Optimal Viewing Conditions Apply

Some things only work when the circumstances are exactly right. The Hangover requires your closest friends and several beers. Knight Rider is the greatest show ever made—but only when you’re ten. And Masanobu Hiraoka’s new short animation only works in a dark room, on the largest screen you have, and on acid.

I mean that as a prerequisite, not a disclaimer. Watch it sober under bright lights and you get something colorful that moves pleasantly. In the right conditions, though, this thing opens like a dimension you’d forgotten existed. Something about a girl being swallowed by the chaos of being alive. Or colors that have fallen in love with each other. Or the flood between one existence and the next. Or maybe just a lot of LSD—a truly generous amount of LSD.

Hiraoka’s studio Je Regarde produces work I can’t explain and can’t stop watching. The short is over here. Lights off first.