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Subject: The Third Design Phase of The Time Machine

Symbol Evocation:  The Chronon equals one billionth of the first instant of time at the birth of the physical universe. Besides containing all the quantitative aspects of time, that is, the measurement of duration, The Chronon also exhibits the qualitative aspects of time, such as the experience of duration [proto- consciousness], or the fundamental connection between time, fate and free will. 

Comments: 

I

It is now just eighteen years since the centennial celebrations of the 1895 publication of the famous novel by H.G. Wells – “The Time Machine.”  The subject matter of science fiction has long been recognized – I would venture a guess since the genre first attained popularity – as a fruitful source of ad hoc research and development by certain individuals like the Wright Brothers or Hugo Gernsback. It was not until the mid-1950’s [the period of the beginning of the maturity of our vision of technology – mechanical, electronic and psychological] that this recognition became widespread and socially obvious. This phenomenon has had such an impact on the writing of science fiction, that current science fiction seems little more that a slight “spin” on present conditions, and no longer the “back bone” of futurology.  The concept of The Time Machine has remained, however, “immune” to such historical and technological acculturation – in short The Time Machine has been considered by its nature impossible and absurd. 

In a less pejorative characterization the concept of the Time Machine is often viewed as symptomatic of the confused state of thought concerning the development of non-Euclidean geometries and the notion of a fourth spatial dimension just prior to the initial work of the theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. The story however is sometimes cited as a direct influence of Einstein. But the attempt to build a Time Machine, or even to propose the possibility of such a device coming into existence, by any individual has been cause to label that individual and one holding, or laden with embarrassing, atavistic and superstitious beliefs about the nature of reality. This has been the general case even to the present. Apparently sympathetic but no less devastating to the image of “A Time-Machine Builder” is the idea that such a person is being held in the “psychological grip” of what has been called a most singular fantasy of our period, or perhaps even a new version of the primordial myth – to control time itself. Given the horror of the unprecedented, absurd, and inexorable changed the world has experienced in its historical move from the 19th to the 20th centuries has caused, it is said, a virtual attack, if only in our dreams, upon the source of change itself – time. The idea of the Time Machine that is taken seriously is seen, therefore, as, the expression by the imagination of a crank, or as, the means to escape into the past or future in order to avoid the real problems of the present, which often seem so difficult they are deemed without solution. 

As for Wells himself, the developer of the idea of the Time-Machine [actually Edward Page Mitchell, an editor of “The New York Sun” newspaper first thought of the idea in 1881], the Time-Machine, critics of literature say, was simply a literary device that enabled Wells to demonstrate his attitudes about the idea of world utopia that was prevalent during the late nineteenth century. This would be similar, they day, to the literary use made by Edward Bellamy of the idea of 113 years of sleep by the hero of his novel, “Looking Backward,” Julian West a wealthy Bostonian who falls asleep in 1887 amid industrial chaos and competition only to wake up in the year 2000 in a socalist utopia complete with order, equality and prosperity. Now as we approach closer to the 21st century this pragmatic rhetoric used by the critics of the early 20ths century to denigrate the accomplishments of the 19th century seems somehow dated and lacking now its original punch of modernity. The 19th century as a whole and especially the “fin-de-siecle” period of H.G. Wells is being viewed now not only just as an historical domain of repression and social horror from which the intellectuals of the time wanted to distance themselves, but also as a time of subtle and probing possibilities that were cut off and overshadowed by the more blatant and brutal aspects of the 20th century, such as the complete adoption of a simplistic mechanical model of reality, global wars, and the abandonment of moral consistency. 

II

It has always seemed somewhat ironic to me that the image of the Time-Machine Wells portrays in his novel is not of a device appropriate to the 19th century. His image is that of an automobile – that staple of the 20th century myth of personal freedom in the world. Hollywood, who has only recently caught up to Wells, first presented the Time Machine in film as a car with no wheels done in anachronistic décor. This would be similar to a contemporary commercial jet-plane being designed by a Victorian architect. In other words Wells in giving the impression of the Time-Machine as being essentially modern, while, I believe, its theoretical structure is neo-medieval.

III

Neo-medievalism became one of the strongest creative forces to permeate 19th century Europe and America. It encouraged a taste for purpose and the exotic in places, religions and manners of thought. Eventually it culminated at the end of the century in the International Symbolist-Mystical Movement. With it came from such ideas as, the Vedic notion that the entire physical universe is alive; mass and consciousness the objective and subjective expressions of the universe are both derived from a more primary entity; and that both expressions contain their own natural systems of invariance. 

Physical Research began and with it the idea of a “Mind-Physics” that stated that the human soul was no longer inaccessible to engineering. The re-emergence of interest in the creative principles of nature began to inspire both the arts and sciences. Sacred geometry, higher dimensions of reality, belief systems about the nature and the origin of the Earth of Aboriginals came into focus. The extent of the power of Neo-Medievalism and its implication for the Time Machine can be seen in the work of Einstein. Since the early 1940’s to the present various theoretical physicists have been offering solutions to the equations of Einstein that postulate the possibility of time travel from one’s natural present to a future or past. Based on ideas like the invariant velocity of light, the warping of space by gravity, the existence of singularities in nature [where sense un-knowableness is localized], the universe being finite but unbounded, time being inconstant throughout the universe and dependent if the velocity of the Timekeeper, the mathematics of the relation between time and space – all these ideas [aspects of general relativity] threaten, it is said, to run counter to the entire philosophy of modern physics. This is a physics that is based on Causal Determinism – A) Causes B) within set of circumstances C). Causal Determinism requires that an event depends on what uniquely happens in the event’s immediate past. To abandon this principle or to augment it with another principle [such as the idea proposed by Jung called Synchronicity –an a-causal meaningful coincidence of events] means to return to the medieval idea of teleology. While teleology as such does not imply necessarily the existence of conscious volition, it does, nevertheless, mean that in the predicting of an event, its future consequences would have not be considered in order to avoid any inconsistencies. 

IV

No one can gainsay the brilliance of Wells’ concept of the Time-Machine, yet he offers in his novel little overt assistance to anyone who would wish to build a Time-Machine, while at the same time his story is an obvious challenge to do so. The first person to accept that challenge was the playwright Alfred Jarry, father of the Theater of the Absurd and guiding light of the Surrealist movement. His solution is presented in a speculative essay prosaically entitled “How to Build A Time Machine.”  He states that the Time Machine must be a “machine of absolute rest.” This is to be accomplished, he said, by placing three gyroscopes in three mutually perpendicular axes, along with quartz crystal fittings.

It is curious to realize that in 1996 the Space Shuttle or a Titan II rocket launched an earth satellite-based experiment known as the “Gravity-Probe-B.” This experiment will be an attempt to test Einstein’s “General Theory of Relativity” – This, of course, is Einstein’s “tough” theory – the one that predicts the possibility of time travel. The devices to be used bear an uncanny resemblance to that which Jarry described in 1899.

Wells gave the impression of the Time Machine as being essentially modern, while its theoretical structure is Neo-Medieval.  Neo-Medievalism became one of the strongest creative forces to permeate 19th century Europe and America.  It encouraged a taste for purpose and the exotic in places, religious and manners of thought.  Eventually it culminated at the end of the century in the International Symbolist-Mystical movement.  Since the early 1940's to the present various theoretical physicists have been offering solutions to the equations of Einstein that postulate the possibility of time travel. 

V

The Time Traveller appears to his guests one week later, after leaving on a Time-Trip, in a dirty, bloody, and limping condition. He reports that he has just returned from the year 802701 A.D. In this future world he has found a decadent people, the Eloi, living in leisurely comfort but fearful of the underground society of the Morlocks. The Morlocks are grotesque and Gnome-like. They make slaves of the beautiful but apathetic Eloi. The Time Traveller has his Time Machine taken without his knowledge by the Morlocks. Upon discovering his situation he foments a revolution among the enslaved Eloi, which frees the Eloi and creates a diversion allowing him to recapture the Time Machine and flee to his natural present during the melee. To further prove his ability to travel in time, he makes another trip to the year 30,000,000, where he witnesses the final days of the earth, just as it enters its death struggle.  Wells presents in his story of the Time-Machine scenario after scenario fraught with teleological ethics on both the personal and social levels. But the main device itself – the Time Machine – seems impervious to teleology except for the mention “that it looks singularly askew, and that there is an odd twinkling appearance about this bar, as though it was in some way unreal.” The machine, nevertheless, is not spoken of as if it were an example of biotechnology or in anyway alive which would allow morality to enter the realm of technology. The Time Machine seems impelled by blind determinism, subject only to physical destruction as any other machine, but the extent of the destruction it could endure and still be operational is not disclosed.  With its abstract and arbitrary frame of reference the machine from one location seems to alter the entire universe in an objective and physical manner. At the same time the machine provides the Time Traveller with a series of experiences [while the machine is on] that are just on the edge of conscious control, similar to those induced by, say, lucid dreaming, psychedelics, intoxicants, extreme sensory deprivation or the current state of virtual reality technology.  Beyond the change of sense experience for the Time-Traveler lies the more insidious notion that the “before and after” sequence of time can be reversed by the machine, or that it can undermine and all normative definitions we may have of history or historicism.

VI

H.G. Wells was once the darling of intellectuals. In the 1930’s he was known and respected the world over for his writings on fiction, sociology, history and economics. But today, most of his 150 works are all but forgotten. His interest in the concept of world utopia seems, to current intellectuals, as naïve and old hat as a punk rocker’s hair-do.  What remains of his reputation is his speculative essays and science-fiction, especially the concept of Time Travel presented in his famous novel of 1895 –“The Time-Machine” – and now even the thought that his “prediction” that time travel might come true [that is; allowing all aspects of space-time to be accessible to one aspect of space-time] is greeted by many contemporary intellectuals as a boring prospect. Boredom, of course, has been the bete noire of the 20th century. As a malaise that reached its maturity in the mid-1950’s, it has held its own right up to the present, being relieved only by momentary instances of campy wit, ironic reference and personal indulgence. Thus the speculative exhortations of Wells are now being treated in the same vein as the charismatic preaching of an ideologue –with the reaction that one has encountered a source of unconscious humor. In short, to many, the possibility of time-travel has become déclassé. 

Boredom ,like any other motivation, is not diminished by the repetition of the form of its relief. To a person enduring extreme starvation, if there is the possibility of receiving small bowls of rice similar to each other every day, that news may not seem so bad. In like manner, if someone’s consciousness in invaded by seemingly endless boredom, and if they are presented with a drug that allows them to feel nothing, or if an act of violence diverts their attention for a moment, will they not seek repetition? 

Nevertheless, I do not think the current intellectual rejection of time travel, especially by those from academia, is based on a real concern about possible repetitive forms of the commercial use of time travel [space-time dilation utilization]. To me their basis of anxiety is that time travel is medieval concept, or more accurately [what would be a medieval based mind responding to in the 20th century culture but something as weird as time travel!] It is a gothic thought at its most genteel and has nothing at all of the sensibility of the Renaissance. 

One agendum of the Renaissance was to stop or at least hold in check the imagination of the medieval mind which the Renaissance considered to be given to excess and wild extremes, and could be characterized as barbarous and frightening – an imagination motivated by selfless goals combined with a single mindedness of purpose. This is the direct opposite mentality to that of the present day pedantic intellectual – our final inheritance from the Renaissance –a mind given to taking a cautious but well researched overview of situations which delays decision making and thereby action. Both Nietzsche in the 19th century and Umberto Eco in the 20th century have described this clash of sensibilities. Nietzsche abstracted them from history as: Dionysus versus Apollo, but at least Eco has tried to let us know what we are in for historically – a Neo-Medievalism.  A current example of the recoil of intellectuals from the inherent medievalism of the concept of time travel occurs in a recent book by the astronomer John D. Barrow, entitles: “The World Within The World.” In this book he attempts to reveal to the laity those unspoken assumptions that form the basis of our quest for the laws of nature.  The passage on page 344 in which he mentions time travel is introduces as an example of what happens when you allow “selection effects” to occur, a type of error that can effect both the experimental and the theoretical aspects of science: “a good example is the famous special solution to Einstein’s equations found [in 1950] by the logician Kurt Gödel. This solution showed that there is a particular solution of Einstein’s equations, which allows time-travel to occur. You could kill your own grandmother and create a paradox of fact [or even solve the problem of induction!]. Gödel’s solution describes a weird rotating universe which looks nothing like the one we live in, but this does not mean that we can stop worrying about time-travel. We need to know whether time-travel is a property of the full and realistic solutions of Einstein’s equations – that would describe our own world – or whether it is a pathology of a small number of physically irrelevant solutions with weird properties.” This is a round about way of saying that he does not like the idea of time travel, but is willing to take a “wait and see” attitude in reference to the authority of Einstein. J.T. Fraser, founder of “The International Society For The Study of Time,” a prestigious organization of philosophers and scientists of time, is much more direct. He has stated simply that time-travel and the time machine are intellectually dishonest constructs.  I guess what has made the difference about the intellectual reaction to Wells from his time to ours is that the nature and thereby the definition of the intellectual has changed. 

Wells [1866-1946] worked in world populated by men of purpose and action like Alexandre G. Eiffel [1832-1923], Washington A. Roebling [1837-1926], Louis Sullivan [1856-1924], Nikola Tesla [1856-1943], Le Corbusier [1887-1965], Frank Lloyd Wright [1867-1959], or Albert Einstein [1879-1955]. While each was active in their own pursuits, they also managed to maintain a perspective of the world – so in that sense they were intellectuals also.  As the 20th century progressed this integration of thinking and feeling that characterized the world of Wells began to dissolve, with a few notable exceptions like Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983]. 

The 19th century began to be seen as a correctable anomaly in the smooth unfolding of the Renaissance system. Even the concept of “The Renaissance Man” which so aptly defines the devouring talents of Leonardo and Michelangelo has been turned upon itself transforming it into a contemporary cliché.

Today the scientists at N.A.S.A. that are building “Gravity Probe B” to detect warps in space-time carry on no conversation with the world. That function is being left those intellectuals who will not or cannot do such frontier activities as pilot a rocket into space. The builders of Chartres [one of the sublime frontier creations of the Medieval mind], I believe, would have found a cultural kinship, if they had somehow lived into our period, with a few people like Fuller or Wells. 

VII

Although I am sure that I am as subject to the Renaissance system as much as anyone else living at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, I nevertheless, always has a great interest in the Time Machine of Wells. I was attracted to it because it seemed like a device with no natural limitations except being subject to gravity. So my first attitude was that it must be viewed either as a kind of sculpture or an impossible device like a Perpetual Motion Machine. A “realistic” or fully functioning device that becomes part of the history of human instrumentality appears to have the three following characteristics:

1. It is a self-contained or closed system of aspects that process some sort of energy. There must be an input that connects to the source of energy to be used, and output or exhaust of the energy that is not used in the completion of the function of the device. 
2. The “function” of the device is the result of the human definition that some or all of the processes that are indigenous to the device are capable of extending the desires of the human will. And there must be some aspect of the device that allows human entry and exit from the basic system of the device. 
3. The device in order to be used must share the same environment as the human user of the device. This means a sharing, not only of the same spatial and temporal parameters, but also being equally subject to the limitations of the natural invariances of that shared environment. Now the concept of the “Limitations of The Natural Invariances” must include the human beliefs of what they consist. The history of human invention is a function of what people believe those “natural invariances” and their “limitations” are at any instant in history.

VIII

In the late 1950’s when I first read Wells’ story, there seemed no manner by which the time machine could be translated into a true physical device. Its patent “lack of limitations” caused me to think of it simply as an interesting visual or mental construct. My attitude remained the same until nearly the end of the 1960’s when I become aware of the emerging new fields of bio-feedback and psychotronic research by means of “new age” newspapers and other alternative media. Immediately I thought that the concept of psychotronics was definition of a technology implied by the idea of “Mind-Physics” or “The Physics of Consciousness.” Although apparently modeled on the existing electronic technology, psychotronics attempts to model in devices the kind of mutual interaction that occurs in nature between a brain and its mind. The theory is that of a mass-consciousness mutually interdependent causality. In other words the molecules of the brain seem to be nature’s most adaptive form of mass, being able to respond directly to various aspects of the mind [conceived as a system of highly evolved quanta of consciousness]. Today the definition of psychotronics has moved away from its more “anthropomorphic beginnings.”

My Father, who dabbled in the occult and spiritualism, became at one period of his life very close to a number of pioneers in the field of psychic research. Among his friends was Leonard T. Trolland, who was a professor of optics at Harvard University until his death in the early 1940’s. T. Trolland, a colleague of Rhine and Gardner Murphy, set about to construct a complete mathematical description of “Mind-Physics,” via my father, I was raised on the concept. Later when I studied under Curt J. Ducasse, the concept was brought into even sharper focus for me. 

About 1967 I thought that idea of time-travel might be identified with the psychic phenomena pre and retro-cognition, pre-perception of the future and retrospection of the past. To qualify as an isomorphic interpretation of the effects of time travel, these phenomena would have to be engineered to some extreme form or controlled amplification. In their natural state the dreams, hallucinatory-like visions and strong hunches that overlay the present-time experiences of anyone enduring episodes of precognition or retro cognition about specific events, seemed to me [I have had a few of these experiences] to weak to qualify as a complete translation of the sense of radical displacement of one’s natural present –in the manner described by Wells. However,  they did have one advantage (being facts of nature), pre and retro cognition could not be accused of violating the definition of time, as Wells’ definition of time travel was. 

At this time I began to research the concept of dimensionality from the point of view of quality and not just quantity as a mathematician might do. Taking my clues from the theosophical use made of the Vedantic levels of reality, I identified the Western notion of energy, [as something that is efficacious without motion). In this manner I began to establish qualities of dimensions and open out the seeming monolithic concept of energy. 

By the time a friend of mine gave me a copy of “Psychic Discoveries Behind The Iron Curtain” in 1972, I was prepared to absorb the thoughts of Nikolai Kozyrev presented in Chapter 13 on the energy of time or time as a form of energy. His experiments with gyroscopes led me to invent a new form of gyroscope which I have called “The Levogyre.” I claim it will weigh less while in operation than when it is at rest. The dynamics of the geometry of its design amplifies the natural reduction in mass any gyroscope endures while in operation –only the reduction in mass is not normally detectable. 

In 1980 another friend of mine pointed out that my “Levogyre” invention sounded a little like the gyroscope described in Alfred Jarry’s essay of 1899 “How to Construct A Time Machine”. Later [October of 1980] this same friend handed me a copy of Hugo Gernback 1911 science fiction story “Ralph 124C41+” open to page 104. The text read: 

“A multitude of inventions and suggestions were made but none proved to be of any value until the “anti-gravitator” was invented by the American 969L9 in the year 2210.This Scientist had made extensive studies of the gyroscope and had finally evolved a machine which when set in motion would rise freely and continue to rise as long as power was supplied. The action, moreover, was purely gyroscopic. 969L9 took a large hollow sphere [The Rotor] inside of which he built a number of independent gyroscopes, all of which traveled in fixed orbits. The large sphere which hung in a gyroscopic frame was made to spin around in its axis at great speed. This sphere thus acted as the fly-wheel of a gyroscope and as such was not influenced by so-called horizontal gravity. As in the case of simple gyroscopes, its axis would always be in a vertical line as long as the spheric rotor was in motion. If, however, the independent gyroscopes inside of the sphere were set in motion by means of electrical current, the vertical gravity [weight] was overcome, the entire contrivance rising into the air, its rising [lifting] speed being directly proportional to the speed of the enclosed gyroscope rotors.” 

My first reaction to reading this passage was the wish to have my name changed to “969L9.” My friend with a smile suggested. Before I do that, I read the whole book where I would discover that Gernsback in 1911 had prophesied most of the major technological inventions of the 20th century – such as radar.

By 1973 I had identified the “Levogyre” in some way with every scientific and religio-symbolic notion of the singularity in nature [a point-instant at which space-time is infinitely distorted by gravitational forces]. Edgar Allan Poe in 1848 had described but not named the concept of the singularity in his prose-poem “Eureka.” The discovery of cell tissue similar to brain cells in parts of the human body lent scientific credence to the Hindu concept of the chakra system and the acupuncture points of traditional Chinese medicine. Consciousness as well as mass could be subject to singularities. The significance of traditional proportioning systems [like the golden section observed throughout nature] made sense to me now. If everything in the universe is subject to a gyroscopic-spin-singularity structure, the natural distances [in space-time] between singularities or in groupings, are these proportional systems. As an example the geostationary orbit of the Earth is the one to seven proportion that Gurojieff described as inherent in his Enneagram – that is if you measure from the center of the Earth to its surface and then to the geostationary orbit. Even the smallest particle of mass, I felt, must have its own “geostationary orbit” – its natural distance in the universe, but utilizing perhaps other proportions giving rise to the different “modalities” of energy within the realm of time. 

I also thought that consciousness – mass link of the singularity also represented the eternity-time link traditionally associated with revelation and now psychic phenomena. While black holes, and worm holes, chakras were “natural” singularities and in a sense as “dimensional portals,” it was the Photon [A “structured” singularity] with its infinite internal spin and its external finite traveling velocity that became the actual model of my “Levogyre.” The still point at the center of the spinning wheel, the twin still points of a pendulum system, the still instant between the cause and effect of an event sequence are all examples of natural singularities or closed-systems, while the photon connecting the finite with the infinite is a structured singularity or an open-system. I have always felt that the Kabbalistic language Einstein used in his early descriptions of the photon were not totally metaphorical.  At this time I realized that as the “Levogyre” lost mass it gained consciousness, thus providing me with a way to induce control and amplification of pre and retro cognition. I felt someday time travel of a type that would exceed the vision of it presented by H.G. Wells would be possible.

From 1973 to the present I have been working on ways to further emphasize natural limitations to which the time machine that Wells seemed to dismiss in his history.  As an example in my latest design for the time machine, I have placed the main mechanism at the geostationary orbit of the Earth for several reasons, the most important of which is that to me the geostationary orbit of the Earth is the internal frame of reference of the Earth. Rather than being an abstract or mathematically convenient concept, I believe, an internal frame of reference is a concrete natural limit to any energy process that can be measured. 

Given the standard litany of paradoxes that are thrown at the concept of time travel which deal with a potential verses a deterministic vision of time, the concrete frame of reference provides a natural limit on all information exchange throughout the physical universe. Some frames of reference can be subsumes by others, such as all the earth-surface energy systems and their framed of referenced are responsive to the entire frame of reference of the Earth, but not to those beyond the Earth. The Earth in total reacts to larger frames of reference. Information that is precoged or retrocoged on the Earth cannot by my definitions appear deterministic beyond the limit of the Earth.  Near the surface of the Earth where we live other framed of reference and their measurable limits come into play. If the concepts of space and time are relative as Einstein has postulated, so must be the concepts of the potential and the deterministic when used to apply to a physical context. 

It is said that if the time machine really existed, we would already know of it. I say it has always been here, and we are beginning to become aware of it. 

Exhibitions:  

The Time Machine, Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Anchorage, Alaska, 1997

Paul Laffoley: Building the Bauharoque, Kent Gallery, New York, 1998

Architectonic Thought Forms: a Survey of the Art of Paul Laffoley, Austin Museum of Art, 1999

Paul Laffoley: The Tree of Sephiroth and Other Drawings, Kent Gallery, New York, 1999

The UFO Show.  University Galleries, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, 2000. Traveled to: The Arts & Science Center for Southeast Arkansas, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Gallery of Contemporary Art, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 2000–01

Science and Science Fiction, Castle Art Gallery, College of New Rochelle, New York, 2001 

Paul Laffoley: Time Phase X, Kent Gallery, New York, 2005

We Make Versions, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Munster, 2011

Mondes inventés, mondes habités, Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg, 2011

Paul Laffoley: Secret Universe 2, Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2011

Adelaide International, Australia, curated by Richard Grayson, 2014.

Literature:

Paul Laffoley, “Elements of the Time Machine: Homage to H. G. Wells,” Journal of the United States Psychotronics Association, No. 4 Summer 1990, p.4, cover, ill.

Paul Laffoley, Jeanne Marie Wasilik, James Mahoney. Architectonic Thought-Forms: Gedankenexperiemente in Zombie Aesthetics, A Survey of the Visionary Art of Paul Laffoley Spanning Four Decades, 1967-1999, to the Brink of the Bauharoque, exhibition catalogue. (Austin, Texas: Austin Museum of Art, 1999, pp. 76-77, ill. p. 77, cat. no. 22 (color).

Paul Laffoley, “Disco Volante,” in The UFO Show, ed. Barry Blinderman, exhibition catalogue, (Normal: University Galleries of Illinois State University, 2000) p. 37 ill.

Paul Laffoley, “The Phenomenology of Revelation,” interview by Richard Metzger, Disinformation: The Interviews (New York: The Disinformation Company Ltd., 2002) p. 39 ill.

Paul Laffoley: Time Phase X.  Kent Gallery, New York, 2005, pp 26,27, ill p 27 (color).

Katja Schroeder, We Make Versions, exhibition catalogue, (Münster: Westfälischer Kunstverein, 2011) pp. 34–35 ill.

Udo Kittelman and Claudia Dichter, eds., Paul Laffoley: Secret Universe 2, exhibition catalogue (Berlin: Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; Cologne: Walter König, 2011), p. 45, 113 ill.