Room Escape Artist

June 2024 saw the return of the Tribeca Festival to New York City. The annual celebration of film and storytelling again included exhibitions for Immersive (predominantly VR and AR experiences) and Games (video games). Typically these are presented together, this time around, Tribeca’s Immersive section was wholly separate from their video games – one sign of a format change that overall was a large step backward from the high water mark set by last year’s Immersive exhibition.

As a reminder, my experience with 2023’s Immersive exhibition was at a press event that took place in the exhibit itself, and I expressed just how much I appreciated the upgraded and polished experience. Many of the creators and designers were there to talk to, and there were public relations representatives to show me around and make sure that I was experiencing everything. The whole experience really felt like it was being taken seriously, and I had been looking forward to Tribeca building on that strong foundation.

Unfortunately, the 2024 Tribeca Immersive experience was something of a letdown. The Immersive section was styled as “Mercer Labs” and was devoid of both virtual and augmented reality, and the chances for interactivity were minimal at best. Mercer Labs felt more like a selfie factory than something that was truly Immersive. It’s not that I didn’t like what I was seeing; but it was not at all like what it had been.

My entry into Mercer Labs started out relatively strongly. I was told to put foot coverings over my shoes – something that you would do before entering a clean room in a lab – before I could see the exhibits. Unfortunately, this is where the diegesis ended. No room or exhibit in Mercer Labs was styled as a ‘lab’ in any way.

CO_SONIC 38,144 km²

Putting all that aside and examining the exhibits for their own sakes, Mercer Labs opened impressively. The first exhibit, “CO_SONIC 38,144 km²”, was an immersive riverine soundscape set in a large padded room. The soft red lighting and misty atmosphere gave the room a comforting and ethereal feel. Sitting down for a moment, it almost felt like relaxing in a river. This oasis might have been better placed toward the middle of the exhibition, a restful moment after walking around the Lab.

While We Wait

The next room, entitled “While We Wait,” revealed the reason for the booties: many exhibits, starting with this one, utilized highly polished mirrored floor panels to give the exhibits a grand sense of space. Tracked-in dirt from shoes would have ruined the illusion of scale that the reflective surfaces provided. The sense of depth and the highly reflective surfaces created an explosion of neon color throughout the space and was slightly disorienting in a pleasurable way. “While We Wait” sought to show the disparity between the chaos of life and the consolation that we find in virtual spaces, and the alternation between havoc and tranquility sold that idea.

Planet City

“Planet City” was an attractive exhibition of LED string lighting that was part of a larger multimedia work involving a book, a short film, and a VR experience. While it was pleasing to the eye, I believe it lost some of the impact without the context of the other aspects of the work. Reflective floors and walls made an appearance again, adding to the sense of space.

Pneumatic Transmission

No walkthrough photo experience would be complete without an opportunity to collect customer data, and that seemed to be the point of the pneumatic tube exhibit. Participants were invited to write their wishes onto a computer terminal and send them off via a glowing pneumatic tube – once you entered your email address as well. Like everything else, the tube room was nice to look at. It felt a bit like if Willy Wonka had taken over a bank drive-through window. Reflective floors once again reminded me that NYC real estate is expensive, and creating the illusion of space is much cheaper than high ceilings.

Ecosystem

“Ecosystem” was a breath of fresh, actually interactive air. At first I thought it was just an exhibit for children with the crayons and coloring pages of a few different fantasy creatures neatly laid out on a long table. But then I saw the magic – an attendant was there to scan each completed coloring page, which then created a moving 3D avatar of the animal in a virtual world on a screen. Between this exhibit and the large chessboard set up in the next room, it was really positive to see the younger crowd have an actual hands-on experience that they could participate in. In the chess room, I watched a young child who was obviously familiar with chess slowly realize that the exhibit was made with the standard chess rules in mind. I could see his own agency take over as he turned the chess game into something he wanted to experience. It was a good lesson in the usefulness of blending the familiar with the strange in order to teach the confidence needed to interact with interactive art for the first time.

Mercer Labs

As with many galleries, the exit of Mercer Labs was through the gift shop. There was the standard collection of branded and themed apparel and accessories as well as art books. But there were also some oddly incongruent pieces as well – namely the stoneware tableware. Perhaps that inconsistency speaks to the larger issue with Mercer Labs. I was left wondering what the purpose of styling this Immersive exhibition as a “lab” if there was nothing inside that made it feel anything like a lab.

Overall, while many of the exhibits were interesting to see, I found myself mourning the previous iterations of Tribeca Immersive. For people like myself looking forward to seeing new and interesting ways of telling stories, or experiencing creators’ innovative use of virtual and alternate reality to create new worlds or expand our real one, Mercer Labs was nothing short of a major downgrade. I’m hopeful that future versions of Tribeca Immersive will return to its peak 2023 form.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s article about Tribeca’s Games exhibit!

Disclosure: Tribeca Festival provided a complimentary media ticket.