The George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann

WHEN Euripides had the character of Medea kill her children, he sent her offstage. Today the threshold for thrills is higher, and many artists, filmmakers in particular, have the high-def tools to deliver them in detail.

Works by two artists with major exhibitions in New York this summer offer reminders that sometimes art can really leave a mark. James Turrell, who studied perceptual psychology as an undergraduate, is bathing the Guggenheim Museum’s atrium with intense artificial light and color in his piece “Aten Reign.” In her review in The Times, Roberta Smith said the exhibition would be the “bliss-out environmental art hit of the summer.”

James Turrell

A scene from "Aten Reign."

But in a 1980 show at the Whitney Museum, two patrons filed lawsuits after claiming they became disoriented by Mr. Turrell’s work. Bevil R. Conway, a neuroscientist and artist, said Mr. Turrell’s pieces can affect the part of the brain that sees in three dimensions, effectively creating “a kind of functional stroke.”

“He’s impairing your ability to figure out what the scene structure entails,” Mr. Conway said of Mr. Turrell’s body of work, of which he is a fan. “You can’t tell where the floor is. The part of your brain responsible for guiding motor behavior can’t operate, and then you trip.”

At times, content is explicitly intended to cause discomfort. The artist Paul McCarthy has been triggering upset stomachs for decades with work that graphically combines bodily functions, sexual acts and food. For his latest multimedia installation, “WS,” Mr. McCarthy has packed the Park Avenue Armory this summer with scenes of degradation, violence, nudity and sex in his reimagining of the Snow White fairy tale.

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

A video at the Paul McCarthy exhibit at the Park Avenue Armory on June 20.

“Even though Paul’s work indicates that things are artificial, there are some people who have the physiological response of feeling repulsed or scared,” said Maggie Nelson, who wrote about Mr. McCarthy’s work in her 2011 book “The Art of Cruelty”: “Where his art has its power is in its ability to produce the same nausea that might be produced were it real.” Given the huge crowds flocking to the Armory show, the public seems to have an appetite for a mass-scale gross-out.

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

Visitors take in an installation at Paul McCarthy's exhibit on June 20.

Watching a bad movie can be torture. Is it worth sitting through “C.H.U.D. II: Bud the CHUD” just to say you’re a “C.H.U.D.” completist? (No. Trust me.) But what about movies that actually hurt? In 1973 paramedics rushed to theaters to treat people who were felled by William Friedkin’s now-classic horror film “The Exorcist.” The movie’s graphic depictions of vomiting, gore and blasphemy were unheard-of in a Hollywood film at the time. A clip on YouTube of audience reactions to the movie shows a woman collapsing in the lobby. “As soon as they faint I get out the smelling salts,” says an usher.

The 1950s B-movie director William Castle was a master at provoking adverse audience reactions. At screenings of “The Tingler” (1959), buzzers installed under some seats jolted spectators at a moment in the film when the monster is announced to have gotten loose in the real-life theater. Before viewing “Macabre” (1958), audiences signed life insurance policies in case the film scared them to death. He “didn’t expect anyone to actually die,” said Jeffrey Schwarz, who directed a documentary about the filmmaker, “Spine Tingler!” “It was about the expectation that someone might die that got people to buy tickets.”

At screenings of his film “The Tingler” (1959), buzzers installed under some seats jolted spectators at a moment in the film when the titular monster is announced to have gotten loose in the real-life theater.

Castle’s gimmicks were hucksterish, and mostly harmless. But his tactics have staying power, and for some renegade artists these days, a warning means business. At the beginning of David Lynch’s flashing and flickering new video for the Nine Inch Nails song “Come Back Haunted,” a notice warns viewers that the piece could “potentially trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy.”

Below is a sampling of other artworks that have caused audiences to faint, swoon, vomit or otherwise feel queasy.

Music

SUNN O))) This metal band, known for its deep, droning guitar effects, performs so loudly and in such low frequencies that listeners feel vibrations more than they hear pitches. When heard live, such low-end frequencies, or infrasound, can trigger headaches and nausea. “People definitely go to these concerts to experience the vibrations,” said Olivia Lucas, a Harvard graduate student who has written about the band in her research on the sonic extremes of metal. “It’s like a pilgrimage to discover the physicality of sound.”

Film

“THE FLICKER” (1966) Tony Conrad consulted with an epilepsy doctor before he released his 30-minute experimental short of black and white frames that combine to create a strobe effect. At the beginning, it warns: “may induce epileptic seizures or produce mild symptoms of shock treatment.” In a 2002 interview, Mr. Conrad said he knew of at least one person who suffered a seizure.

“IRREVERSIBLE” (2002) Twenty people fainted when Gaspar Noé's film, which depicts scenes of rape, brutality and blood-soaked revenge, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, according to news reports. “The scenes in this film are unbearable, even for us professionals,” a fire official told the BBC. An estimated 250 people walked out of the screening.

Theater

“DRACULA” (1927) Four years before Bela Lugosi played Bram Stoker’s vampire on film, he starred on Broadway in a stage version of “Dracula.” Stationed in the lobby of the Fulton Theater was a nurse with smelling salts. According to a 2006 biography of Lugosi, in the first weeks of the show’s run in Los Angeles 110 people fainted, 19 people left the theater “scared after the first act,” and “10 wives per performance summoned husbands to escort them home.”

Universal Pictures, via Associated Press

Bela Lugosi in the 1931 film "Dracula."

“BLASTED” (2008) At least one person fainted during the Soho Rep production of this intensely raw but critically acclaimed play by Sarah Kane, a young British playwright who killed herself in 1999 at 28. The show was mounted in the theater’s 74-seat space, an intimate setting that amplified its graphic depictions of cannibalism, rape and eye-gouging.

Simon Kane/Sam Rudy Media Relations, via Associated Press

Reed Birney and Marin Ireland in a scene from Sarah Kane's "Blasted" in 2008 in New York.

Art

“CARSTEN HöLLER: EXPERIENCE” (2011) This Belgian-born artist, a trained scientist who refers to some of his works as “confusion machines,” had a career survey at the New Museum that deliberately disoriented visitors. A pair of goggles turned the viewer’s surroundings upside down and backward. An installation of flashing lights aimed to induce hallucinations. Museumgoers had to sign legal waivers to participate in the works.

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Visitors rode the "Mirror Carousel" at the “Carsten Höller: Experience" at the New Museum in 2005.

“EMILY’S VIDEO” (2012) The artists Eva and Franco Mattes put out an online call for volunteers to watch a video they described as “extremely graphic and extremely violent.” Those who agreed watched it on a laptop computer, and clips of their reactions were turned into a 15-minute compilation shown at a London gallery. In one video, a young woman fights back tears and gags as she watches through her fingers. In another a man hangs his head for the duration of the video.

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