Set within the claustrophobic environment of Manchester's disused 'Old Fire Station' The Tetra Phase presented participants with an intense journey into subjective experience. Permitted to attend only once, on one of the four Saturdays of the event, groups of participants moved through the constructed possibilities of this labyrinthine space, interacting and completing tasks to proceed. With no recourse to a definitive interpretation or set of experiences, groups and individuals took on the responsibility for investing their situations with meaning. Beyond the limitations of ‘true’ or ‘false’, all that could be known was that certain results followed inevitably from certain actions.

Further exploring Reactor’s interest in ‘the audience as artwork’, interpersonal and group dynamics came to the fore, as participants attempted to reconcile their differing experiences. The omnipresent ‘eye in the sky’, created by a network of CCTV cameras, provided the only position from which an overarching perspective on the event might be possible, yet it was inaccessible to participants. Several months after the event, recordings from the CCTV system were posted out to participants who had thought their experiences were over.

“I can hear voices softly chattering around my head, my blindfold is removed and the rest of my team greets me wearing party hats. "Are you having fun?" they ask me constantly. Bearing strange fixed grins, they force feed me cake and lemonade. This is by far the most unsettling experience of the whole project as I wonder what the consequences of not having enough fun may be.”

Matt Roberts, review for a-n Magazine