation of this site. It dates from 2004,

when the LSD was set up in a different space.

You can also visit waybackmachine.org for even

earlier incarnations of whatisthelsd.com that are increasingly

embarassing as you get further back. (Assuming,

that is, waybackmachine.org is still up.)

The point I've struggled to make over these years is that

the LSD is a new medium, with an new upper limit of

representational quality.

As mentioned on the home page, the LSD is currently a 24-channel

sound system in Austin. That is because this LSD was the best LSD

that I could build on a relatively small budget.

With a larger budget, much more advanced LSDs

can be built — I believe I have discovered a new medium

that transcends and includes previous media. For the cost

of a middling motion picture, for instance, I believe I could build

an amazing LSD that would far exceed any film experience.

In 2002, I wrote a book (available in PDF format here) that describes

in detail the methods by which anyone could build the full range of

LSDs foreseeable, by me at least, at that time.

Since then, technology has advanced significantly such that much of

what I wrote in 2002 has been superseded. That means, however, that

it's now much easier to achieve some of the effects I described back

then. Most especially, there's the ready availability of cheaper, higher-resolution

flat-panel displays, be they driven by analog or digital information.

A future LSD might be comprised of a thousand sound points

in the space around you, not just 24.

Or it might consist of a wall of 2,048 LCD monitors.

In my view, even old-fashioned CRTs and VCRs could produce a

compelling, high-resolution experience.

To summarize the book and the concept as much as possible (though I do

urge you to check the book out for some fairly mind-blowing examples), the

LSD is a high-resolution medium that provides an audio or visual experience

much more in line with our capacity, as humans, to hear and see. Adding a

computational layer to this experience increases its potency.

What you perceive right now through your senses, be it life, a book, TV, a movie,

is bound by certain conditions. The LSD is an attempt to show us that we are free

to imagine beyond those conditions and to finally, possibly, or at least a bit more,

be free.

If you want to see what I've discovered along this path on a theoretical level,

please take a look at the aforementioned book — written well before I'd actually

built and made music for the 24-channel LSD currently in Austin, Texas.

This LSD has exceeded, by the way, all expectations; a few of my friends have been kind

enough to send me (solicited) testimonials, which you can read here.

Thank you for reading this much, and please do contact me if you have questions or

observations, or would like to hear the LSD as it is currently manifested.

Roy Leamon

2007