Review Rundown: The One With Greek Gods & Frank Gehry

Art, audio, and more for July 27, 2021. Five reviews.

This week, just in time for the Delta Covid Olympics, we have a bit of a pivot back to what we used to call “Remote” work in the Before Times. Three online pieces, two art pieces in NYC and LA. One of which can work as just an audio piece on its own. The other a gallery showing of an iconic architect’s sculptures. A podplay that sounds like it has half the cast of the video game Hades in it. (The Gods, not the voice actors.)

Five reviews to help you find your next immersive adventure.

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The Golden Record — Wall Break Productions in collaboration with A Sketch of New York and Blue Owl Films
$15; Online (Zoom); Through July 30th

One sci-fi’s many classic obsessions is attempting to determine the value of an artificial life. For the most part, the interactive Zoom experience The Golden Record handles this theme with genuine sweetness, letting the audience nurture a fledgling AI as she learns about her own past from the past of the audience. Audience recollections are fun and the actors gamely play along with the elements each audience member introduces into the stew of the AI’s growing consciousness. However, mid-game, the themes of The Golden Record shift to abuse and codependency and a late plot twist somewhat undermines the charm of the show.

In a moment of classic immersive frustration, the audience is made to feel responsible for a decision they haven’t been given adequate information about or time to reasonably come to a conclusion on. While I enjoyed my time chatting with our AI daughter (tragically left unnamed through the entire show), the ending of this experience left me a bit cold.

Occasionally charming but utterly inoffensive, The Golden Record makes a nice evening’s theatre for the price, I suppose, but I doubt I’ll think back to it very fondly, if at all.
— Blake Weil, East Coast Curator at Large

Journey to the Kingdom of Hypnos — Spectacle and Mirth
$9; Remote (Podplay); Through July 30th

Embarrassing story time: when I was in sixth grade, going through my Greek mythology phase (as many a sixth grader does), I used to picture Hypnos as I had seen him illustrated, gliding down to spirit me off into dreamland. Somehow Journey to the Kingdom of Hypnos captures that same spirit but with a warmhearted and mature approach to how we relate to sleep.

Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, has sensed troubles from the overflowing banks of oblivion, sensuously realized as lapping waves in this on-demand podplay. The audio is mostly her guided tour of the corner of the underworld which is home to the gentler children of Nyx. As Mnemosyne leads the listener towards the source of the trouble and its potential solution, there are some quite lovely moments: guided meditations on the ways memory guides us and binds us to one another and brings us our principle joys. Forgetfulness is a lovely ease from the burdens of our failures and shame, but memory makes us whole as both individuals and as a society. Journey to the Kingdom of Hypnos walks a delicate tightrope, giving just enough specifics to create a gorgeous world, but ambiguous enough to let you fill in the empty spaces with your own fancies and dreams. This is all executed via gorgeous spatial audio that fully realizes the realm of sleep via a mixture of trancey synth and the assorted sounds of the night time world, both natural and man made. Original music manages to capture an expected ancient feel, while still feeling urgent and personal.

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For fans of podplays, guided meditations, and mythology, I can see listeners returning to the Kingdom of Hypnos again and again in their waking lives, as a lovely way to remember and embrace our forgotten nightly journeys.
— Blake Weil, East Coast Curator at Large

PNOC.io — Chronic Insanity
PWYC; Remote (Web Based); through Aug 6

I had a hard time getting into Chronic Insanity’s choose your own adventure video narrative PNOC.io.

Not for any technical reasons, or because I didn’t “get” what this modern twist on the tale of Pinocchio was about, but because of an exposition-heavy start that mimics tech company onboarding videos so well I couldn’t help but tune out.

Granted, such a start is satire, but it also means that the piece has a double onboarding. By the time we meet the titular PNOC.io it feels like we’ve been onboarding for ten minutes. It’s probably less, but it feels longer.

PNOC.io leverages the features of a FMV video game — a form that has been around since the 1980’s and actually has some fascinating ties to early immersive theatre. There’s been an uptick in interest in the form after Sam Barlow’s Her Story showed that you could really get some fascinating results playing with perspective and partial information. Even Steven Soderbergh has had a run at the form in the last few years.

Yet there’s a reason why so few of these take off: so much work goes into making the branching paths and setting the stage for those branches that fewer resources are put into tight characterizations and arcs. That, sadly, is what happens here. It’s not a bad experiment with the form, but PNOC.io doesn’t really transcend the limits of its structure. We’re kept at a distance from the drama too long to bond to a character, and that pretty much hobbles it from the start. In so many ways it feels like the strings are still attached on this one.
— Noah Nelson, Founder and Publisher

Samuel — Alexis Roblan and The Tank NYC
$25; The Tank NYC; through Aug 14

Lifeless eyes stare out from the diorama, straight into my soul. The perfect porcelain pieces gleam in the illumination from the red neon light. The points of the pentagram glow ominously in the blackness of the room, and I begin to learn about Samuel.

Samuel is an audio-visual experience, presented by The Tank NYC, taking the form of a series of audio vignettes accompanied by dark diorama. The experience is available as standalone audio, but the visual component really adds to the dark tone of the drama. Each diorama remains perfectly still, with porcelain dolls placed in unsettling dollhouses and scenarios to aid the sense of unease throughout. The space is darkly lit; only the vignettes have any light shining from them. With lighting cues timed to go alongside the audio, it is a spooky museum tour of the macabre. Portable fans provide an incessant drone to the piece, while also moving the curtains just enough to keep your peripheral vision on its toes throughout the experience. It is quite unsettling.

The narrative itself focuses on a family of grown sisters, who are having issues recollecting their memories, including whether or not they did in fact have a brother, the titular Samuel. The story in Samuel gets increasingly dark and potentially spooky, but always with enough room to doubt the validity of what you are hearing. With canned laughter, voices that merge in and out of each other, and a soundtrack that never quite seems to fit, it is an unnerving mixture to have up close in one’s ears. My only gripe with the production is the lack of a convincing wrap-up to the experience; I was hoping for some final event, twist, or explanation to come from the story to give a final punch, but was left wanting.

The show is well produced (and worth a listen if you are unable to make the in-person experience as it is also available remotely), but Samuel’s visual aspect is the real killer here. This is a great early contender for Spooky Season, and I look forward to seeing where the piece goes next with Halloween just around the corner!
— Edward Mylechreest, New York City Correspondent

Spinning Tales — Frank Gehry
Free; Gagosian, Beverly Hills, CA; Closes August 6

Best known for his sweeping architecture, Frank Gehry’s oeuvre also includes sculptural works. Gehry’s current show at Gagosian focuses on two presentations: sculptures inspired by the “perfect form” of fish and an immersive interpretation of the Mad Hatter’s tea party from Alice in Wonderland.

Spinning Tales begins in the main gallery. Massive, internally illuminated “Fish Lamps” are suspended from the ceiling, seemingly preserved mid-swim. Amongst these are smaller, illuminated fish sculptures, skimming the currents of shredded plastic laminate. The sculptures embody the balletic tension of a fish’s form and motion so thoroughly that there’s a disarming, peripheral sense of movement, as though they pause their undulations only when looked upon directly. And, for the first time, two Fish Lamps are constructed in copper. These appear weightless and delicate, as though they’re made of the thinnest, foil membrane, one that would arch from a distant exhale.

Wishful Thinking, a reimagining of the Mad Hatter’s party, is housed in a second, upstairs gallery. A concentrated, labyrinthian installation, Wishful Thinking is comprised of colorful figures representing Lewis Carroll’s characters. Scattered around a central, candescent table, the figures are bookended by a mirror on one side and steel “tapestries” on the other; depicting the forest setting of the tea party, these tree tapestries are a transportive wonder. Spinning Tales offers a way to experience Gehry’s dynamic work on a personal scale and is well worth a visit.
— Laura Hess, Arts Editor

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