This week we’ve got six reviews for you: from magic in the most famous fictional hotel in New York City to soundwalks that can be done anywhere.
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Divine Immersion: The Experiential Art of Nick Dong — Nick Dong
$0 — $10 (Reservations required); USC Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, CA; Through Oct. 3
Divine Immersion: The Experiential Art of Nick Dong is a problematic show to cover for two reasons: its effects are indescribable and it’s best if nothing is revealed beforehand.
The brutal reality is that we are still entrenched in a global pandemic and its pervasive, heartbreaking consequences. We’ve endured civil unrest and economic tragedy. We’ve been unable to process or grieve because our present contorts on a daily, even hourly basis, and the future can seem impossible. Now, many months later, we straddle disconnected worlds, caught between collective responsibility and entitled irrationality; it’s a surreal dichotomy splintering the membranes of our bodies and minds.
And so, Taiwanese-American artist Nick Dong “extends an invitation…to bring all of your chaos to this exhibition.” Described as “quest[s] of self-evolution,” the artworks incorporate “scientific and handcrafted components, supernatural movements, light, [and] sound” to create an immersive and interactive experience. Fueled by the searing coals of our terror, rage, and despair, the spaces and exchanges offered by Dong generate a condensation of wonder and joy, beading with hope and seeping into our pores.
Words feel inadequate in these moments. Instead, I turn to text by the USC Pacific Asia Museum: “Dong’s work nourishes the transformative potential of this moment — toward human wholeness, imperfections encouraged and included.” The exhibition isn’t just extraordinary art, it’s a transcendent gesture of compassion.
— Laura Hess, Arts Editor
Once in a Blue Moon — Mobile Escapes
$14.99 per person; Remote (Web Browser); Ongoing
Looking for something that’s all-ages appropriate for the whole family? Or something easygoing to convince your hesitant friends they’ll enjoy escape rooms? Mobile Escapes’ web-based, self-guided escape room Once in a Blue Moon is a perfect, accessible entry point for families or newbies. Yet anyone else will be hard pressed to find their money’s worth.
Typically escape rooms exclude, intentionally or not, children due to subject matter or the level of difficulty. Blue Moon is the first experience, in-person or online, I’ve encountered that’s welcoming to players of any age. Imagery and text used in the eight puzzles involves stars, candies, and bugs with elementary grade-level counting, spelling, and visual comprehension required to parse out a solution. Children, and possibly those completely new to escape rooms, will feel like geniuses. Additionally, the website works flawlessly, something more complicated, involved online games struggle to accomplish.
Yet for a majority of players, Blue Moon is not for them. It wasn’t for our team. The puzzles are too easy, with someone cracking one in less than a minute. Only two puzzles held us up. One we felt was a little too convoluted in its presentation and the other simply too didactic, with a clear, instructional based clue required to solve it. I will note Mobile Escapes did warn Blue Moon was their easiest experience.
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Yet the biggest puzzle is Mobile Escapes’ pricing model. For a family of four, Blue Moon costs $59.96. Per their own leaderboards, Blue Moon can be completed on average in 31 mins and involves no Game Master running or monitoring any elements.The price seems high, especially as there’s so much other content (of any kind) available for less that lasts longer. I fear this pricing might be unintentionally excluding the ideal audience that’d love Blue Moon.
— Patrick McLean, Chicago Curator
The Next Best Thing — Emily Holyoake
£5 — £10; Remote (Web browser); Through Aug. 15
As part of Chronic Insanity’s Puncture the Screen festival, The Next Best Thing is an interactive, visual novel. Written by Emily Holyoake and illustrated by Ellen Schaffert, the format purports to “measure the audience’s personality to create personalised routes through a dystopian story…about finding your place in a confusing world.”
The narrative centers around Alex and the reader embodies her POV. After the sudden death of her father, Alex is currently ensconced in a technological community under a doctor’s care. She’s isolated from her close friends, who remain on a commune outside of the watchful perimeter of SAM, a “social analytical matrix.” This is the crux of reader interaction: SAM is an AI (presented as a smart watch) and, at various points in the story, offers a series of multiple choice questions to the reader. Answers to these provocations determine how the narrative unfolds.
While the experience’s premise isn’t revelatory, the novel fosters enough conflict to hold interest. On several occasions, I found myself wavering in my convictions, reevaluating my tactics, and making alternate choices. And yet, the ending arrived abruptly and the overall experience left me longing for an arc with emotional depth. Chronic Insanity’s goal of “utilising audience data to produce a uniquely customised performance each time, crafting a connection through the personalisation” is fantastic in theory. However, meaningful personalization relies on more than algorithms. In spite of its statistical measurements, The Next Best Thing lacks an unquantifiable data point: heart.
— Laura Hess, Arts Editor
The Sisters Savitree — Mirror World Creations
Free; Remote; Ongoing
A contract with the Devil has always been one of the most terrifying — yet alluring — tropes in fantasy and folktales. For the price of your soul, you can get anything your heart desires: a great fortune, eternal youth, musical talents. You name it, the Devil’s got it. The only catch is you must spend eternity in the fiery pits of Hell. Easy peasy — just sign on the dotted line.
It’s not a very tempting offer, but it’s certainly interesting to think about, which is what makes Mirror World Creation’s The Sisters Savitree so fun.
Over the course of seven days, you receive emails from the seven sisters of the Savitree family. The eldest sister, Grey, has been given a blank check from Satan himself and died before she got to use it. The player has been selected as Grey’s executor and gets to decide which of her sisters gets to use it. Each sister sends an email proposing how to use the contract.
It is up to the player to decide what — if anything — is worth burning for.
The format and pacing of the game worked well for its contents. The player receives one email per day, and I found myself thinking about the contents of each message throughout the day. The emails were well written, distinct, and thought-provoking.
— Cheyenne Ligon, NYC Correspondent
Speakeasy Magick — The McKittrick Hotel
$150; New York City, NY; Ongoing
In a darkened room, a pianist sits at his instrument, playing old time jazz tunes as the guests gradually arrive. A silhouette appears onstage, and he welcomes and invites us to an evening of wonder.
Speakeasy Magick, an ongoing project of the McKittrick Hotel, is a chance for a select number of New Yorkers to let go of their perceived reality, and to enter into a world of whimsy and magic for an evening. A rotation of some of the finest magicians in the city, under the helm of the ineffable Todd Robbins, a legend of the NYC circle of magicians, flaunt their talents from the stage, but the real beauty is in the intimate magic that they display at each of the tables dotted around the cozy Club Car restaurant. Sleight of hand, card tricks and unexplainable predictions done up close (and at times very personal) are a wonder to behold from the small card tables, which host up to 10 guests, for the 90 minute experience. Performers all display a badge of vaccination, and we are asked whether we are comfortable with our mask-less magicians before the evening begins.
The intimacy of the evening is wonderful, and I left awe struck at the magic that I witnessed, but perhaps a little more “story ”would have levitated the evening even further. As it is, the soirée used to be for magicians exclusively until the bright idea hit the wizards to open it up to us paying regular folk (or so we are led to believe). There are some lovely interactions between magicians and assistants, which aid the timeless/eternal feel to the evening (a staple of the McKittrick’s appeal), but the evening is more performance-focused than it is story driven.
It was wonderful to be back in the legendary hotel and the atmosphere of the evening is a beautiful mix of electric energy and dark, sexy speakeasy whimsy. A must see for any would-be sorcerers, or those just curious enough to let themselves be carried away for an evening of delightful trickery. Just don’t expect any more answers than those you went in with!
— Edward Mylechreest, New York City Correspondent
The Walks — Rimini Protokoll
€5 in-app purchase; Remote (Cellphone); Ongoing
The Walks is a standalone app for iOS or Android that contains eight separate soundwalks created for users all around the world; it comes to us from the famed German theatre group Rimini Protokoll (who you might know from their series Remote X). The app is free to download but accessing the content requires an in-app purchase; once acquired, all the content is available in German, English, as well as French. Each soundwalk is tied to a specific starting point but with the parameters loose enough so that you can customize it to your own location; most of the walks thankfully last only 20–30 minutes. There are walks specifically designed for standing outside a closed theater, a supermarket, or even a cemetery. Others ask only that you find yourself on the street or at a crosswalk. Smartly, the app lists the requirements for completing the journey (some require two participants or a pen and paper) as well as the run time of any particular walk. There may be an occasional prompt for interaction (such as taking a photo of what’s nearby), but it is easily skipped if you don’t wish to participate.
The storyline (if there is one) and narration varies widely depending on the soundwalk you choose to do. “Departure” takes the participant on a dream-like random walk narrated by a child, whereas “Street” introduces us to a psychologist and a “strollogist” (that is, an expert in pedestrian walking) and feels more like an episode of 99% Invisible. I was charmed by a clandestine supermarket dance delivered as verbal instructions designed by a choreographer, as well as envisioning my secret twin entering a currently closed theater, two of the more site-specific walks. And the clever use of 3D sound was delightful with the inclusion of footsteps, rustling, birds, children playing, and the occasional airplane flying overhead. Even as I started to become flushed in the hot Southern California sun, I felt my heartbeat start to match the rhythms of the audio, as if I were truly there, with my narrator at my side.
— Kathryn Yu, Executive Editor
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