Domestic Tension

For Domestic Tension (2007), a networked durational performance, Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal confined himself to a gallery space. He broadcasted over the internet 24/7, inviting viewers to watch and chat with him at all hours. The audience was also given the option of shooting Bilal with a robotically controlled paintball gun.

The Backrooms (Found Footage)

The Backrooms is my favorite creepypasta. Legend has it that if you’re not careful and accidentally “noclip out of reality,” you can end up in the Backrooms, an endless series of yellow rooms with musty carpeting, neon lights and a constant buzz in the background. A few weeks ago, Kane Parsons – a.k.a. Kane Pixels – a 16-year-old filmmaker, produced a short film inspired by this mythical place. Instant classic.

We Met in Virtual Reality

“We Met in Virtual Reality is an enchanting portrait of social Virtual Reality (VR) app VRChat, composed of intimate and hilarious moments inside global VR communities. The film presents an emotive impression on this new virtual landscape through a poetic collage of stories, exploring how VR is affecting the way we socialise, love and express ourselves; told authentically by the users of VRChat through a warm heartfelt lens.”

Can’t wait to see this.

Marshall McLuhan in Conversation with Norman Mailer

This is the best McLuhan conversation I found so far:

Marshall McLuhan in Conversation with Norman Mailer, 1968

[Mailer]Look Marshall, we’re both agreed that man is accelerating at an extraordinary rate into a super-technological world, if you will. And that the modes and methods by which men instruct themselves and are instructed are shifting in extraordinary –
[McLuhan]We’ve gone into orbit.
[Mailer]Well, at the same time I would say there’s something profoundly autoerotic about this process, and it’s sinister for that reason.
[McLuhan]It’s psychedelic. When you step up the environment to those speeds, you create the psychedelic thrill. The whole world becomes kaleidoscopic, and you go inward, by the way. It’s an inner trip, not an outer trip.

Dialogue Goggles

Lygia Clark, Goggles / Dialogue Goggles, 1968

“Brazilian artist Lygia Clark’s ‘Óculos’ (Goggles) and Dialogo: Óculos (Dialogue: Goggles) from 1968 draw attention to the performance of wearing, looking and seeing; and the fashion accessory as an object of communication. Both artworks are performative and are a sensory experience for the participant as well as being an immersive sculpture and fashion accessory. The artwork is the participant wearing the object: a pair of glasses that alters the vision of the participant(s) with magnifying lenses.”

Weird Gnosis

Weird Gnosis, a new, amazing project by IMPAKT:

“From the occult rituals of witchcraft to esoteric psychedelia, the online webproject Weird Gnosis takes you on a journey into some of the weirder parts of the web. With a selection of video and performance art, Weird Gnosis curates a dialogue with artists and thinkers whose practices radically disturb the familiar by invoking the truly weird.”