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THRESHOLDS OF PERCEPTION: DRIFT

by

John Patrick Walsh 3

________________________________________________________________________

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS

August 2012

Copyright 2012 John Patrick Walsh 3
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EPIGRAPH

When I was at Cooper Union, someone told me how I could get on to the
unfinished New Jersey Turnpike. I took three students and drove from somewhere in the
Meadows to New Brunswick. It was a dark night and there were no lights or shoulder
markers, lines, railings or anything at all except the dark pavement moving through the
landscape of the flats, rimmed by hills in the distance, but punctuated by stacks, towers,
fumes and colored lights. This drive was a revealing experience. The road and much of
the landscape was artificial, and yet it couldn't be called a work of art. It did something
for me that art has never done. It seemed that there was a reality there, which had not
had any expression in art.
Tony Smith in conversation with Samuel Wagstaff 1960

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Epigraph ii

List of Figures iv

Abstract v

Drifters: Balance and Human Thresholds Behind the Wheel 1
Zone 1 6
Arab Drift 6
Drift Comparisons 9
Tokyo Drift 10
Senna 12

Early Drift, Enzo Ferrari 13

Zone 2 14

Drifting the Homemade: Wax Wheels and Ferrari Engines 15

Bibliography 21

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Screen Capture from YouTube, Arab Drift 1
Figure 2: Screen Capture of YouTube 3

Figure 3: Screen Capture from YouTube, Arab Drift 6
Figure 4: Screen Capture from YouTube, Bmore Xtream 9
Figure 5: Screen Capture from YouTube, Tokyo Drift 10
Figure 6: Still From Senna Documentary about Ayrton Senna 2010 12
Figure 7: Image from The Enzo Ferrari Story An Autobiography 13

Figure 8: Diagram Locating the Otoconia in a Human 15
Figure 9: Diagram of the Racetrack at Monaco Speedway 15
Figure 10: Arab Drift Tuned Endo, Performance Still 2009 16
Figure 11: Volume A Rhoades Referencz 17
Figure 12: Screen Capture from YouTube via Phototron 18
Figure 13: Arab Drift Tuned Endo, Performance Still 2009 19

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ABSTRACT
We inhabit a society that demands increasing access to instant communication,
expanded motorways and thus creating more moments of divided attention, we are faced
with a culture that will evolve based on the interpretation and manipulation of these
technologies. In this paper I examine interpretations of the in-between time of commuting
that is a part of so many urban dweller’s lives.

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Figure 1: Screen Capture from YouTube, Arab Drift
DRIFTERS: BALANCE AND HUMAN THRESHOLDS BEHIND THE WHEEL
To put the body into free play, to engage the imagination while inside the
automobile, is a maneuver analogous to a Russian doll. Earth is orbiting the sun, a
metropolis of interconnected highways; a car, the driver, the inner ear where the otolith
organ keeps the body’s linear balance, and finally, the imagination and its capacity for
divided attention, within the brain. All of the physical properties of the universe matched
against the effervescence of the mind. The imagination works and wanders during a
commute. You’re able to think yet you cannot create. Your divided attention is startlingly
polar: the mechanical part of the mind deals with the road, while the aesthetic mind
attempts to organize all other voluntary thoughts -- what you might like to make for dinner,
! %!
or as an artwork. For many, this has become a time of daily reflection and recalibration; it
is the in-between time, personal and alienated. When driving, we attempt to focus
primarily on distance and speed, yet our minds will inevitably wander to a place of partial
awareness: the body performing a choreography of mechanical gestures, subsumed to the
mind’s wandering thoughts. All the while looking straight ahead, following in the time
line, maybe looking back to change lanes, but never for more than a moment.
With the rise of the smart phone, and its increased use as a tool of habitual
distraction, we discover that writing, photography and driving are possible to accomplish
simultaneously, however not always successfully. The presence of the smartphones does
not mean that the mind’s proclivity for contemplation is completely disrupted, but divided
again. Competing with so many sensations, the limits of actual focus are stretched to their
ends. However, as humans adapt to their technology, will evolution demand increased and
sharpened abilities for multi-tasking? The ubiquity of smartphones and the passivity of
driving a car have lead to their inevitable simultaneous use, sometimes taken to the point of
suicidal banality. The act of writing text messages while laying down on the seat of your
motorcycle as you accelerate down the highway suggests that there must be a pleasure in
communicating while in transit, a pleasure in distraction; some have fully evolved to full
functioning divided attention.
&! !

Figure 2: Screen Capture of YouTube

Virillio’s model of invention states that with the creation of a 1,000-passenger
airplane comes the 1,000-passenger accident. When advancements in science and
technology lead to more sophisticated modes of transportation, their mere existence
increases the potentiality for a catastrophic accident.
The Military has learned many defense techniques from nature: for instance, bats
have inspired military scientists to emulate their echolocation skills to discreetly locate
their enemies. Stealth bombers are designed to avoid radar and therefore be able to fly
undetected. Submarines, aircrafts, and radio towers are a distinct adaptation and
exploitation of night vision and supersonic sound waves. Satellite dishes can transmit and
receive frequencies undetectable to the human senses. The destruction caused by these
! '!
technological advancements is seen as an inevitable price to pay for the convenience of
rapid transit and the sophistication of modern warfare.
“We know very well that progress in space is not necessarily progress in time. The fact of
going faster from Paris to New York doesn’t make the exchange any better. It makes them
shorter. But the shortest is not necessarily the best.”
1

Paul Virilio

Currently we have technology that allows us to be hyper-aware of our location. As
satellites track us from above, we chart our live progress on touch screen maps, sitting in
traffic trying to assess how much longer our journey will be. Our real-time location is
information that’s made available for the system of Google Maps, thus creating a symbiotic
relationship between the user and Google Maps, locating and providing a representation of
your body in space. Surrounded by banner ads and billboards, we are virtually and literally
drifting through the Capitalist Matrix, dipping in and out of two screens, a touch screen and
a windshield. Our advertisers are bombarding us with consumable goods and phrases, ever
weakening our attention to the road and our own internal thoughts.
While driving, we have an inherent sense of the space around the car. This sense
seems to be most problematic when we are parallel parking, yet while we are traveling
forward, we tend to be very comfortable assuming the car will fit down a narrow street or
past slower cars on the highway. The rules of a freshly paved highway are not yet in place.
The same is true along empty desert highways: the perspective begins to open up, and you
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!()*+!,"-"."/0!(12.)!(2-3!41-!(Semiotext(e)!
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become more conscious of your lateral movement through space. As your speed increases,
you may get the urge to start aggressively turning the car’s steering wheel to increase the
effect of G-forces on the body. Like figure skaters doing figure eight turns, quickly sliding
frontwards and backwards, you are no longer just a traveler on this road, but an athlete, a
wanderer, a performer, a conjurer of new ways to perceive thoughts, visions and inhabit
space. Compressed between text messages and nudges on the acceleration pedal, these
gestures seem to blend together.
How does Guy Debord’s theory of derive translate into our contemporary
experience of driving down the ever-increasing sprawl of the modern superhighway?
Debord conceived of derive, which literally translates from French to drift, as “a mode of
experimental behavior linked to conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage
through varied ambiences (…) the term also designates a specific uninterrupted period of
deriving.” To derive is to experience an unplanned journey, to be led by cues in the urban
environment, with the goal of having a spontaneous and authentic experience. The idea of
having a disruptive experience of one’s environment, to use the grid as a means for
unexpected discovery, is akin to the practice of automobile stunt drifting. The architecture
of the city and the roads become a blank canvas for skilled motorists.

“One always says that the primary freedom is freedom of movement. True, but not
freedom of speed. When you go too fast you are entirely stripped of yourself, you become
totally alienated. There can be a dictatorship of movement.”
2

Paul Virilio
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ZONE 1
Drift: to disconnect, wander, lost and searching, derive, intentional, theoretical political
wandering, to pollinate as bees do, sprinkle oneself across an entire city or meadow, a
street or path. Free fall, suspension, without gravity, weightless, if only for a second,
without acknowledgement of a certain place in the world, disconnected, lack of inertia,
only sky, or air, complete alienation, loss of dialogue, stripped bare. To exist in free fall is
the nexus of two restraints, you have somehow temporarily escaped the land, yet you are
quickly rushing back to the earth.
ARAB DRIFT

6! !
Figure 3: Screen Capture from YouTube, Arab Drift
In Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Middle East, car stunts called Drifts (or
Hagwala) are performed at top speed, often involving a controlled out-of-control four-
wheel slide on a straight highway, weaving between passenger traffic. Spectators line the
sides of the road, edging closer as the drifters graze the edge of the highway, whipping the
crowd with sand and rubber. The cars streaking and skidding almost out of control, yet
nestled within the arms of chaos: the lives of the crowd, the other motorists on the road,
and the drifters all take second place to the experience of drift. This, of course, can
sometimes prove to be fatal.
“Aesthetic culture presupposes a total revolution in the mode of perception and feeling and
such revolution becomes possible only if civilization has reached the highest physical and
intellectual maturity. Only when the ‘constraint of need’ is replaced by the “constraint of
superfluity” (abundance) will the human existence be impelled to a ‘free movement which
is itself both an end and means.”
3
Herbert Marcuse Eros and Civilization, pg. 189
Using conventional and usually expensive vehicles, the drifters create an aesthetic
culture by usurping their intended use-value in favor of leisurely yet destructive drifting.
Their ability to use expensive cars as disposable toys is evidence of a surplus of money, a
surplus of leisure time, and a certain indifference to their own lives. Cars are rented and
destroyed, perpetuating the culture of reckless behavior in search of extreme thrills.
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!p.189 Marcuse Herbert Eros and Civilization, (Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd 1956)
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The phenomenon was created and popularized by Arab male youth, and funded by
elite Arab royalty. The drift maneuvers take place on long, hot, sandy streets throughout
Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Middle East. However, unlike popularized versions of
other car racing spectacles, such as Tokyo Drifting or Nascar races, these events happen
without the interference of commercialism, because there is no incentive or need for
sponsorship or promotion.
The limits they push inside and sometime outside their automobiles are of a
completely self-determined, independent and independently funded nature. The
willingness to risk one’s life in increasingly creative ways via the automobile happens on
the hot flat and straight highways of the Middle East. Perhaps they are embracing the
statistics of the high automobile accident death rate and have resolved to have a heightened
driving experience if they are likely to die while driving anyway.

7! !

DRIFT COMPARISONS

Figure 4: Screen Capture from YouTube, Bmore Xtream
Bmore Xtreme is a motorcycle gang of Baltimore youth who perform motorcycle
stunts in abandoned areas of the city, on highways, and in neighborhoods. Their attitude
towards their stunts appears to be one of nonchalance, similar that of the Arab Drifters:
terrorizing the highways is just a part of commuting, and the bikers are usually equipped
with cell phones in case doing a wheelie at 60mph starts losing its edge. However, in
contrast to the Arab drifters, the contingents of Bmore Xtreme are inner city youth, with
little financial resources and a crumbling educational system. Rather than deciding to take
to the streets, B more extreme youth are virtually forced onto them, and their bike stunts act
!$8!
as an expression of their existence. Whereas the Arab drifters take to the streets to remind
those around them that they are truly in control, the youth of B more extreme are there to
remind others that they exist.

TOKYO DRIFT

Figure 5: Screen Capture from YouTube, Tokyo Drift
In contrast, Tokyo Drifting is a completely organized, corporate-sponsored
television competition; using turbo charged Hondas and Subaru rally cars. Drifting in
tandem around a racetrack like synchronized swimmers, the main attractions are the large
bends in the racetrack where the drifting occurs. Lined with high-density foam, the
driver’s life is well protected from risk; the only real harm is a loss of points from hitting
$$! !
the foam. Although elegant, its predetermined nature leaves little to chance. The curve is a
straight line wrapped around the city or a mountainside, ever changing the driver’s
perspective, and allowing for a controlled drift. However with the straight road, and the
never ceasing horizon, the road is wide enough that one can veer from the left shoulder to
the right. Rather than attempting to control the slide, the goal is to seek the maximum
amount of controlled chaos within a straight shot. The straightaway becomes a temporary
dance floor, ice skating rink, or a blank page, whereas the curved racetrack is more aptly
likened to a math problem.

“On the Colportage phenomenon of space: ‘The sense of mystery,’ wrote Odilon
Redon, who learned the secret from Da Vinci, ‘comes from remaining always in the
equivocal, with double and triple perspectives, or inklings of perspective (images within
images) forms that take shape and come into being according to the state of mind of the
spectator. All things more suggestive because they do appear.”
4

Walter Benjamin, Arcades Project pg. 429.

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!p.429 Benjamin, Walter, Arcades Project.
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!$%!

SENNA

Figure 6: Still From Senna Documentary about Ayrton Senna 2010
Ayrton Senna , one of the world’s top Formula One racer, claimed to have seen a
tunnel of light while driving at top speed, with God leading the way. A man of deep faith,
Senna speaks of his racing career as a series of religious experiences. During one race, he
was so far in the lead that his team leader told him via radio to slow down –feeling like he
was chasing the light at the end of the tunnel, and desparately confused, this caused him to
crash. Ultimately, Senna’s mastery of formula one racing can be hard to comprehend: it is
as if he could make the car perform in ways its manufacturers would not think possible,
sometimes appearing to skip or slide around turns.
$&! !

EARLY DRIFT: ENZO FERRARI

Figure 7: Image from The Enzo Ferrari Story An Autobiography

Tazio Nuvolari was a racer that excelled at racetracks with many bends, he called
them his resources. One day in 1931, Enzo Ferrari asked Nuvolari to take him for a ride on
the practice track in a 1750 Alfa racecar. Ferrari recounts the incident, and it bears a
startling resemblance to what later became known as drifting:

“At the First corner, I was certain that Tazio had taken it badly and that we were going to
end up in the ditch: I braced myself for the shock. Instead we found ourselves at the
beginning of the straight with the car pointing it down. He put the car into a controlled
!$'!
four-wheel skid, utilizing the centrifugal force and keeping the machine on the road by the
driving force of the rear wheels.”
5

Enzo Ferrari, The Enzo Ferrari Story pg. 39

This event took place before the advent of shock absorbers or suspension; the car was built
as tightly bound as possible. By comparison, modern cars’ suspension is like that of a
porch glider, built to absorb and inconsistencies in the road.
Ferrari has claimed that every accident that happens on the racetrack with his cars is
a result of human error. His utmost faith in his automobiles led him to encourage his
drivers to take unnecessary risks, often resulting in fatal accidents. In his autobiography,
Ferrari acknowledged the inherent risk of racecar driving, asserting that it would always
take its death toll, but that should not stop sport racing. He held his automobiles to
extremely high standards: never satisfied to mass-produce, he chose instead to make state
of the art prototypes continuously over his lifetime.

ZONE 2
Good speed bad speed, multiple perspectives, constant motion of the eye over a painting,
this buzz or blurring effect of the stimulated eye, is also stimulated in the inner ear, within
the ortolith sac are tiny bone like hairs which enable your equilibrium to remain balanced
as you walk laterally through space, if you have a ringing in your ear, some of these hairs
have been broken due to high decibels of sound.
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5
P.39 Ferrari, Enzo, The Enzo Ferrari Story (Casa Editrice Licinio Cappelli, Bologna)!
$5! !

Figure 8: Diagram Locating the Otoconia in Figure 9: Diagram of the Racetrack at
a human Monaco Speedway

DRIFTING THE HOMEMADE: WAX WHEELS AND FERRARI ENGINES

In 2009 I exhibited my first Drift performance. Having watched almost every Arab
drift video on YouTube, I decided I wanted to attempt a 0mph drift, or as close to zero as
possible. For this performance I created wax tires cast around steel rims and jacked the car
up. I replaced its rubber tires with the new wax ones, reminiscent of how wheels might
have been shaped in the Stone Age. As the car was lowered to the ground, the weight of the
car on the wax allowed for the slowest of drifts.

!$*!

Figure 10: Arab Drift Tuned Endo, Performance Still 2009

The car maintained its physical and potential energies while now sliding or drifting
within a perceptual threshold that is visible to the human eye. Time and risk are inverted in
this performance while the perceptive elements remain in tack. The acrobatics are now in
the hands of gravity and physical properties instead of daring and acceleration.
I became interested in Ferrari while reading Jason Rhoades’ book, Volume I
Rhoades Referencz
6
. Rhoades created a go-cart racetrack to, in effect, return to the purity of
racing: racing at slower speeds for the pure joy of the race. He also included a Ferrari car
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!Volume: 1 A Rhoades Referencz, Rhoades, Jason (Oktagon press 1999)

!
$6! !
as part of his contribution to the 2001 Venice Bienniale -- his work, Venice 4 Way,
consisted of four cars meeting at a pillar in the middle of the gallery. One car was his old
Pontiac Fiero, one was a car made from Ikea furniture, another was simply a silhouette of a
car made in wood, and then the Ferrari. I can infer that one thing Rhoades was commenting
on was the strange meeting of machines at stop signs, the potential of interaction, yet we
are incased with in our steel identities.

Figure 11: Image from Volume A Rhoades Referencz

!$+!

Figure 12: Screen Capture from YouTube via Phototron

Recording devices that can slow down and speed up video and audio, allowing a
greater understanding of how things are created, have slowly altered our thresholds of
perception. A popcorn kernel and a car have the unique quality of being both performative
and sculptural. A 60,000-year-old spore of corn pollen was discovered 200 feet below
Mexico City. Its DNA is nearly the same after all these years. In Peru, popcorn poppers
date back 5,000 years; it would seem that all of civilization has had some contact with
popcorn. In 1917, German scientists first perfected the slow-motion camera -- it was a
four-ton beast it resembled a small locomotive. To photographically capture movement
beyond the human eye’s threshold, film cameras must be capable of passing hundreds or
thousands of frames per second through the aperture. For the Germans, a diesel engine was
used to run the massive film camera. The initial reason for creating a slow motion camera
was to study the bursting of shells and other artillery uses, but eventually they filmed
popcorn popping. I can imagine a timeline that stretches across all of humanity and feel so
$7! !
amazed that within just the last 100 years we have had so many previously unperceivable
actions in nature that we can now more clearly understand.

Figure 13: Arab Drift Tuned Endo, Performance Still 2009

As the ear pops, as the stomach drops, how do these forces affect our thoughts, the
anticipation of speed, the mental strain of texting at high-speed is increased when smoking
or changing the CD, the car can become a miniature party or personal moment of
reflection, it can also be a trap. Thankfully we have The Jaws of Life, a hydraulic spreader
and cutter that can create a rescue hole in the side of a damaged car to rescue survivors.
Such inventions are created because of the impending accident. Already there are at least 6
!%8!
million car accidents a year in America, how is this possible, 6 million intoxicated, tardy
daydreamers. This statistic does not stop many from putting down the keys, and even if
there were a 6 million-car pile up, everyone that survived would speed right past the
massive accident. In this case the reality principle is traded for the pleasure principle. At
one moment you were listening to your favorite song singing along, and now you are in a
ditch, using your phone to call AAA.

The Aesthetic dimension is the medium in which nature and freedom meet & burnout.
Reality principle / imagination/ see ya

%$! !

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Benjamin, Walter. Arcades Project. Cambridge: First Harvard University Press, 2002.
Ferrari, Enzo. The Enzo Ferrari Story: An Autobiography. Bologna: Casa Editrice Licinio
Cappelli, 1962.
Fried, Michael. Art and Objecthood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967.
Marcuse, Herbert. Eros and Civilization. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1956.

Rhoades, Jason. Volume: A Rhoades Reference. Cologne: Oktagon press, 1999

Virilio, Paul. Pure War. New York: Semiotext(e), 1997.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Walsh, J. Patrick, 3 (author)

Core Title Thresholds of perception: drift

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

School School of Fine Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Fine Arts

Publication Date 08/03/2012

Defense Date 08/03/2012

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Arab drift,Dérive,drift,Enzo Ferrari,OAI-PMH Harvest,Paul Virilio

Language English

Advisor Fine, Jud (committee chair), Haniley, Bruce (committee member), Owens, Laura (committee member), Setisema, Paul (committee member)

Creator Email bustersmag@gmail.com,johnpatrickwalsh3@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-86964

Unique identifier UC11289877

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Legacy Identifier etd-WalshJPatr-1133.pdf

Dmrecord 86964

Document Type Thesis

Rights Walsh, J. Patrick, 3

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Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Abstract (if available)

Abstract We inhabit a society that demands increasing access to instant communication, expanded motorways and thus creating more moments of divided attention, we are faced with a culture that will evolve based on the interpretation and manipulation of these technologies. In this paper I examine interpretations of the in-between time of commuting that is a part of so many urban dweller's lives.