Review Rundown: The One With Ghostbusters and Ghost Reefs

Some weeks it is quiet but WEIRD, and this is definitely one of those weeks with just two things on the docket as we head into SXSW week (see our SXSW FOMO event roundup for more on that) and what’s looking to be a steady stream of XR reviews for the rest of the month.

This time out its two events in LA, one from Maid to Order Mysteries who do a different themed murder mystery in Burbank each month and the other a unique installation piece from artist Mulyana at USC’s Fisher Museum of Art.

Let’s get to it!

Looking for more? Last week’s Review Rundown “The One Where We Open Up The VAULT Festival” has some mysteries to solve.

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Mulyana: Modular Utopia — USC Fisher Museum of Art
Free; Los Angeles, CA; Closes April 13

In downtown Los Angeles, adjacent to the vehicular stream of a busy thoroughfare, is a gorgeous expanse of coral reef with thousands of fish, a massive whale, and clusters of sea anemone — all captivating and transportive.

All made of crochet.

Presented by USC’s Fisher Museum of Art, Indonesian artist Mulyana’s Modular Utopia portrays marine underworlds through knitted environments and kinetic sculptures. His artistic philosophy views creation as an act of human endurance, a necessary foundation for the themes of his work.

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Anchored by two spacious installations, Modular Utopia offers opposing outcomes: a colorful, abundant reef and a monochromatic, bleached embodiment of extinction. Bridging the spaces are gray wall sculptures; their muted spectrum serves as a kind of limbo, a purgatory of yarn. Mulyana leverages palette to spotlight vitality or its total absence. Color serves as a vehicle for immersion and a visceral call to action.

Collective experience is at the heart of Mulyana’s practice. He describes art as “a ‘feeling game’, a place to share imagination.” Collaboration and imagination play key roles for Modular Monster, the show’s interactive project. An assortment of oversized plush parts — tongues, mustaches, lips, tentacles, and eyes — invites guests of all ages into joyful, communal exploration with a focus on group effort and open dialogue. To that end, Modular Utopia is indeed an appeal. It’s also an example of sustainability. Materials include repurposed yarn, recycled foam, and overstocked art materials.

As a medium, crochet feels warm, inviting, and threaded to childhood. There’s a familiar, familial sensation in its pliability. Interested in “the combination of science and creativity,” Mulyana characterizes crochet as “concise and clean.” Its precise stitching emphasizes nature’s patterns and fractal designs. The effect is a wondrous, dynamic tension between its gentle quality and its urgent portrayal of our climate crisis. It shows us why our world is worth saving.

— Laura Hess, Arts Editor

Welcome to the Jungle — Maid to Order Mysteries
$35; Burbank, CA; New Events Monthly

After getting the assignment for Welcome to the Jungle, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Maid to Order Mysteries’ events are billed as murder mysteries, which is a fairly broad description, but did imply that there would be puzzles in service of solving a, well, murder mystery. The premise of Welcome to the Jungle confused things a little further because it features a bunch of pop culture characters who are all inside of Jumanji (learning that this particular game was initially created for Sony helped clarify that part though). Additionally, guests of any of the events are encouraged (though not required) to dress up based on the theme or character.

In the lead up to the event, guests are given a survey, which helps determine which character they’ll be assigned. Based on the assigned character, attendees are given background about how they fit into the theme, along with some costuming ideas. The info they give also helps set the tone for the night as a little silly. Once Welcome to the Jungle officially kicked off, it started, surprise surprise, with a murder! Guests had to work together to investigate the scene, find and decipher clues, and put all of the information together to deduce who among the group had ‘dunnit.’ In essence, it’s something like a game of Clue crossed with an escape room where you have to solve puzzles to get info to start eliminating suspects.

Each set of characters had a unique ability or skill that helped them solve the mystery. The Ghostbusters could speak with ghosts, the Spider-People could use their Spidey sense to find hidden messages, Lyle the Crocodile and some Jumanji characters could understand animals, and so on and so forth. This rather simple move did a few things. First, it created a few large-ish groups of people who could work together. At the same time, it forced people to work with people outside of those groups to obtain info they couldn’t get on their own. Lastly, it made the character you’d been assigned feel more meaningful.

The puzzles were on the easier side, but mostly felt like an engine to drive interactions between all of the attendees. Like I said before, the tone is pretty firmly silly, but it’s meant to be and made it more fun once people started running around trying to solve the mystery. After a set amount of time, each guest had to lock in their vote for the killer (and the best dressed) via an online survey. Guess the killer and everyone wins, guess wrong and the falsely accused winner of the vote is killed before everyone has just 10 more minutes to try to crack the case and see justice done.

Welcome to the Jungle was a great introduction to Maid to Order Mysteries, and overall, just a good time. If you’re into murder mysteries or escape rooms, it makes for a great group get together as you work together and compete to solve the mystery first.

— Kevin Gossett, LA Reviews Editor

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