\n<\/p>\n
The email was masterfully vague. Early last month, when an invitation to something called INTER_ that was billed as New York\u2019s \u201cnewest interactive and avant-garde art journey\u201d landed in my inbox, I kept rereading the pitch in hopes of extracting actual specifics. The description resembled a marketer\u2019s dream word cloud, promising an interactive projection show, a \u201chypnotizing activated digital floor,\u201d an \u201cAI-powered photo station,\u201d and \u201ca mirrored digital infinity experience.\u201d\u00a0But what was it all\u00a0for?<\/em>\u00a0I wondered.\u00a0What am I actually going to be looking at here?<\/em><\/p>\n In a way, this unabashedly vacant appeal from INTER_ struck me as a logical end result to the past decade spent in witness of the creep of social media upon our geographic space. The regular eventization of \u201cplaces\u201d to visit and document is now as familiar to us as the actual landmarks dotting our built landscapes. By now, you have either personally seen or at least been made aware of the gamut ranging from the accursed\u00a0Museum of Ice Cream<\/a> to the once mania-inspiring\u00a029Rooms<\/a>, the hated\u00a0immersive Van Gogh experience<\/a> to the slightly less hated\u00a0David Hockney one<\/a>, and of course,\u00a0Yayoi Kusama<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s commanding and inescapable Infinity Mirror Rooms, which have turned the 94-year-old artist\u2019s statements of transcendence into some of the most \u2019grammable spots on the planet.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The obvious culprit for all this commodified immersion, of course, is our subservience to platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where standing out on the feed necessitates scouting newer and prettier locations for what feels like life\u2019s never-ending photo shoot. Personally, I\u2019m also partial to the theory that we\u2019re also just seeking continuously higher grades of eyeball-feel that will register above the operant threshold of our overly-connected reality: when life already feels like a thousand screens blaring in your face, Times Square doesn\u2019t exactly hit anymore. We crave the kind of sublime awe that the Romantics found\u00a0on the edge of a seaside precipice<\/a>; but where else can we turn but these retina-flooding boxes of \u201cactivation\u201d that so convincingly intimate, if just for a second, the existence of a better, more beautiful world?<\/p>\n To be fair, I say this as someone who can\u2019t remember ever actually visiting one of these things. This has to do with my nuclear-level impatience for lines, sure, but also, let\u2019s be honest, I\u2019ve still actively bought into the delusion that I can win whatever game of 5D chess that is cultivating a plausibly casual social media presence\u2014of which visiting Instagram traps would be the antithesis. But the mind can open. And so the coinciding launch of INTER_ and the opening of the new Infinity Mirror Room at David Zwirner offered an efficient opportunity to, well,\u00a0immerse<\/em> myself at the high-low bounds of the genre. What I hoped to answer was what the INTER_ invitation made me question: Did any of it\u00a0need<\/em> a point?\u00a0<\/p>\n The INTER_ exhibit, located on Canal Street, offers timed visiting slots. I paid $41.36 and showed up early on a Monday afternoon to join two sets of couples, roughly my age, for a 45-minute excursion within about a half dozen various rooms. In the \u201cInduction\u201d room, we wore 3D glasses and sat on bean bags to watch a 12-minute video that blasted quotes from Rumi,\u00a0Oprah,<\/strong> and Ana\u00efs Nin (along with a repeated exhortation to \u201cMove around!\u201d) with swirling, bright screensaver enthusiasm. The disembodied voice of a British woman introduced herself as our guide to the \u201cInterverse\u201d and encouraged us to \u201cenjoy the journey without worrying about the destination.\u201d Afterward, an employee (an \u201cInter-guardian\u201d) ushered us to a room with a bigger wraparound screen that we could wave or dance at in order to create flubber-like outlines of ourselves amidst the graphics while a foggy electronic beat pulsed. At one point, a shower of bubbles descended upon us; my journeymen and I got our phones out immediately.\u00a0<\/p>\n We moved through a hallway lush with\u00a0Rainforest Caf\u00e9<\/em>\u2013esque arrangements of artificial plants and flowers; a spaceshippy corridor gave way to a \u201ccave\u201d where stalactites and rock fissures \u201cglowed\u201d with magma. My favorite part was standing underneath an installation where hundreds of strips of sheer fabric dangled illuminated from the ceiling, like a waterfall or jellyfish tentacles. But the elemental theme felt at odds with the omnipresent screens, which my \u201creality bending\u201d glasses wrapped into splinters of rainbow everywhere I looked (A headache felt imminent). There was no further instruction given for our journey, except for a few mirrors you could use markers to write on in response to prompts like \u201cWhat do you want to hold in your heart?\u201d (\u201cPeace,\u201d \u201cN+J,\u201d \u201ccalcium buildup\u201d being amongst previous responses) and \u201cWhat are you grateful for?\u201d (\u201cGod,\u201d \u201cNetflix,\u201d \u201cNancy was here.\u201d) In the final station, we watched recent footage of ourselves walking around the exhibit, which felt both meta and also kind of like a rip-off. I left the Interverse feeling exhausted and flat, opting to skip the gift shop offering $4 selenite crystal sticks in favor of finding the nearest mechanical underground box that would take me back to Brooklyn and my home box.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n